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Spengler comments on the new economic powers of the presidency.
Inauguration day brings to mind the reason I don’t read science fiction. It’s never weird enough. Yesterday, America placed more power than any peacetime president ever has wielded into the hands of a man nobody knows. He has convinced more incompatible constituencies that he takes their side than any politician in American history. And through no fault or merit of his own, he has stumbled into more power than the White House has had since World War II.
From the day Obama was elected to 9:30am Tokyo time on Monday morning, the S&P 500 index has lost 17% of its value, after absorbing Obama’s proposed cabinet and hearing the gist of his economic stimulus plan. That can’t be blamed on Bush. It counts as the “Obama crash”. With the unprecedented power of his office, Obama inherits a commensurately high level of accountability. Unless he offers something radically different, the boomerang of expectations could flatten him faster and more thoroughly than the swift ascent of his star. People in power get blamed; people with absolute power get blamed absolutely. As the economy continues to deteriorate, there will be no one left standing to blame but Obama.
Before America entered World War II, Franklin Delano Roosevelt borrowed no more than 6% of gross national product in a given year. During his first year in office, Obama will have borrowed perhaps double that amount. …
George Will on the same theme.
… Obama’s unprecedented power derives from the astonishing events of the past four months that have made indistinct the line between public and private sectors. Neither the public as currently alarmed, nor Congress as currently constituted, nor the Constitution as currently construed is an impediment to hitherto unimagined executive discretion in allocating vast portions of the nation’s wealth.
He acquires power just as the retreat of the state has been abruptly reversed. The retreat began 30 years ago this May, when Margaret Thatcher became Britain’s prime minister; it accelerated 20 months later when Ronald Reagan was inaugurated; it acquired an exclamation point a year after that, when adverse market forces compelled French President Francois Mitterrand to abandon socialism in a nation receptive to it.
Obama, whose trumpet never sounds retreat, overstated the scale of our difficulties with his comparison of them with those the nation faced in the almost extinguishing winter of 1776-77. Still, the lyrics of cultural traditionalism with which he ended — the apostle of “change we can believe in” urging the nation to believe in “old” values — reinforced his theme of responsibility, summoning the nation up from childishness.
John Stossel on the “choices” we will get from the left.
Jennifer Rubin calls attention to Rick Warren’s invocation.
And here is Pastor Warren’s effort.
Comments on the speech from some of our favorites.
First the folks from Contentions. John Podhoretz, Abe Greenwald, and Jennifer Rubin.
Yuval Levin from the Corner.
Thomas Sowell, in an essay titled “Lured to Disaster,” points out the problems of the phrase “affordable housing.”
… The ultimate irony is that increasing government intervention in the housing market over the years has generally made housing less affordable than before, by any standard.
A hundred years ago, Americans spent a smaller percentage of their incomes on housing than they do today. In 1901, housing costs took 23 percent of the average American’s income. By 2003, it took 33 percent of a far larger income.
In particular places where government regulations and restrictions have been especially severe, such as coastal California, rents or monthly mortgage payments have averaged as high as 50 percent of the average person’s income.
Most of our problems are not nearly as severe as political “solutions.” In housing, government policies have lured people into situations that were untenable to them and to the country.
Guess whose Presidential Inauguration UVA cancelled classes for; George Bush or Barack Obama?
ABC News reports Carter snubbed Bill and Hillary at the inauguration. Why is there so much hate in Jimmy Carter? Is that why he keeps trashing his successors?