The Hope and Change Hangover

 

By Hugh Hewitt
WashingtonExaminer.com

National excess, like individual overindulgence, leads to uncomfortable aftereffects and even deeply painful ones.

The "hope and change hangover" the country is experiencing is 100 percent the consequence of the policies adopted in 2007 and 2008 by President Obama in concert with Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid.

Even the recession bequeathed to this trio of massive spenders combined with the dire consequences of the Panic of 2008 did not oblige the country to struggle through the dreariest recovery in modern times.

This is an Obama-made becalming of the economic waters, an inevitability when Obamacare, the Dodd-Frank Wall Street reforms, an out-of-control federal regulatory blob consisting of the Environmental Protection Agency, Consumer Product Safety Commission, Department of Interior and more, combined with massive deficits to create the perfect storm for the private sector.

Amity Shlaes described in her magnificent "The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression" how President Franklin Roosevelt and his group of political operatives and academic theorists prolonged the terrible times brought on by the Crash of 1929 by endless "innovation."

The uncertainty that resulted drove capital and the entrepreneurs who might have deployed it underground. Unpredictable government was a menace to private-sector planning and investment, but this fundamental truth eluded Roosevelt.

Sadly, Obama, wearing his Alinskyite blinders and advised by his Chicago gang, either didn't read or failed to understand Shlaes' arguments. Every promise he made about every policy and program he proposed has turned to ash, and the national headache is profound and debilitating.

Don't expect "hope and change" to be the defining brand of the president's bid for re-election. But do expect a "hair of the dog" set of proposals when the president unveils the specifics of his latest "hard pivot" to jobs.

Could the president really trust his mainstream media allies so much that he would dare propose a second stimulus? It would require an almost Mount Everest amount of self-regard and economic ignorance to believe that more federal spending is the ticket out of our near zero-growth economy.

Rush Limbaugh argued last week -- very persuasively as usual -- that the president will do just that and then campaign against a Congress that would never pass such an obviously irresponsible second spending bender.

If the president does attempt to tout a new stimulus, the instant and prolonged chorus should be laughter and ridicule, and the political consequence an approval rating heading toward 30 percent.

Three out of 10 Americans might believe in ghosts, Bigfoot and the efficacy of Stimulus 2.0 but even proposing such an absurd program should cement in an election result that will be 1980 2.0.

The president's only real option -- and the country's -- is the recipe adopted by Ronald Reagan in 1981: tax reduction for the job creators and a single-minded focus on shuttering the regulation factories of the Beltway, which are crushing expansion in 100 different ways.

The president's only rational hope for re-election is a genuine economic recovery, one which demonstrates almost unstoppable momentum toward 4 percent growth over many years.

And the only way to get such growth is to put out massive incentives for the people who create private-sector jobs.

The problem is that even if every economist in America signed on to such a proposal, even if Paul Krugman, George Soros and every MSNBC host recited in unison the same prescription, still this deeply ideological president could not bring himself to embrace it.

Obama is apparently convinced of very few things outside of his own abilities, Chicago rules and the powerful effects of his speeches on the public.

But he really and truly does seem to believe the nostrums of his community organizing days, and the recipes he pushed then (and detailed in his first memoir) remain the fixed star of his economic theory.

Sadly, they don't work. They have never worked. They won't work now.

Examiner Columnist Hugh Hewitt is a law professor at Chapman University Law School and a nationally syndicated radio talk show host who blogs daily at HughHewitt.com.