A President Who Is Rooting for Chaos

In my last column I said that President Obama was a “deeply cynical man.”  I now have second thoughts in light of the White House warning that because of sequestration we should expect long flight delays and a general disruption in air travel. Unfortunately for Mr. Obama my second thoughts are exactly the same as my first thoughts.  He is a deeply cynical man.

Mr. Obama is not only out to scare everybody about a tiny cut in the growth of our out-of-control spending -- $85 billion out of a $3 trillion-plus budget -- I think he actually wants long lines at airports, and criminals being set free for lack of money to prosecute them, and massive layoffs and all the rest.  I think he wants the most hardship to the most people so he can secure the most political points.  I think he is rooting for chaos because he knows the American people won’t blame him, not a majority of them anyway.  The Republicans will get the blame and in 2014 he may very well get the House – to go along with the Senate.

You know what that means?  It means Mr. Obama would then be able to do whatever he wants and it will be called democracy in action.  Higher taxes on success that might discourage investment that would create jobs, more money for green energy that won’t produce much energy, more money for early education programs that don’t work, a minimum wage that might cost young workers a job, increase in cap-and-trade programs for carbon emissions that might slow the economy and put people out of work, new housing incentives, new manufacturing incentives, new, new, new, more, more, more, money, money, money.

This can only work, as I pointed out in my last column, if there are enough clueless people out there who know nothing about the economy but are certain that they love Barack Obama and will support any idea he comes up with. And there are.  We live in the United States of Clueless.

All the president has to tell these low information voters, as Rush Limbaugh calls them to avoid using the word “stupid,” is that he’s for “compromise” and they swoon.  All he has to say is he wants to close “loopholes” for people who fly around in private jets and buy yachts, and they say “right on, Mr. President.” Except closing those loopholes wouldn’t keep the government going for an hour … and there’s also that inconvenient fact that whenever big liberal government goes after private jets and yachts it’s the blue collar workers who build them who get hurt a lot more than the “plutocrats” who get around in them.

I also think President Obama doesn’t care one bit about deficits and debts.  I think he is a community organizer at heart.  He thinks the poor are getting the shaft and the rich have more than they need.  His entire philosophy can be summed up in four little words:  “Spread the wealth around.”  That’s why I’m also convinced that he has absolutely no interest in cutting spending in any serious way.

So will the slobbering love affair last if Barack Obama gets his way and keeps on taxing the successful and spending money we don’t have?  Will the love affair last after it becomes obvious that he can tax the rich all he wants and it won’t get us out of the debt and deficit whole that someday will sink the economy?

In the short run, the answer, I think, is yes.  Ignorance is a powerful force.

But if the sequester goes into effect and chaos doesn’t reign -- if the scare tactics are exposed as just that -- Mr. Obama will look like the boy who cried wolf.  But he’ll get away with that too.  For a while.

But if he continues to believe, as he reportedly told House Speaker John Boehner, that “we don’t have a spending problem,” if he continues to minimize our deficit and debt, then the house of cards will come crumbling down as sure as the sun rises in the east. And the people he says he cares about the most will be the ones who are hurt the most.

A president would care about these things.  A community organizer … not so much.