If you have an hour to waste, go online and listen to President Barack Obama's State of the Union speech. In his view, this nation is doing swell; that with a little investment, innovation and competition -- and maybe bullet trains and a wind farm or two -- everything will be just fine.
The speech is a shining example of why Americans are fed up with government, no matter whether it is "led" by Obama or a Sarah Palin. Many Americans see them as a difference without distinction -- alienated, insulated, isolated from the very people they purport to represent. Americans are growing weary of the flim-flam, the half-truths, the political hocus-pocus.
Obama's speech was a case in point, long on rhetoric and light on substance; rife with yada-yada and bereft of details. It was enough to make rational people wish presidents would return to the practice in vogue before Woodrow Wilson's presidency of simply sending over to Congress a written message members could ignore at their leisure.
While Obama yammered on about investing in America (the American Presidency Project says he mentioned it 13 times), or how we must innovate (11 times) or that we must compete globally (nine times) he failed to talk about the real America, where things, by virtually any measure, could be better.
What life is like in Obama's world is anybody's guess, but out here, unemployment stubbornly remains at record levels. The economy is staggering. Housing prices are in the basement and foreclosures are an American nightmare. Government intrudes into every nook of American life and now wants to regulate the Internet, the last vestige of real freedom in this country. Police across the nation are being murdered in shocking numbers, and local governments desperately are trying to avoid going broke. States are seeking ways to declare bankruptcy.
The nation is awash in red ink deep enough to threaten its credit rating. The national annual budget deficit is predicted to be $1.5 trillion. We can just add that to $14 trillion in accumulated debt -- brought on by years of profligate spending. In a few years, that debt will eclipse the entire economy. The nation's highways and infrastructure are falling apart. Illegal aliens are streaming across our borders, jamming our nation's prisons and bankrupting hospitals and state government agencies. We are at war with a barbaric enemy halfway around the world. Our education system arguably is more broken than not in far too many places. Obama foreign policy efforts are impotent. I will not even go into his smoke and mirrors about health care.
Obama's speech urged what amounts to a phony spending freeze and offered an agenda that, the National Taxpayers Union Foundation says, would add $20 billion in new spending and trigger new taxes. It could be worse. In his first State of the Union, the foundation said, Obama called for a spending freeze and sought to add $70 billion in additional spending. He also took a few seconds this week to praise his bipartisan fiscal commission -- whose recommendations on spending cuts he largely ignores.
I fear for my nation. I fear for my children and yours, and their children. We are in dangerous territory, and surely there must be a tipping point. I worry that Obama -- and this mess is not all his -- and the Congress are too self-absorbed to do what is necessary: curb spending, get government out of the way and reduce taxes to spur the economy.
Then, I remember a Charles Krauthammer column from July 2008, in which he wrote:
"Obama is a three-year senator without a single important legislative achievement to his name, a former Illinois state senator who voted "present" nearly 130 times. As president of the Harvard Law Review, as law professor and as legislator, has he ever produced a single notable piece of scholarship? Written a single memorable article? His most memorable work is a biography of his favorite subject: himself."
Reading that again, the fear of what could happen in the next few years becomes almost bitterly palpable. A bullet train is not going to fix what ails us, but Obama's remarks give a clue about what facet of America is important to him. With all his talk about investing -- liberalese for spending -- innovation and competition, remember this:
He mentioned the word "freedom" only once.
Paul Jenkins is editor of the AnchorageDailyPlanet.com.
PAUL JENKINS
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