Obama’s Snake Oil
Monday, August 25th, 2008 3:06 pm by NealGeorge Will has a great article today on how Barack Obama’s campaign pledges and so-called “agenda” add up to one, big gut-laugh — unless you’re a Democrat. Read For Obama, Believing is Seeing :
Barack Obama has made his economic thinking excruciatingly clear, so it also is clear that his running mate should have been not Joe Biden, but Rumpelstiltskin. He spun straw into gold, a skill an Obama administration will need in order to fulfill its fairy-tale promises.
Obama recently said he would “require that 10 percent of our energy comes from renewable sources by the end of my first term — more than double what we have now.” Note the verb “require” and the adjective “renewable.” …
Obama is (this is part of liberalism’s catechism) leery of nuclear power. He also says — and might say so even if Nevada were not a swing state — he distrusts the safety of Nevada’s Yucca Mountain for storage of radioactive waste. Evidently he prefers today’s situation — nuclear waste stored at 126 inherently insecure above-ground sites in 39 states, within 75 miles of where more than 161 million Americans live.
But back to requiring this or that quota of energy from renewable sources. What will that involve? For conservatives, seeing is believing; for liberals, believing is seeing. Obama seems to believe that if a particular outcome is desirable, one can see how to require it. But how does that work? Details to follow, sometime after noon, Jan. 20, 2009. …
Where will the electricity for these million cars come from? Not nuclear power (see above). And not anywhere else, if Obama means this: “I will set a hard cap on all carbon emissions at a level that scientists say is necessary to curb global warming — an 80 percent reduction by 2050.”
No he won’t. Steven Hayward of the American Enterprise Institute notes that in 2050 there will be 420 million Americans — 40 million more households. So Obama’s cap would require reducing per capita carbon emissions to levels probably below even those “in colonial days when the only fuel we burned was wood.” …
There never is a shortage of nonsensical political rhetoric, but really: Has there ever been solemn silliness comparable to today’s politicians tarting up their agendas as things designed for, and necessary to, “saving the planet,” and promising edicts to “require” entire industries to reorder themselves?
In 1996, Bob Dole, citing the Clinton campaign’s scabrous fundraising, exclaimed: “Where’s the outrage?” This year’s campaign, soggy with environmental messianism, deranged self-importance and delusional economics, the question is: Where is the derisive laughter?
The real scandal isn’t that Obama’s agenda is a joke, but that Democrats fall for these snake-oil salesmen decade after decade. Whether the pitch is channeling dead babies or proclaiming that sea level is dropping, a willing suspension of reality is a prerequisite to being a liberal. Hell, even Hillary gets it. We’ll have more on that soon.