Friday, November 7, 2008

Why Obama May Be More Dangerous Than The Clintons

When George Bush the elder was on the threshold of losing re-election, a political commentator compared him to Ronald Reagan: the difference between Reagan and Bush illustrated the difference between the "big boys" and "the little boys" in Presidential politics. The "big boys", like Reagan, were driven to seek the Presidency to accomplish a specific set of goals. The "little boys", like Bush, were just interested in being President for their own private, egotistical self-fulfillment. I believe that the same comparison can be applied to Obama and Clinton. Yes, Clinton's record leaves little to be desired. Yet many of the doomsday predictions of a transcendent liberal state that were made when Clinton was elected did not come to pass. The reason is not that those fears were not well grounded. The reason was that while Clinton was a leftist, he was most interested in the trappings of the office than policy. He was so interested in maintaining his popularity that he often did not rock the boat; he just let things go without any interference from himself, fearful that any action by him might jeopardize his standing in the polls. In the realm of economics, that is the reason the prosperity that began under Reagan continued throughout the 1990's. Clinton enjoyed the White House helicopters and the opportunities to rub shoulders with fawning Hollywood celebrities, yet in his first six months in office, he only met with his Secretary of State twice. Clinton was smart enough a politician to realize that while he governed as a Liberal, he had to appear as a moderate, and so, in the eyes of some of his most leftist supporters, he failed to implement the plans to gain power over the private lives of ordinary people. Obama, on the other hand, is all business. He is not the kind of politician that likes to schmooze, when he makes contact with potential allies, he is either interested in discussing policies or ways in which to implement them. Obama is all discipline, unlike Clinton. He is what we would have experienced if Dukakis had won; a committed ideologue whose sole desire is to regulate public behavior and one who disciplines his life and actions around that goal. Hillary would have been like that, yet her personality was against her. She projected a persona of one who wanted to run every one else's lives. Obama appears non-threatening to the public. Early in the primaries, many Conservatives, even if they had no plans to vote for Obama, were rooting for him to beat Hillary. They feared Hillary not only because she was Liberal and more committed to implementing a Socialist agenda than her husband, she was feared because it was believed that if she ever gained power, she would use it to totally annihilate the opposition. No one thought that Obama had any desire to totally destroy his Conservative opponents. With Hillary, you could see the enemy approaching; with Obama, the enemy may have surrounded us in the night, taking us completely by surprise. With a Congress with a nearly filibuster proof Democratic majority in collusion with the White House, many of our economic and political freedoms may be in peril. Many commentators surmised that the reason Obama did not crack a smile during his victory speech Tuesday night was because of the enormity of the challenges facing him. I disagree. I think what we saw was the ascension of a disciplined man driven to achieve a specific set of goals, committed to gaining for government the power over the everyday lives of Americans. And as he reached the pinnacle of power, he was contemplating just what he intends to do to anyone who dares to challenge him.

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