Posted By Vicki McClure Davidson on May 22, 2009

By Vicki McClure Davidson * Frugal Café Blog Zone

Pres. Barack Obama

Here’s a portion of it:

Flip-Flops and Governance
Our president isn’t quite as advertised.
Wall Street Journal
By Karl Rove | May 21, 2009

…Mr. Obama campaigned on “responsible fiscal policies,” arguing in a speech on the Senate floor in 2006 that the “rising debt is a hidden domestic enemy.” In his acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention, he pledged to “go through the federal budget line by line, eliminating programs that no longer work.” Even now, he says he’ll “cut the deficit… by half by the end of his first term in office” and is “rooting out waste and abuse” in the budget.

However, Mr. Obama’s fiscally conservative words are betrayed by his liberal actions. He offers an orgy of spending and a bacchanal of debt. His budget plans a 25% increase in the federal government’s share of the GDP, a doubling of the national debt in five years, and a near tripling of it in 10 years.

On health care, Mr. Obama’s election ads decried “government-run health care” as “extreme,” saying it would lead to “higher costs.” Now he is promoting a plan that would result in a de facto government-run health-care system. Even the Washington Post questions it, saying, “It is difficult to imagine . . . benefits from a government-run system.”

Making adjustments in office is one thing. Constantly governing in direct opposition to what you said as a candidate is something else. Mr. Obama’s flip-flops on national security have been wise; on the domestic front, they have been harmful.

In both cases, though, we have learned something about Mr. Obama. What animated him during the campaign is what historian Forrest McDonald once called “the projection of appealing images.” All politicians want to project an appealing image. What Mr. McDonald warned against is focusing on this so much that an appealing image “becomes a self-sustaining end unto itself.” Such an approach can work in a campaign, as Mr. Obama discovered. But it can also complicate life once elected, as he is finding out.

Mr. Obama’s appealing campaign images turned out to have been fleeting. He ran hard to the left on national security to win the nomination, only to discover the campaign commitments he made were shallow and at odds with America’s security interests.

Mr. Obama ran hard to the center on economic issues to win the general election. He has since discovered his campaign commitments were obstacles to ramming through the most ideologically liberal economic agenda since the Great Society.

Mr. Obama either had very little grasp of what governing would involve or, if he did, he used words meant to mislead the public…

Click to read it in its entirety

Other insightful reads:
Robert Bowie Johnson, Jr., American Thinker: Narcissus And Echo: Obama And The Mainstream Media
Greg Gutfeld, Big Hollywood: Daily Gut: Bush Speaks
Adam Baldwin, Big Hollywood: ‘Global Citizenship’: An Unsustainable Social Injustice
Seth Mitchell, Big Hollywood: Karl Rove: Shining a Light in the Wilderness
Myrna Sokoloff, Big Hollywood: ‘The Smile’: A Perfect Presidential Nickname
Hot Air Green Room: Obama Admits to Being on the Wrong Side of History on Iraq
Gazzer’s Gabfest: President Stink-Eye?

Categories: Conservatism, Economy, International Relations, Media & Communication, National Security, Social and Political Climate
Tags: America, American health care, Barack Obama, budget, campaign images, debt, economy, flip-flops, government waste, health care, Karl Rove, liberal, Obama, president