Barack Obama is unhappy with much that preceded his occupation of the White House, and not only his predecessors conduct of foreign policy, for which he is a serial apologizer. Pre-Obama domestic policy also displeases him: any prosperity the nation enjoyed, he says, was built on a foundation of sand. That won’t happen again: the trillions of debt he is loading on the nation’s books will enable us to erect our post-recession house on solid rock, he says. Our world will never be the same again.
Of course, it never has been: the march of technology has enabled us to travel faster, age more slowly, entertain ourselves differently, and build air-conditioned homes in the miserably hot South and Southwest, and in our steamy nation’s capitol. But the President has something more in mind and, with control of both Houses of Congress, the power to change the way we live. Let’s make a few guesses as to where those changes will take us.