I'm so glad we have a government that is able to solve all our problems and make everything right. Otherwise, we might be having a global financial crisis. But since our all-knowing, all-seeing, smarter-than-thou government was around to do just the right thing to save our economy, everything is falling into place and there are no more worries.
Aren't you relieved? And don't you now want to vote for the candidate who promises even more government solutions to the challenges before us?
I thought so.
4 comments:
The sad part is I don't know for certain which candidate you're referring to. {sigh}.
You well know that I'm voting for McCain, but on this one, anyway, he's got his foot on the step of the same bandwagon Obama's on. They have different plans, but they're operating from similar assumptions, and that disappoints me.
I understand what you're saying, Evan. I'm also disappointed in McCain's approach on this issue. Still, he's not the one who wants to socialize health care. And I think he has an essential appreciation for individual freedom and responsibility that Obama does not share.
The McCain plan to buy up bad mortgage debt is, indeed, not free market economics, but we should remember that the US has been a mixed economy now since the early part of the 20th century. McCain is having to campaign in an environment where the schools and the media catechize government solutions to economic problems, and in a country where the conservative party hasn't made a MORAL case for the market since Goldwater. (Reagan did make such a case to conservative groups, but when campaigning he sold free enterprise to the electorate as something that works, not as something that is intrinsically good.)
The ironic part about McCain's stance in the debate is that he made it sound like an additional $300 billion rather than how he would direct the Treasury to spend a lion's share of the $700 billion already allotted. Some say that is because he doesn't really get economics, but I think it is because he is a wise politician who knows these debates are won by convincing the mushy middle folks who are just tuning in.
Evan, McCain will make annoying compromises with the Democrat congress - but so did Reagan. At the end of the day, though, he will actually be a more conservative president fiscally than Bush I or Bush II.
He won't actually teach or lead the nation into understand WHY we should have smaller government, but I believe he'll do more to actually get us there than any president since the New Deal.
Thanks for the reminder, Phillip, that McCain's doing what he needs to do to get elected. And you're right, his instincts are free-market, but following them explicitly would be political suicide.
And if I was the type who wasn't willing to stomach pragmatic ideological compromises, I'd be writing in Ron Paul, right? :)
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