Brief · June 27, 2011
The Foundation
"Here comes the orator! With his flood of words, and his drop of reason." --Benjamin Franklin
Political Futures
Barack Obama is reminiscent of simpleton Chauncey Gardiner"Which past leader does Barack Obama most closely resemble? His admirers, not all of them liberals, used to compare him to Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt. Well, Obama announced his candidacy in Lincoln's hometown two days before Abe's birthday, and he did expand the size and scope of government. But no one seriously compares him with Lincoln or FDR anymore. Conservative critics have taken to comparing him, as you might imagine, to Jimmy Carter. ... But there is another comparison I think more appropriate for a president who, according to one of his foreign-policy staffers, prefers to 'lead from behind.' The man I have in mind is Chauncey Gardiner, the character played by Peter Sellers in the 1979 movie 'Being There.' As you may remember, Gardiner is a clueless gardener who is mistaken for a Washington eminence and becomes a presidential adviser. Asked if you can stimulate growth through temporary incentives, Gardiner says, 'As long as the roots are not severed, all is well and all will be well in the garden.' 'First comes the spring and summer,' he explains, 'but then we have fall and winter. And then we get spring and summer again.' The president is awed as Gardiner sums up, 'There will be growth in the spring.' Kind of reminds you of Barack Obama's approach to the federal budget, doesn't it? In preparing his February budget, Obama totally ignored the recommendations of his own fiscal commission headed by Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson. Others noticed: The Senate rejected the initial budget by a vote of 97-0. Then, speaking in April at George Washington University, Obama said he was presenting a new budget with $4 trillion in long-term spending cuts. But there were no specifics. Congressional Budget Office Director Douglas Elmendorf was asked last week if the CBO had prepared estimates of this budget. 'We don't estimate speeches,' Elmendorf, a Democrat, explained. 'We need much more specificity than was provided in that speech for us to do our analysis.' Evidently 'first we have the spring and summer' was not enough." --political analyst Michael Barone
Government
"[American seniors] want their Social Security and their Medicare to stay the way they are -- and their anger is directed against those who want to change the financial arrangements that pay for these benefits. Their anger should be directed instead against those politicians who were irresponsible enough to set up these costly programs without putting aside enough money to pay for the promises that were made -- promises that now cannot be kept, regardless of which political party controls the government. ... Many retired people remember the money that was taken out of their paychecks for years and feel that they are now entitled to receive Social Security benefits as a right. But the way Social Security was set up was so financially shaky that anyone who set up a similar retirement scheme in the private sector could be sent to federal prison for fraud. ... Despite irresponsible political ads showing an old lady in a wheel chair being dumped over a cliff, the people who are really in danger of being dumped over a cliff are the younger generation, who are paying into Social Security but are unlikely to get back anything like what they are paying in. ... What needs to be done is to allow younger workers a choice of staying out of a system that is simply running out of money." --economist Thomas Sowell
The Foundation
"Here comes the orator! With his flood of words, and his drop of reason." --Benjamin Franklin
Political Futures
Barack Obama is reminiscent of simpleton Chauncey Gardiner"Which past leader does Barack Obama most closely resemble? His admirers, not all of them liberals, used to compare him to Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt. Well, Obama announced his candidacy in Lincoln's hometown two days before Abe's birthday, and he did expand the size and scope of government. But no one seriously compares him with Lincoln or FDR anymore. Conservative critics have taken to comparing him, as you might imagine, to Jimmy Carter. ... But there is another comparison I think more appropriate for a president who, according to one of his foreign-policy staffers, prefers to 'lead from behind.' The man I have in mind is Chauncey Gardiner, the character played by Peter Sellers in the 1979 movie 'Being There.' As you may remember, Gardiner is a clueless gardener who is mistaken for a Washington eminence and becomes a presidential adviser. Asked if you can stimulate growth through temporary incentives, Gardiner says, 'As long as the roots are not severed, all is well and all will be well in the garden.' 'First comes the spring and summer,' he explains, 'but then we have fall and winter. And then we get spring and summer again.' The president is awed as Gardiner sums up, 'There will be growth in the spring.' Kind of reminds you of Barack Obama's approach to the federal budget, doesn't it? In preparing his February budget, Obama totally ignored the recommendations of his own fiscal commission headed by Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson. Others noticed: The Senate rejected the initial budget by a vote of 97-0. Then, speaking in April at George Washington University, Obama said he was presenting a new budget with $4 trillion in long-term spending cuts. But there were no specifics. Congressional Budget Office Director Douglas Elmendorf was asked last week if the CBO had prepared estimates of this budget. 'We don't estimate speeches,' Elmendorf, a Democrat, explained. 'We need much more specificity than was provided in that speech for us to do our analysis.' Evidently 'first we have the spring and summer' was not enough." --political analyst Michael Barone
Government
"[American seniors] want their Social Security and their Medicare to stay the way they are -- and their anger is directed against those who want to change the financial arrangements that pay for these benefits. Their anger should be directed instead against those politicians who were irresponsible enough to set up these costly programs without putting aside enough money to pay for the promises that were made -- promises that now cannot be kept, regardless of which political party controls the government. ... Many retired people remember the money that was taken out of their paychecks for years and feel that they are now entitled to receive Social Security benefits as a right. But the way Social Security was set up was so financially shaky that anyone who set up a similar retirement scheme in the private sector could be sent to federal prison for fraud. ... Despite irresponsible political ads showing an old lady in a wheel chair being dumped over a cliff, the people who are really in danger of being dumped over a cliff are the younger generation, who are paying into Social Security but are unlikely to get back anything like what they are paying in. ... What needs to be done is to allow younger workers a choice of staying out of a system that is simply running out of money." --economist Thomas Sowell
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