Victor Davis Hanson on Obama

Sez Obama will make Bush look better in retrospect...

...one of most profound bait-and-switch campaigns in our political history, predicated on the mass appeal of a magnetic leader rather than any principles per se. He out-Clintoned Hillary and followed Bill's 1992 formula: A young Democrat runs on youth, popular appeal and charisma, claims the incumbent Bush caused another Great Depression and blew Iraq, and then went right down the middle with a showy leftist veneer.

I think he's right, partly.

But he makes no provision for one important difference: Obama has heart. He's not pretending that he cares about those who cannot care for themselves.

Call it what you want. I call it faith in action.

Turn on any of the Republican apologists, still bleating away about capital gains taxes and "give-aways" in the midst of a global financial meltdown, and listen to the message. I'm hearing it from Saxby Chamblis commercials to the heavy breathing Fox News channels... "Don't waste it on people who will just spend it. Give it to those who will create jobs."

Right. And what will all those ordinary people do with their money? Hoard it? Buy second homes? Or buy gold to hedge against inflation?

Hell, no. They're gonna spend it faster than you can snap a picture. For food, shelter and transportation. Some of them might even pay down credit obligations, thus cheating large financial institutions out of many pounds of flesh they have been slicing from millions of customers victims inundated with credit card applications in their mailboxes over the last fifteen or twenty years.We already saw what happened when the "stimulus" started at the top. The sponge was so dry that almost nothing was able to trickle through.

Yeah. Great time to "create jobs". It's what in the food business we call a rich labor market. Clean-cut aspiring professionals to wash dishes, clean tables or serve green beans instead of going back to finish grad school, or a work at a drafting table, or go back to being an executive secretary whose boss was "outplaced".

That video, The Job, ain't so cute as more people join that "labor pool".