Tuesday, September 2, 2008

Dave Barry nails Obama Speech: "Read from stone tablets...!"

Dave Barry, of all people, nailed Barack Obama's acceptance speech at the DMC last week:

"...Barack Obama's now-legendary acceptance speech, which he read from stone tablets, in which he promised theAmerican public that if elected he would give them peace, jobs, healthcare, national security, energy independence, good schools, a clean enviroment, reduced government waste, lower taxes, the head of Osama bin Laden, giant underwater cities, time travel, and a magic flying zebra named 'Sparkle' for every American pre-schooler regardless of income level."

As I was listening to Barack speak, I became increasingly uncomfortable, and Barry has explained: Barack was basically promising the sun, the moon, and the skies -- and much of what he was promising was impossible to deliver, or really really hard to deliver even partially, or would be shockingly expensive to deliver even partially, or were simply fever dreams. 

Of course, that's the point: When politicians promise voters things in exchange for votes, they are just throwing pie up into the sky -- they have *no* idea how they could conceivably deliver the goods, even if all the opposition party went home and turned the whole government over to the speaker's own party.  

Paraphrasing, for example: "We are going to find and stop Osama bin Laden" -- how are you going to do that?? 

"We are going to deliver affordable, high-quality health care to every American" -- by government decree? 

The same government that screwed up when the hurricane ran over New Orleans? 

The same goverment whose every military campaign, military weapons project, major highway project, and major bridge project runs shockingly over budget? 

The same government whose waste and inefficiency is the stuff of legend? 

The same government that runs the DMV and the Post Office, the Army, the food stamps program, that monitors the health and quality of our food and our air and our purchases, that tells us how to live our lives and how to love one another and can't even keep the streets of our metro areas safe? 

That government?

Or is Obama going to bring in a backup government from the next county over?

Politicians would like you to think the solutions to these mindboggling, gigantic problems are just a matter of *political will* -- if we just *cared* enough, if we'd just be willing to make *sacrifices*, if we had courage, and if we could just vote for me and vote against the other political party--the one that is filled with people of ill will, who hate poor people and want to see the elderly die on the streets, who are all fat cats and brutes -- yes! All would be delivered to you! At no cost to you! We'll make the fat cats pay for it! The fat cats who are funding my campaign! The fat cats who pay lobbyists millions to meet with your Congressperson regularly! We'll go over the budget line by line and eliminate waste and get rid of programs that don't work anymore -- the programs that are sacred turf for this or that Congressional District -- yeah, I'll just slice 'em out.

If you believe even *one word* of that to be even close to true, you are a fool. Experience, history, human nature, and common sense are lost on you. As Dave Barry points out, Obama has promised us every good thing every Democrat has ever promised in the past fifty years. And of course McCain will pull out his laundry list of good things conservatives want, and promise them that at long last they'll get them. 

And we'll both believe them and vote for them on the one hand, while expressing our fake cynicism on the other. 

When governments take on every task, every challenge, promise everything at a cost of nothing, they not only play us for fools, they set up the entire government for failure. If you really DID care about the success of our government, you would be VERY careful what you let the politicians dump on its back. 

Plainly, the pols don't care -- they live for the moment, for the election. 

But you voters are supposed to care about the long term. 

Wake up, people!

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