In a CSPAN interview the president says:
Well, we are out of money now. We are operating in deep deficits, not caused by any decisions we’ve made on health care so far. This is a consequence of the crisis that we’ve seen and in fact our failure to make some good decisions on health care over the last several decades.
So we’ve got a short-term problem, which is we had to spend a lot of money to salvage our financial system, we had to deal with the auto companies, a huge recession which drains tax revenue at the same time it’s putting more pressure on governments to provide unemployment insurance or make sure that food stamps are available for people who have been laid off.
We’re not in this fix because of any healthcare decisions he’s made — “so far,” mind you. But what is remarkable is the lack of personal responsibility for our current sea of red ink. No mention of the trillion dollar stimulus or the $3.5 trillion budget. And in the same breath in which he denies running up the deficit he mentions the car bailouts which he “had” to deal with. Actually, it wasn’t necessary; it was a policy choice which now has the ailing car companies permanently affixed to the public dole.
It is hard to ignore how passive he sounds — ever the victim of circumstances. That darn Bush left a mess on national security. And what’s a guy to do with such a deficit left on his doorstep? But the facts tell a different story, as this chart illustrates. To a greater degree than any predecessor, Obama has run up the deficit — with little to show for it.
Blaming the previous administration is a time-honored political trick. But voters tend to hold the party in power responsible for the state of the country’s finances. That’s how the Republicans lost the White House and I suspect the public will be no less forgiving in 2010 or 2012 if things don’t turn around.
Apparently, some would like the US to look like 1960′s Eastern Europe.
What a mismatch, a featherweight like Brooks vs Murray the sober scholar. Who do think has it right? Me, I go with Murray. Bush’s blithering incompetence opened the door to dangerous radicalism. We won’t recognize this country.
Mr. Wehner,
I share your fear that Mr. Murray is more on the mark than Mr. Brooks when it comes to what the future may hold for our republic. Unfortunately, as a structural construct, DNA is notorious for mutating into a molecule that can manifest as a cancer killing its host, partiularly when exposed to external agents. I pray that the progressive lunacy of the liberals currently in power trying to fashion a new America by adhereing to Rahm Emmanuel’s Rule #1 of crisis manipulation, does not result in a carcinogenesis of Mr. Brooks notion of American cultural DNA.
Europeans only became what they are today after living under their welfare state regime for a few decades. Their DNA mutated and adapted quite rapidly. America’s ‘commercial republic’ ethos could disappear in a generation if Obama succeeds. Brooks’s judgment is not to be trusted on these matters.
Here in Normal, USA, we could care less what these two nitwits think or write.
There in “Normal, USA” are there any thoughts or writings that you *do* care about?
Great post! Good analysis by Wehner and by Brooks & Murray. All have contributed positively to a good discussion.
Without a doubt, the USA has earned its place in history as an exceptional nation. Our history of ups and downs, positives and negatives has created a unique mind-set that won’t simply be washed away with some new government programs and initiatives.
I’m of the opinion that Brooks’ analysis will prove to be more accurate. We’ll have to assess in a few years. I’m also of the opinion that the USA becoming more like Europe in some ways is not such a bad thing. The nation was founded by European traditions and laws. This European aspect of our nation has been part of our DNA since colonial times. Perhaps we can maintain the rugged independence that frames the American character (as opined by Brooks) and borrow sufficiently from Europe to enhance our rather poor public education system. I’m continually amazed by the young western Europeans that I meet that have far superior mathematical, scientific and language abilities than their US counterparts being turned out in our public schools.
Brooks:
“After periodic pauses, the country inevitably returns to its elemental nature. The U.S. is in one of those pauses today…. Washington is temporarily at the center of the nation’s economic gravity and a noncommercial administration holds sway.”
What pause are we in? When before has such “pause” been the case? When before has Washington been the center of the nation’s economic gravity? Perhaps the Great Depression & WW II? Seems to me, we are not in another depression, nor are we in a pitched all-out battle to save our lives or the lives of our allies. The Great Depression was no pause–it was the beginning of the nanny welfare state, from which we’ve never shrunk. Obama is set to enlarge the nanny welfare state even further. This is no pause either. I’m afraid Charles Murray has the better observation–but that’s no surprise as the man does real research, as compared to Brooks as the token conservative lackey on the NYTimes opinion page.
Has David Brooks ever claimed — publicly, specifically — that he considers himself to be “conservative” (however he defines that term)?
I agree with Murray. I believe the cultural decay combining relativism, altruistic anti-capitalist self-righteousness, a poorly educated populace (especially in economics), and pop culture has led us to a crucial point. Discipline, personal responsibility, and security have take a back seat to radical liberalism and radical egalitarianism. A new president is seeking to drastically restructure society and government’s role within it, promising the introduction of basically irreversible new entitlements (regardless of our inability to fund our current irreversible entitlements), and appealing to the rawest of human weaknesses on a regular basis (class envy, guilt, fear, and unearned entitlement, supplemented by the allure of Obama’s own pop culture glamour). Does human nature, even American nature, have the strength and discipline to resist the idolatry of Change, the allure of getting something for nothing, the class envy to punish the successful and lucky, and the bestowal of self-righteousness by pandering politicians? It has been a long time since America knew real deprivation and struggle. We are weaker in our will than we are in our current resources. Although our traditional systems of social incentives will remain in place, they will be rendered vastly less effective by government controls and regulations. The more we get the government’s direct help, the worse off we will all be. Yet a citizenry whose majority pays no income taxes will begin to expect more help from government, without making the connection between the welfare state’s influence in the economy and the overall decline of living standards. Thus, we will experience the democratic despotism Tocqueville discussed.
It’s as disturbing as it is interesting that neither Murray nor Brooks nor any of the commentary here mentions the most reliable discriminator between Europe and the United States: sincere religious belief.
I would suggest that in discerning the probable future of avowedly religious communities in the US one simultaneously discerns the probability that Americans will or will not come to resemble Europeans.
Actually this isn’t true:
“his leading intellectual heroes are the American equivalent of Europe’s social democrats.”
Murray has it wrong. The social democrats who created the modern European social democratic states were NOT inspired by “equivalents” of Frantz Fanon, W. E. B. DuBois, Malcolm X, Edward Said, Rev. Wright, the “post-modern” Critical Legal Studies professors, the neo-Marxist Critical Race Theory professors, the neo-colonialist theorists — the key intellectual inspirations described in Obama’s own memoir and in later interviews.
Perhaps the European social democrats were a bit like one Obama intellectual hero — Obama’s own father:
http://prestopundit.wordpress.com/2008/04/07/barack-obama-hid-his-fathers-socialist-and-anti-western-convictions-from-his-readers/
This topic has been well address in Friedrich Hayek’s _The Road to Serfdom_.
One sign of the current anxiety about the direction in which we are headed is the fact that Hayek’s _TRtoS_ has been among Amazon’s top 400 bestsellers for months.
You read that right. In the top 400. For months.
I agree with Murray and Bertolt Brecht, who noted that “the government decided to dissolve the people and elect a new one.” That is precisely what is happening today as anyone living in any urban area can easily tell just by looking around.
Many years ago, the great political theorist Anthony De Jasay predicted that the U.S. would become like Western Europe “within a 100 years”. My guess is that if he were to review that estimate today it would come down considerably – and not by just the time elapsed since his original guess. De Jasay’s reasons for saying that were not Murray’s – the loss of cultural heritage – but were more fundamentally based on his analysis of the ‘dynamics’ of democratic institutions and the way they evolve.