Massachusetts’ Senate election as much as grabbed President Obama by the lapels, looked him in the eye and told him to cut the leftist idiocy on health care and get serious about the economy and jobs. It took him hardly any time at all to respond.
Without a moment’s hesitation, he emerged a ranting, prejudice-eliciting demagogue figuring to reverse his party’s fall in popularity by kicking banks and insurance companies; and by adopting a policy that, while thrilling to those who want to hurt big businesses, will damage the economy, not help it.
It was enough to make you dizzy, so irrational were some of his arguments, showing, of course, that he has major disrespect for the public’s intelligence.
“We want our money back, we want our money back, and we’re going to get your money back, every dime, each and every dime,” he said at an Ohio rally in reference to bank bailouts. It was as if this wasn’t a Bush-initiated policy, one that Obama’s administration enthusiastically followed without even paying much attention to what was done with the billions passed to the banks.
And what about this new proposal of restricting investments of bank-owning companies? It has already cost average Americans money by causing stock values to decline, and Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York City says it could lead to layoffs in the industry, adding to the city’s jobless rolls and worsening its financial plight.
The mayor notes, too, that the Obama idea could make these businesses less competitive with financial institutions overseas. Sadly, that’s not the kind of argument that will appeal to a president who fails to understand that it’s the private sector that counts in creating wealth, that there are safe, sound ways to deal with its excesses, and that we know what doesn’t work — for instance, a mammoth stimulus package that has done nothing to prevent the recent weekly increases in jobless claims.
In the final analysis, a bustling economy is dependent on businesses having confidence in presidential leadership, not trembling at what inanity might come next — and that’s where we are. A recent poll of investors shows 77 percent think Obama is anti-business and that hardly anyone believes he can handle this financial mess.
It hardly helps when you look at another of his demagogic slams, this one berating “insurance company bureaucrats” who “click their heels and watch their stocks skyrocket” as they keep people from getting the medical care they need. Let’s see — isn’t it the Obama administration that has wanted all Americans to be unconstitutionally required to buy health insurance, with many of us paying higher premiums than ever?
Oh, sorry, shouldn’t have brought that up. It’s sounds so Tea Partyish.
Although a number of Democrats have signaled they are ready to put off movement on a health package, Obama is still insistent on it, still preaching that we should put more trust in a government grown mountainous and increasingly dictatorial than in free enterprise occasionally redirected in small ways by prudent, small-scale governmental actions.
Obama should consider this: There is nothing even the worst of the big banks did to help bring on this latest recession that is any more irresponsible than the federal government’s running up a $38 trillion unfunded Medicare liability, and there is no more irresponsible way to deal with that issue than establishing still another health entitlement, as Obama wants to do.
I think the public has caught on to him, and I don’t think populist demagoguery is going to dig him out of the hole.
He needs to change. It looks like he won’t.
Examiner Columnist Jay Ambrose is a former Washington opinion writer and editor of two dailies. He can be reached at [email protected].
