David Boaz, executive vice president of the libertarian Cato Institute, offers thoughtful remarks on where the Obama Administration has gone wrong, and what the president might do about it.
By pressing such a big-government program, Obama has energized a small-government element in the electorate that had been demoralized and pushed aside by a big-government Republican president. Right now, that movement looks likely to turn a lot of Democrats out of office this fall….
Some people point out that Ronald Reagan had low approval ratings after a year. But his policies then produced a strong recovery, and there’s no reason to expect that imposing more burdens on a struggling economy will have good results.
Obama has several models to choose from: He could reverse his tax-spend-and-regulate policies and hope for the same economic and political results that Reagan achieved. He could, like Bill Clinton, recognize the political obstacles to his sweeping ambitions and learn to work with Republicans on modest reforms. He may well end up like Lyndon Johnson, with an ambitious domestic agenda eventually bogged down by endless war. But I don’t think his wished-for FDR model – a transformative agenda that is both popular and long-lasting – is in the cards.
See, NPR.org – For This Libertarian, Obama’s First Year Looks Grim
Yes, despite my platform from my imaginary campaign for Congress, I’m willing to quote from NPR. It’s not that NPR is terrible, it’s that it shouldn’t be government-funded.
Until then, any port in a storm!