After listening to last evening’s Obama speech, there is the usual reaction: well delivered, the loud enthusiastic crowd response, and more of the Obama Rules — the now familiar “hope, change, and possibility” tropes, the de rigueur attacks on McCain, coupled with the victim’s simultaneous warnings about Republican personal and low-road politics soon to come, the now customary condemnation of the Iraqi government (that is making real progress and bravely taking on Islamic terrorists), and the doom-and-gloom Depression scenarios that seem to evoke images of black-hat and moustached bankers who arm-twisted poor mortgage seekers and then foreclosed on them.
One wonders, what will he say in five months, should the economy pick up, should Iraq continue to see reduced violence and a strengthened military and government, should we enjoy a continued respite from terrorist attacks at home, and should we see even more pork-barrel spending such as the current Obama-supported, monstrous Farm Bill? It would be far wiser to run against deficit spending, the need for fiscal control, and more energy production and conservation, rather than gas-on-the-fire suggestions for new programs and taxes.
Six months in not just a long time in politics, but also in war and the economy, and so the present strategy of running against The Great Depression, Worse than Vietnam, and Exxon Did It, by autumn, won’t necessarily be a sure thing.
And never a word about the need for more nuclear power, clean coal, drilling offshore and at ANWR – only the idea that we are going to tax the oil companies for what they do and then have government use the money to do what they don’t, and, presto, millions of new jobs appear as wind and solar save us all. Even with plug-in cars, windmills in the yard, and panels on the roof, there may be still a few calm, cloudy days . . .