State of the Debtor Nation

President Obama’s State of the Nation speech last night was once again riddled with irony and once again showed he has little problem offering up the same centrist banalities that have characterised both his speech-making and his presidency so far.  

By the end of an hour-and-some-change long speech Obama and his silver tongue are usually able to provide enough for everyone on both sides of the aisle, to the point where everyone leaves the room going, “this guy knows what he’s doing”. 

In reality Obama can no more deliver on his make-everyone-happy promises than someone can be in two places at once or turn left and right at the same time.  And indeed reality has proven so, with Obama’s actual decisions in stark contrast to warm fuzzy “let’s put aside our petty partisan differences” rhetoric. 

What many of the gawking mindless herd mistake for oratory genius is really an insidious rhetorical cunning that is as dishonest as it is, ultimately, meaningless. 

Obama promises to “tackle the federal deficit”, but also to “press ahead with his plan to overhaul the nation’s health-care system” and “stimulate the economy and create jobs”.  He wants to give “tax breaks and incentives” but maintain “government spending efforts”.  The president says he wants to be fiscally responsible and enact a “budget freeze” on “some discretionary spending”, but also that he will increase discretionary “spending programmes” in other areas like education.

Bottom line: US debt is growing rampantly and will keep growing rampantly.  Trite words or appeasement do not change that fact.  The numbers don’t lie.

In his speech Obama also said that he hated the bank bailout.  He then went on to say that $30 billion of the money paid back by the big banks that were bailed out with TARP should be used to assist community banks that give loans to small businesses. 

Message: Propping up the big bad ugly wolves on Wall St is bad, but propping up everyone else is ok – Classic populism.

Obama’s other favourite trick is to frame his position as the well thought-out, carefully considered, moderate, sensible, centrist position, devoid of dangerous ideology and petty partisan minutia.  He does this by often prefacing his own platitudinous nullities with rote phrases like, “tired battles”, “petty politics of the past”, “tired old grievances”, “the same old partisan politics” etc, as in: “It’s time to set aside the tired partisan politics of the past and move toward…[insert Obama agenda here].

In this way, those who disagree with Obama’s polemic are seen to be small, petty, self-serving parasites while King Barack and those beautiful souls who join him at his right hand represent the new enlightened ‘politics of the future’. 

Back in the real world however the edifice that was Obama’s infallible greatness is crumbling faster than you can say Troubled Asset Relief Programme.  Obama is a clever man and his political strategy is good, but it’s not that good, and Massachusetts proved it.  People are realising that it doesn’t matter if a president’s hugability rating is off the charts, or his oratory leaves the ladies a bit hot under the collar, if he mortgages your future prosperity in the name of daft Keynesian stimulus ideologies, partisan Democrat healthcare ideals, and a tax-the-rich wealth destroying agenda, he’s not working in your best interest. 

For a very savvy politician Obama has surprisingly grown badly out of touch in year-1 of his presidency.  This was perhaps best summed up in his speech yesterday when he said,

“We have to recognize we have more than a deficit of dollars right now. We have a deficit of trust.”

A deficit of trust there no doubt is, but it springs largely from the deficit of dollars and Obama has piled that deficit recklessly high and will continue to do. 

Contrary to what the world likes to think, American’s aren’t stupid.  They see what their leaders are doing at a state and federal level by racking up absurd and ultimately un-payable debts and they get that in reality the buck stops with them, not the cosy politicians who’ll forever waft in and out of power with scant accountability. 

If Mr. Obama and his Democrat groupies don’t get that the trust deficit and the dollar deficit are one and the same thing, they’ll get smashed in Congress in 2010 and in the 2012 presidential election. 

Americans to Obama: ”It’s the debt, stupid.”