OBAMA SPEAKS….AGAIN: DAN HENNINGER ****
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444273704577633622434051452.html
The hour is upon us. Obama speaks. Again.
A sound that was new as it soared from his acceptance speech in a Denver football stadium four years ago will Thursday night in Charlotte be one of the most familiar sounds in American life—Barack Obama’s voice. If it were possible for a president to talk his way to prosperity, the United States would be rolling in clover.
Some of us who went to the Democratic convention in Denver to see that historic nomination knew that Barack Obama was prone to thinking large. Still, even by the standards of the moment, it was hard to miss the grandiosity of Barack Obama’s intentions for the next four years.
As the Denver speech wound down, Barack Obama cited Martin Luther King Jr.’s dreams on the Washington Mall and then linked them to his own: “America, we cannot turn back . . . (applause) . . . not with so much work to be done; not with so many children to educate, and so many veterans to care for; not with an economy to fix, and cities to rebuild, and farms to save; not with so many families to protect and so many lives to mend.”
Columnist Dan Henninger on the promises President Obama made in his 2008 acceptance speech. Photos: Associated Press.
That was August 2008. Mr. Obama must have liked the sound of it because here he is a few weeks ago in Columbus: “Ohio, we’ve come too far to turn back now. (Applause.) We’ve got more students who dream to afford college. We’ve got more good teachers to hire. We’ve got more schools to rebuild. We’ve got more good jobs to create. We’ve got more homegrown energy to generate. We’ve got more troops we’ve got to come home. We’ve got more doors of opportunity to open for everybody who is willing to walk through them. That’s why I’m asking for a second term as president.”
Charlotte is going to be deja vu all over again. If anything, the grandiosity of the early days has expanded. With one exception that isn’t likely to be heard in Charlotte. It was this from 2008: “We measure progress in the 23 million new jobs that were created when Bill Clinton was president . . .”
As Barack Obama makes his four-year passage from one peak of convention rhetoric to a second peak in Charlotte, many Americans have passed his first term in the valley below, with a three-year unemployment rate above 8% and an economy whose average growth rate after emerging from recession has been sinking below 2%.
Here’s another line that soared across that Denver stadium: “If you don’t have a record to run on, then you paint your opponent as someone people should run from.” That was one promise you could take to the bank. Former Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland lowered the bar in Charlotte on the convention’s opening night, painting a laughable caricature of Mr. Romney as virtually a Goldfinger intent on destroying America from his redoubt in the Cayman Islands.
The Democratic Party is now living in Barack’s world of peak-to-peak dreams. That hard-wired 8% unemployment rate is a non-subject at the Democratic convention, as speaker after speaker align themselves with Barack Obama’s determination to devote his presidency to the stuff in his acceptance speeches. Think not? Here he was speaking Monday in Toledo, Ohio:
Chad Crowe
“Now, my opponent said renewable energy sources are ‘imaginary.’ The folks here in Toledo manufacturing solar panels might disagree with that. (Applause.) These jobs aren’t a ‘fad.’ . . . They’re our future.”
This is delusional. Employment growth in the solar-panel business is dormant because of the natural-gas boom that emerged in his first term. Blowing by this reality check, Mr. Obama still promotes solar-panel employment with total belief.
That maiden acceptance speech in Denver was full of this sort of thing:
“I’ll recruit an army of new teachers.”
“I’ll make it easier for the American people to afford these new cars.” That would become the proposed $10,000 subsidy for buying an electric car.
“Drilling is a stop-gap measure, not a long-term solution, not even close.” This presaged his over-the-top ban on oil drilling in 2010.
“I’ll invest $150 billion over the next decade in affordable, renewable sources of energy—wind power and solar power.” That would be Solyndra.
Toward the end came this: “Now, many of these plans will cost money, which is why I’ve laid out how I’ll pay for every dime: by closing corporate loopholes and tax havens that don’t help America grow.”
The “every dime” payment plan was fantasy. It couldn’t come close to producing the revenue needed to pay for the mountaintop Obama agenda. In practice, the Obama plans took spending from a 40-year average of 20% of GDP up to 25%. In Acceptance-II we’ll now hear how taxing “the wealthiest” will somehow pay for all the things still inside Barack Obama’s head.
It was all so new in Denver. By Charlotte, we’ve heard Barack Obama invoke all of this literally hundreds of times. It’s starting to have the sound of a president who is whistling past the graveyard. Not his. Ours.
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