On July 17th, Senator Jim DeMint (R – South Carolina) famously said about Obamacare:

“If we’re able to stop Obama on this, it will be his Waterloo. It will break him.”

Senator DeMint is wrong.  Universal Health Care / Coverage will not be the end for Obama in the sense that Waterloo was the end for Napoleon.  Tonight’s speech could go a long way to determining if Obamacare will be his Russian Winter, however.  Failure on this issue… or worse, a tragic success… could weaken this administration leaving them ineffectual and ultimately doomed in the 2012 election.  Tortured analogy aside….

In mid-June 1812, Napoleon crossed the Niemen, beginning his invasion of Russian Poland.  In mid-June of this year, Obama gave his “ticking time bomb” speech to the AMA where he emphasized the need for a public option (while simultaneously ruling out tort reform).  Next Monday is the 197th anniversary of Napoleon’s disastrous capture of Moscow.  By the end of that year, the Grand Armee’ had been expelled from Russian territory.  If history repeats itself on health care, we could see a disastrous success by the Democratic party which leads to a large-scale collapse of public support as early as Christmas.  Napoleon’s Waterloo was still 3 years away and it’s 197th anniversary will be in the height of election season: June of 2012.

Stimulus?

Its things like these that erode credibility when it comes time for the American public to be asked to write checks for something like Obamacare.

The President’s four year term offers shelter but all you have to do is watch Congress to see how well the public is handling things.  What we’re seeing is representatives backing down from the grander ambitions of the Obamacare plan especially since the Administration has apparently tried to shelter itself by leaving members of Congress up to the task of writing the legislation (some leadership, eh?).  You can get away with that with 60 percent approval ratings and while the public is still mightily angry with your predecessor, but those in Congress are under the gun with re-election thoughts never far from view.

All the more reason to embrace the tremendous wisdom and foresight of the Forefathers who set about to build a government that would work agonizingly slow and deliberately, with a strong bias towards consensus rather than accelerated change.

It is almost laughable by now, but here’s a story by Reuters (complete with the straight-faced headline: Obama seeks fiscal responsibility mantle) about how President Obama is now trying get the federal budget under control.

How Obama can get away with this without enduring automatic ridicule is simply amazing, especially when one looks at where he currently stands when compared to the other great spenders in modern American history.

As it turns outs, Obama has presided over the third-largest year-to-year peacetime increase in the size of the federal government since 1901 and the biggest since fiscal year 1941.  Federal government outlays in 2008 were $2.9 trillion and will rise to $3.997 trillion in 2009, according to government estimates.  Have a look:

Top 10 Increases In Outlays Over Previous Fiscal Year, 1901-2009 (source: Office of Management and Budget)  [Note:  Excludes fiscal years covered by WWI, WWII and the Korean conflict, when the country was mobilized for major warfare]

1. 1941 – +44.2 percent (FDR)

2. 1934 – +42.2 percent (FDR)

3. 2009 – +34.0 percent (Obama)

4. 1939 – +33.6 percent (FDR)

5. 1949 – +30.4 percent (Truman)

6. 1932 – +30.2 percent (Hoover)

7. 1936 – +28.3 percent (FDR)

8. 1975 – +23.3 percent (Ford)

9. 1967 – +17.1 percent (LBJ)

10. 1980 – +17 percent (Carter)

This is the historical record (you can see why Democrats acquired the big-spending label over the years!)  A closer look at the context of some of the spending figures sheds some light on Obama’s profligacy. 

The top figure (1941) has a fairly simple explanation:  The U.S. was ramping up in preparation for its pending involvement in World War II.  A quadrupling of the defense budget accounted for all of the increase.  Fairly understandable.

The second figure (1934) came during the depths of the Great Depression:  1933 saw nearly 25 percent unemployment, thousands of banks had gone under and real GDP had fallen 29 percent since 1929.  Makes some sense to take drastic action (even though most now think it didn’t really work).

But what about Obama’s spending excuse?  Does it hold up?  Or, is he just refusing to let this crisis go to waste, as his Chief of Staff once famously put it?

After all, when Obama took office, the unemployment rate was measured at just one-third that of 1933’s disastrous total.  At 7.6%, it was at the same level as the peak of the historically mild 1990-91 recession.  It now sits at 9.4%, the most since 1983, but still way below the level of 1933.    Over 9,000 banks failed during the 1930s;  the last 18 months have seen merely several dozen banks fail.    The rate of decline in the GDP is slowing even before the vast majority of Obama’s appropriated funds are spent. 

Certainly, some bold action by Obama was warranted and understandable given the seriousness of the financial crisis.  But did the crisis–centered primarily on the collapse of the housing market–justify a 34% increase in federal spending, more than FDR’s increases during every year of the Depression save one?   Did it warrant a greater increase than the one implemented by Truman when he decided to create the security apparatus needed to save Western Europe from Soviet expansionism?   Did it demand exceedingly more strident action than the deeper (though not longer) recessions of 1974-75 and 1981-82?  I think not.

All this would be a little more palatable if Obama would at least attempt to justify it without acting like we are all idiots.  The line he constantly recites, the one claiming his proposals will save or create x-amount of jobs, is pure balderdash and unbecoming of a serious politician.  When his logic falters, he likes to rest on the election results, letting everyone know that ‘he won’ and therefore (it seems) he doesn’t have to justify anything to anyone anymore.

But the vast majority of Americans didn’t vote last November for an instant 34 percent increase in the size of the federal government and I’d wager that such an increase would have gone down to a devastating defeat if placed on the ballot.  One can argue that circumstances in the economy changed after election day and so Obama had to take appropriate corrective action.  But that still doesn’t mean Americans voted specifically for such a radical change.  Hence, a real debate about the size and scope of this action was in order.  After all, it’s the people’s money. 

Unfortunately, we didn’t get that.  Most of the spending bills were rammed through Congress before they were even read by lawmakers.  This was the largest spending increase in 68 years, but the deliberation process was about as serious as a city council proposal to honor a local spelling bee champion. 

The proper level of the federal government’s involvement in the life of the average citizen has always been a big issue in American history.   The idea of a central bank and the use of specie vs. paper money were constant matters of contention in the 19th century.  The union was torn apart over slavery and states rights.  Various Presidents have had to first convince the country to send its sons to wars in faraway lands, then mobilize those left at home to produce the weaponry needed to win those wars.   Other Presidents called on the federal government to focus its efforts on alleviating social ills like poverty and racism.  Most of the time, some kind of consensus on the role of government was eventually reached.     

We are at one of those junctions right now.  I believe that Obama is proposing what amounts to a fundamental shift in the relationship of the federal government toward the average citizen.  Does Obama believe that this is what is happening?  I’m not sure, because there is little or no debate on the issue and he seems to feel no need to address it.  With the GOP in such a weak state and the media firmly in his corner, no one wants to call him on it.  The previous President was excoriated for not leveling with Americans about the War on Terror.  Pundits pleaded with him to ask Americans to sacrifice, but he did not.  This President is not leveling with the people about his plans and he certainly is not asking for sacrifice.  He just prints the money he needs and hopes for the best.  So what’s the difference?   

Is it possible that the largest spending increase in 68 years will not come at the expense of the pre-2009, consensus view of the proper size and role of the federal government?  Is that realistic?  Will things go on as before, only bigger? 

I think we all deserve an answer on this, one way or another.  Because most of us may not want it.

But when it comes to the economy, he is doing things that are unprecedented and that would not hold up under scrutiny if he were any other President.  Could you imagine the howls in the media if Nixon, Carter or Reagan abrogated bond contracts while nationalizing large chunks of a major industry?  Could you imagine the scandal if George H. W. Bush or Bill Clinton put a 31-year old with no business experience in charge of GM?  Could you imagine if any other President produced a $1.8 trillion deficit, $600 billion more than what he inherited?  What if George W. Bush crowed that he ’saved’ 150,000 jobs during a time when the unemployment rate was almost 9 percent?  Oh, the outrage!

There is an amazing double standard at work here.  The main complaint against George W. Bush was that in his reaction to 9/11, he overreached.  This is a notion that can be faithfully debated by both sides.  But at least there is a debate.

So far, there is almost ZERO debate in the mainstream media when it comes to Obama’s policies.  Oh sure, there are murmurs of discontent here and there, but they are unusually muted considering the scope of his ambition.  Amazingly, while the economy transforms, we find the media still obsessing over issues that happened under Bush.

Part of the problem is the marginalization of the GOP and the Conservative movement.  The mainstream media gives short shrift to much of the Right’s opposition.  They are, after all, the opposition party, yet the media acts like they are being nattering nabobs.  In fact, any party in opposition serves at least the minimum purpose of playing devil’s advocate to the proposed policy of the majority party.

But given the current lack of power on the Right, it now falls even more on the media to be a watchdog, a check and balance to what Obama is trying to do.  It’s ironic that in a time of declining media revenues, the one thing that could help revive the media would be to actually fill this role in a faithful manner.  But the truth is that the mainstream media approves of what Obama is doing.  And so they go lockstep down this path and miss the opportunity to actually act like a responsible Fourth Estate.

Yes, there was and is a very deep recession.  There was a financial crisis.  But bipartisan steps were taken to alleviate that crisis.  But since taking office, Obama has used this financial crisis as an excuse to consolidate unprecedented economic power in the hands of the federal government.  In the process, he has turned fiscal policy on its head, printing money as a response to the financial crisis, which in turn is creating a new fiscal crisis.

The natural decline of the financial crisis is occurring now, which is why we see the market reviving somewhat.  We have stepped back from the brink in that regard.  But the fiscal reckoning is baked in the cake and will come home to roost soon.  Obama can only blame Bush for so long.

This is not a presidency content with small things.  This is not Bill Clinton asking for Midnight Basketball funding.  This is not Jimmy Carter asking Americans to turn down their thermostat.  This is not George H. W. Bush asking for a kinder, gentler nation.  This is serious stuff.

Obama is going for broke.  He is not tinkering at the margins.  Whether he is right or not, there MUST be a serious debate on the direction he wants to take us.  This is missing right now in our national discourse.  Instead, the media is talking about Uighurs and Palestinians and whether Dick Cheney is evil or not.  Major magazines like Newsweek are being guest-edited by comedians.  All this while Obama is accumulating unprecedented executive power.

No doubt, Obama doesn’t mind keeping the focus on the twin issues of terror and torture, where he can dazzle people with empty rhetoric and moralize over the supposed failures of the previous administration.  It prevents the public from focusing on what he really cares about:  his desire to turn the country into a European-style social democracy, with a bloated welfare state and a unionized labor force.

Maybe that’s the way to go.  Maybe it’s not.  But let’s have the debate.  If George W. Bush can be lambasted for overreaching on national security, there’s no reason Barack Obama shouldn’t be lambasted for overreaching on the economy and its relation to the federal government.