OBAMA DANGER

Posted at 8:31 a.m. ET

I've noticed an increasing number of very thoughtful pieces warning of the danger of an Obama presidency.  As the days dwindle down to the election, there does seem to be a growing number of writers trying to reach the American people with a picture of what life will be like in the age of Obama.  One of the best of these writers is Mark Moyar.  You might not know the name.  Moyar is a distinguished American historian whose career has been short-circuited by his refusal to toe the approved line on Vietnam.  The first volume of his history of that war is out, titled "Triumph Forsaken:  The Vietnam War, 1954-1965."  The title tells you why Moyar, a Harvard graduate and Cambridge Ph.D., is anathema to our academic class. 

Writing in NRO, Moyar says:

His name was Jimmy Carter, the year was 1976, and he won. His presidency helps us predict the likely results of an Obama victory in 2008.

Chilled already?

Carter and the Democratic Congress generated 18 percent inflation and economic stagnation at the same time. Unemployment rose. Americans came to regret the votes they had cast — Carter’s approval rating sank to 21 percent in 1980, the lowest in the history of polling.

Carter also threw out his professed hawkishness on foreign policy. Declaring America liberated from its “inordinate fear of Communism,” he sought better relations with the Communists in the Soviet Union, China, Cuba, and Vietnam. He was much less nice to America’s allies, withdrawing support from those who did not accept his self-righteous demands for human-rights reforms. Friendly regimes in Nicaragua and Iran fell to hostile tyrants.

Ah yes, I remember it well.

If Obama abandons his promises the way Carter did, his presidency will be even more dangerous. Carter at least had longstanding tendencies toward fiscal restraint, and he, together with a large block of conservative Democrats in Congress, prevented the most left-wing elements of Congress from taxing and spending even more. Obama, on the other hand, has himself been part of the most left-wing element in the U.S. Senate, and conservatives do not have a significant presence on the Democratic side of the Reid-Pelosi Congress. Also, Obama has no history of breaking with his party before this year.

And...

There are reasons to believe Obama will indeed break his promises. In March, he told the American public he would force Canada and Mexico to make concessions on NAFTA. Obama’s senior economic adviser privately assured Canadian officials that Obama’s public promises were “more reflective of political maneuvering than policy.”

Nice, huh?  And there's more:

In the second presidential debate, Obama made the most flagrant of his bogus promises yet, when he announced a “net spending cut.” The National Taxpayers Union has estimated that Obama will actually produce a net spending increase of at least $292 billion per year.

And...

Also during the third debate, Obama distanced himself from ACORN, denying any involvement with this organization since 1995. But as Sen. McCain pointed out, the Obama campaign paid $832,000 to an ACORN subsidiary earlier this year.

The worst part:

Perhaps most incriminating of all is Joe Biden’s Seattle speech. In words that received less media attention than the “international testing” remarks, Biden asserted that an Obama administration would make unpopular decisions, because “if they're popular, they’re probably not sound.” As a consequence, “You all are going to be sitting here a year from now going, ‘Oh my God, why are they there in the polls, why is the polling so down?’” In other words, Obama’s poll numbers will fall once Americans learn that his popular promises of 2008 have been supplanted in 2009 by actions that most Americans oppose.

We'll be told it's Obama's brilliant mind at work.  Something we proletarians could never possibly understand.  We accept that, don't we?

Finally...

The odds of Obama staying true to his current rhetoric are so poor that not even the boldest gambler should bet on it.

The problem is the number - 10 days to go.  We have to hope that the polls are wrong and that the race is much tighter than we're being told.  We have to hope there won't be any more convenient convulsions - like the economic meltdown - in the last week, that would secure an Obama win.  And we have to hope that McCain can finally break through the media screen.

Much to hope for.  But miracles happen in politics.

October 25, 2008.