There may be some formalities left in New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Florida, but the stage for the general election is now set and two stories yesterday almost perfectly previewed what the next 10 months are going to be about.
First in Washington, President Obama accepted the resignation of his Chief of Staff William Daley. Daley had been brought in to improve Obama’s relationship with the business community. Thanks to Obama’s unprecedented expansion of government spending, debt and power, that effort was dead before Daley could even unpack. So now Obama has brought in a committed liberal, Jack Lew, as his new Chief of Staff … his fourth Chief of Staff in less than three years. No previous president (including two-termers) have had more than four Chiefs of Staff. But don’t expect the liberal media to do any stories on White House dysfunction. Daley is out and Lew is in because Obama plans to run a populist campaign demonizing the free enterprise system. He previewed this approach in a campaign speech in front crowd of roughly 700 who payed $100 a ticket to see him at the Capital Hilton yesterday. “We are not a country that was built on the idea of survival of the fittest. We were built on the idea that we survive as a nation. We thrive when we work together, all of us,” Obama said. Of course, Obama’s idea of working together is not voluntary exchange through a capitalist system, but top-down government command-and-control through a powerful and unchecked administrative state.
