re: What do you guys think of Obama?

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Much of the liberal case against President Bush is barely short of silly. His election was not illegitimate. Whether or not the candidate with the most votes should win, that’s not what the U.S. Constitution says. Blame the Founders, not George W. Bush.

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The charge that he’s a crazy right-winger is beyond silly. Other than tax cuts—which have benefited the rich only because the rich paid, and still pay, most of the taxes—virtually nothing of conservative substance has happened. Government is more expansive and expensive than ever before.

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James Traub contends, “Today’s Republican Party is arguably the most extreme—the furthest from the center—of any governing majority in the nation’s history.” This is the Republican Party that has embraced as its own every liberal initiative, from Lyndon Johnson’s Medicare to Jimmy Carter’s Department of Education to Bill Clinton’s AmeriCorps. This is the Republican Party preparing to enact a Medicare drug benefit that would represent the largest expansion of the welfare state in 40 years. This is the Republican Party that is increasing federal education spending as if doing so had something to do with the quality of local schools. This is the Republican Party that is increasing spending faster than during the Clinton years. Right-wing extremists? For the Left, liberal means centrist, and moderate conservative approaches fascist. Really conservative is off the spectrum.

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Third, President George W. Bush has made Woodrow Wilson the guiding spirit of Republican foreign policy. A candidate who criticized nation building is now pursuing global social engineering. The representative of a party that once criticized foreign aid is now pushing lavish U.S. social spending abroad, demanding that it be a gift rather than a loan.

And the administration has advanced a doctrine of pre-emption that encourages war for allegedly humanitarian ends. Attempting to justify the Iraqi war retrospectively by pointing to Saddam Hussein’s manifold crimes, the president apparently believes he may attack any nation to advance human rights. Ironically, the Bush administration has adopted as its policy the question posed by then UN Ambassador Madeleine Albright to then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Colin Powell: what’s the use of having this fine military you keep talking about if we don’t use it?

The negative practical consequences of this policy are all too evident. Ugly foreign governments from Iran to North Korea have an incentive to arm themselves, quickly, with WMD to deter a U.S. preventive assault.

Iraq has become a magnet for terrorist attacks while becoming a long-term dependent under U.S. military occupation.

Anger towards—indeed, hatred of—Washington is likely to continue growing, even in once friendly nations. It will be difficult to maintain an imperial foreign policy with a volunteer military.

Liberals should identify with the Bush record. He is increasing the size and power of the U.S. government both at home and abroad. He has expanded social engineering from the American nation to the entire globe. He is lavish with dollars on both domestic and foreign programs. For this the Left hates him?

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