A Reality Check for Obama

With Barack Obama as America's president-elect, focus turns from the rigors of producing sound bites for the campaign trail to actually crafting policies that have real consequences. Obama has already learned that it is much easier to stand for something while campaigning than to deal with the consequences of actually following through on your promises. Throughout the campaign, Obama and the Democrat party insisted that the rich in America were not paying their fair share in taxes. Obama called for the immediate repeal of the "Bush tax cuts" that favored the wealthy. That position got a lot of support from class warriors who believe government spending is the solution to all problems and the rich and big corporations should pay more taxes.

But with America facing a recession, Obama and his advisors are backing off of their calls for a repeal of the Bush tax cuts. Implicit in their silence is the realization that the "rich" businessmen in America provide millions of high-paying jobs. Increased taxes mean decreasing economic activity, less jobs, and more poverty. That reality does not sell with Obama voters who want even further increases in wealth distribution from some Americans to others. Yet Obama does not want to be blamed for a prolonged recession and realizes that raising taxes, despite his position on the campaign trail, is bad for the economy.

In addition, Obama is no longer loudly calling for the immediate withdrawal of American troops from Iraq. He and his advisors are smart enough to realize such a withdrawal would weaken the Iraqi government to a point where it could be overthrown. Such a transfer of power from a democratically elected government to an Islamist regime would, of course, be blamed on the withdrawal of troops. That failure would in turn fall directly into Obama's lap. The anti-war left demanded troop withdrawals and Obama promised those withdrawals in exchange for votes. However, the political reality today means troops will not be withdrawn on a significant scale anytime soon because Obama does not want the bad press that comes with a foreign policy failure.

Obama, like most politicians, made many promises in order to win a political campaign. Many of his positions sounded sweet to liberals. Yet massive wealth distribution and weakened military might have never been very popular in America. If Obama is, as many contend, a pragmatist, he will not be able to follow his liberal campaign promises. But if he wants to try and change the fundamental foundations of American capitalism and military strength by following his liberal desires, Americans will quickly wake up and realize what a mistake they made on November 4th.

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~ The Conservative Guy