This WSJ column by Bill McGurn on Obama’s “big government” ways was linked in the Web Briefing on Monday and well worth a read. An excerpt:
Now, I know there are people who believe that George W. Bush was a Big Government Republican. And you can make arguments about spending and so forth. Even so, however, there’s simply no comparison with the Obama administration.
That’s because conservatives believe that even our smartest friend is no match for the collective wisdom of the marketplace. If we were to wake up and find that someone we knew well had been given control over some important part of the economy, the conservative would not likely think, “Everything will be fine now that Harry’s in charge.” Far more likely we’d be saying to ourselves, “If it weren’t for his wife, Harry would be wearing red and purple socks every day — and we’re giving him that kind of power?”
Mr. Obama and his team appear to be unburdened by such modesty.
Detroit is in decline because its automotive giants no longer build the kind of cars Americans want to buy? Let’s have the president sack the CEO of General Motors, and then use the bailout money as leverage to appoint a car czar and get GM and Chrysler to build the kind of cars that Washington wants.
And for the record, we are on GM’s second CEO and second car czar. Who knows how many we’ll have by 2012.