California Conservative

Nobody questions President Obama’s speaking ability. What many conservatives are questioning is the substance of his statements. Richard Benedetto wrote about that in this article. Here’s one of Mr. Benedetto’s observations:

Obama also uses the superlative to extol the virtues of his management or his Cabinet picks. His nominees are always the best and the brightest. He bragged to NBC’s Brian Williams last week that he put a functioning government in place “in record time.”

What record did he break? Most new administrations get the same amount of time between Election Day and Inauguration Day to put together a government, about 11 weeks. If anyone set a record, it was George W. Bush, who had only about five weeks to assemble his government because the 2000 election was not decided by the Supreme Court until mid-December.

The people that constantly talk in extreme terms see life through extremist eyes. People will question that statement because the image that President Obama crafted suggests that he’s a likeable, reasonable person. A quick look, however, says that he’s studied with fanatics like domestic terrorist William Ayers. He’s a student, too, of Saul Alinsky. These aren’t likeable, reasonable people.

Here’s another observation Benedetto makes:

In his first interview since confirmation, Energy Secretary Steven Chu told The Wall Street Journal last week that failure to address global warming would devastate California. “You’re looking at a scenario where there’s no more agriculture in California,” he said.

There’s a time-tested cliche that says that you’re known by the company you keep. Mr. Chu is either attempting to scare people or he’s an environmental extremist. He certainly isn’t looking at the world through an objective lens. At minimum, his language doesn’t prove that he’s seeing reality.

This observation might be the most stinging of all:

Obama and company also have a fondness for the word “unprecedented,” which means something has never happened before. Budding journalists are taught to avoid using that word because, once you do, someone is sure to come along and prove you wrong.

Nonetheless, Obama has used it with abandon. In his first radio address as president he said, “We begin this year and this administration in the midst of an unprecedented crisis that calls for unprecedented action.”

What makes this economic crisis unprecedented? He never tells us. If he says it, he expects us to assume it must be so. He also has repeatedly said, using the superlative again, that we are faced with “the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.” Even The Associated Press has taken to using that label, stating it as fact.

It’s time for President Obama to stop using extremist language. It’s time he proved his policies are based in reality and actually provide a solution to real problems. Thus far, President Obama’s economic policies haven’t inspired confidence.

Quite the opposite. Treasury Secretary Geithner’s TARP II announcement was so bereft of details that it caused the Dow to drop almost 300 points after his announcement. Economist Larry Kudlow questioned whether he was ready for prime time.

Great economic recoveries are almost always equal mixture of good policies and confidence in the policymaker’s ability to get the policy right. There’s no indication that Wall Street trusts the Obama administration. There’s no indication that he’ll get things right, especially after finding out that the stimulus bill sneaks policy provisions in that put the federal government in charge of health care decisions.

CEOs understand the need to reform health care. That isn’t where he loses their support. Where he loses their support is when he installs extremist policies that put Big Brother in charge of which procedures and tests will or won’t get done. That’s a policy that America will be devastated by.

For all his sweeping rhetoric, there’s no indication that President Obama wants to take the sensible approach to anything. That’s the definition of either an extremist or an hyperbolist.

That realization won’t insprire confidence at a time when inspiration is badly needed.

Technorati Tags: Hyperbole, Extremist, Global Warming, California, Steven Chu, Tim Geithner, TARP II, Stock Market, President Obama, Economy

Cross-posted at LetFreedomRingBlog

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 12th, 2009 at 7:09 am and is filed under Author: Gary Gross, Domestic Policies, Economy, Environment, Obama. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.