The Middle is Always Evil

Today, President-elect Obama announced some of the meat of his plan to fix the economy, which he sincerely believes will work:

Today, I am announcing a few key parts of my plan. First, we will launch a massive effort to make public buildings more energy-efficient. Our government now pays the highest energy bill in the world. We need to change that. We need to upgrade our federal buildings by replacing old heating systems and installing efficient light bulbs. That wont just save you, the American taxpayer, billions of dollars each year. It will put people back to work.

Finally! Obama gets specific about where he’ll be cutting the government budget: cheaper light bulbs! And new light bulbs means Obama will need to hire an army of light blub changers, which will be made up of the hordes of newly-unemployed investment bankers, stock brokers and their former secretaries. They should start a Union.

What else does Obama have planned?

Second, we will create millions of jobs by making the single largest new investment in our national infrastructure since the creation of the federal highway system in the 1950s. We’ll invest your precious tax dollars in new and smarter ways.

The most upsetting part about this plan is that Obama truly believes that it will work. It can’t. It won’t.

Its really very simple: government make-work programs such as these do not create jobs, they move them around. Think about it. Where will the money that will pay the government-laborers come from? The top 5% of income-earners, of course; the people who do most employing in the private-sector. By taking money away from them to pay the “millions” of new government employees, they will have less money to pay those who they currently employ. As a direct result of this plan, more people will lose jobs, and then go work for new, bigger government programs. This vicious cycle will continue until we’re all working shoulder to shoulder in the rice fields.

Perfect equality, right?

You can’t have your cake and eat it too, it is said. Apparently, no one ever told John McCain this particular pearl.

Ever since clinching the nomination, McCain has been hit by Democrats with allegations that his presidency would be nothing more than “Bush’s third term,” labeling him John McSame, and challenging people to find differences between the policies of the two Republicans. Looking only at the George Bush’s abysmal approval rating, McCain has spent a large portion of his time distancing himself from the President.

But in doing so, McCain is only digging himself into a hole. Infamously, Governor Mark Sanford was unable to show any significant differences between the economic polices of George Bush and John McCain.

Here’s what people are missing with this video: like it or not, George Bush has had some solid economic policies, especially in the areas of tax cuts and free trade. But they haven’t worked, you say. The economy is terrible, you say. You’re wrong. The economy is bad, but its not terrible– we’ve been much worse off. Take the Carter administration for example.

But the economy is declining, and thats because Bush has been far-from-perfect economically. Look, for example, at his federal spending record:

In February, Bush sent a 3.1 trillion dollar budget to congress: hardly conservative. Just yesterday, Bush authorized a bill that will send $48 billion American taxpayers’ dollars to Africa for AIDS relief. Over all, Bush has shown an utter reluctance to veto anything, much less spending, during his administration, which has made for an out of control federal deficit.

George W. Bush is proof that tax cuts alone are not enough– without tandem cuts in spending, they hurt, rather than help the economy. John McCain has stated this problem explicitly, and he says he will be fixing Bush’s error here.

This is the single, most important difference between Bush and McCain: and McCain never mentions it. Why does he think the American public is so dumb? We can understand that just because the two men have similarities, they aren’t the same; we aren’t two-year-olds. He’s gotten so wrapped up in distancing himself from the President that he’s become reluctant to defend what works, and as a result he’s drifting further and further left. Is it so hard to say: “Yes, George Bush supported it, but it is right.”?

John McCain is supposedly Mr. Straight Talk; so why can’t he look into a camera and tell me: “Look, George Bush and I have a lot in common, but in the places where we differ, it makes all the difference.” Now thats some straight talk I can get used to.

Here’s the bottom line: McCain and Bush are similar, very much so, but their similarities are good.  But McCain is obsessed with being a non-conformist, and in his attempt to distance himself from the President, he has ended up downplaying his strengths and playing up his weaknesses. Way to go, maverick.