National Review Online
Wednesday, October 24, 2012
Barack Obama has released a ridiculous little 20-page
pamphlet — 20 pages with lots of pictures — detailing his agenda for a second
term. He calls it the “New Economic Patriotism,” and if that name seems to you
redolent of early-20th-century totalitarians, that may be because it is not the
first N.E.P.: Lenin’s was the Novaya Ekonomicheskaya Politika. Mitt Romney
published an economic-policy book, too. No pictures.
Apparently, Obama’s second term is to be a more or less
precise repeat of his first term. In fact, the sixth item on his seven-point
list merely touts Obamacare, which, if memory serves, already has been passed.
He also wants to add six-figure numbers to the headcounts of the public-sector
unions that finance and staff his campaign. And build batteries. There’s no
picture of the batteries, but there are 17 photographs of the president, most
of them centerfolds. In fact, photographs of the president gazing down
benevolently upon children, doctors, oldsters, and one guy with a baseball cap
on sideways account for about 80 percent of the space in the booklet. That is
appropriate, inasmuch as the Obama campaign, like the Obama presidency, is not
about jobs or economic growth: It is about Barack Obama.
Such scant substance as there is exhibits the president’s
characteristic dishonesty. He repeats the canard about tax deductions for
outsourcing, when in fact no special tax deduction exists. (Business expenses
are deductible when calculating income for tax purposes — that’s it. No special
benefit for outsourcing expenses exists.) He boasts that his policies have led
to a dramatic reduction in oil imports, and he is in a sense correct: Demand
for oil is down because the economy is stagnant. Demand for lots of things is
down for the same reason, and Obama’s policies are an important part of the
reason for that. He suggests that we will reduce our demand for foreign oil
even further by investing in wind, solar, and clean coal. He is not very clear
on how that will work, since those technologies are used to produce
electricity, which is not what we use oil for. Perhaps he thinks the country
runs on diesel generators. Cars that run on cool breezes and sunshine are not
yet commercially available.
In truth, Obama’s policies are a dagger pointed at the
heart of the American energy industry. Oil production on federal lands is
declining, and his EPA is poised to pounce upon the natural-gas industry,
threatening to squelch innovative techniques for recovering natural gas from
shale deposits. In the unhappy event the president should win reelection, he
will not be constrained by the thought of having to face the voters again, and
his EPA will be off the leash.
The president also repeats his misleading statement about
job growth in “the auto industry rescued by President Obama.” (Sure, you
taxpayers may have played a role, too, but don’t expect a mention.) In truth,
most of the growth in automotive employment has not been at the bailed-out
firms, which still are significantly underperforming such competitors as Toyota
and Volkswagen.
He boasts of the three free-trade pacts he has signed,
every one of which was handed down to him by the Bush administration. In fact,
he slow-walked the Colombia trade pact under pressure from his labor-union
allies.
He proposes to cut corporate tax rates. It is our
understanding that there is another candidate in the race with a similar idea.
He proposes to create 20 federal institutes for
innovation in manufacturing, because innovation is the first thing most people
think of when they think of the federal government.
He also promises to cut spending and to reduce the
deficit, issues upon which he simply has no credibility. If he were going to
adopt a deficit-reduction plan, he would have proposed one by now instead of
torpedoing every idea sent his way for the last four years, including the
recommendations of his own deficit-reduction commission.
If patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel, what is
economic patriotism? The last refuge of a man with President Obama’s record.
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