In an unintentionally comic piece [3], Stanley Crouch claims, “On President Obama’s watch, patience is the ultimate virtue.”
Is he kidding? To rephrase the expression, Barack Obama never
waited a day in his administration. (Up until the presidential
campaign, “worked an honest day in his life” covers him pretty well,
too.)
Obama would have nationalized healthcare, banned carbon dioxide,
withdrawn from Iraq, and started a second New Deal while still in the
“Office of the President-Elect” if he could have gotten away with it.
President “I want a stimulus package on my desk by January 20” Obama
couldn’t be bothered with niceties like posting the bill online for 48
hours for voters to read, even though he waited four days after it
passed to sign it. In his quote from the week before the $800 billion
boondoggle was brought to a vote—“We can’t afford to make perfect the
enemy of the absolutely necessary”—by “perfect” he evidently meant “a
bill with completed wording [4].”
Obama is just fine with Nancy Pelosi ramming “healthcare reform”
through Congress with a simple majority by inappropriately using budget
reconciliation to write it into law after the budget is approved, so
members of Congress don’t have time to debate it.
President “Delay is no longer an option” is content to let the
Environmental Protection Agency enact cap-and-trade regulations if
Congress doesn’t pass them soon enough for his liking.
Our Hastener in Chief is willing to lose the war in Iraq so he can
make sure combat troops are home in time for the midterm elections.
And President “Bow at the Waist” Obama just can’t wait until he and
Fidel Castro, Kim Jong Il, and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad are on good enough
terms that he can add them as Facebook friends, even though Castro
hasn’t promised to confirm his request.
Crouch explains Obama’s leadership style thus: “He clearly
understands that a democracy with many, many circles of power is prone
to a slow velocity of policy achievements.” Apparently Obama
understands it well enough to cut Republicans out of committee meetings
on the stimulus package, cut the American people out of a chance to
look at and comment on the bill, cut shareholders out of hiring and
firing decisions at automobile manufacturers and banks, and cut
Congress out of passing environmental regulations. That’s one way to
deal with “many, many circles of power,” otherwise known by our
Founding Fathers as “checks and balances” and “limits on rule.”
Crouch contrasts Obama’s administration with a dictatorial or
totalitarian regime by explaining that in the latter, “Orders are given
to go with a theory… Physical threats can almost always guarantee
compliance and the speed once called ‘greased lightning.’”
Let’s recount what orders Obama has served up so far to go with his
“theories.” There are the massive stimulus package and budget to go
with the discredited theory of Keynesian economics. There are the
wasteful bailouts to go with the meritless theory that some companies
are “too big to fail.” There are the suicidal environmental
regulations to go with the delusional theory of man-made global warming.
As for threatening those who do not follow orders, Obama has already
set his staff on private citizens who might impede his progress (Rush
Limbaugh, Jim Cramer), fired or intimidated CEOs who interfered with
his plans (Rick Wagoner, Vikram Pandit), ordered creditors to accept
lousy bankruptcy terms and warned that he would ruin their reputations
if they didn’t comply, and issued a veiled threat against dissenters by
implying that he might unleash the Department of Homeland Security as a
bulwark against their dangerous right-wing tendencies.
Crouch sagely counsels, “It is always good for our nation to sit
back, be patient, be determined, be disciplined and listen carefully to
everything that is said.” Sorry—who was it who didn’t have time to
post the stimulus bill online for Americans to read so they could
“listen carefully to everything that is said”? Who is too busy to
provide promised details on how the stimulus money is being spent so we
can be “disciplined” and spend it wisely? Who isn’t “patient” enough
to let U.S. soldiers in Iraq finish their job and let Congress and the
American people have a chance to debate nation-altering healthcare and
environmental legislation?
Perhaps what Crouch really meant is that Obama’s “patience” is
demonstrated by his willingness to wait a long time for our problems to
be solved. Maybe Obama believes that precipitous action is needed now,
and then we can relax and engage in luxuries like “debate.” But if
these issues have allegedly gone unaddressed for so long and will take
years or decades to resolve, then we can certainly afford to spend a
mere few months discussing them.
Even Stalin probably didn’t institute one of his Five-Year Plans without sleeping on it.
