In the Obama administration’s third year, an air of unreality and disbelief has settled across the nation. Much of the media is focused on the trial of a trashy young woman for the murder of her daughter — even as the economy is headed for the shoals. Majorities think the country is on the wrong track, and 40 percent think the nation has entered permanent decline.
Meanwhile, President Obama — after lecturing Congress not to slack off — took off for his own holiday weekend at Camp David.
The contrast between some state governments — forced by reality into dealing with their huge budgetary problems — and the fantasy world of the feds has never been greater.
In New York, New Jersey and Florida, politicians as philosophically disparate as Democrat Andrew Cuomo and Republicans Chris Christie and Rick Scott have taken significant steps to bring their states’ fiscal houses into order, no matter what the eventual political price.
They’re hammering home a theme not much heard in Washington — personal responsibility.
Others, alas, are still in deep denial. The Minnesota government has just shut down in a duel between its Democratic governor and Republican legislature. In California, Jerry Brown is furiously raising taxes to support the satrapy in Sacramento, seemingly unconcerned that he’s driving out the productive classes.
With the Blue State model of high taxes and a huge underclass teetering on the brink of breakdown, Brown and others pretend that all it takes to right the system is more taxes and fewer services for the middle class — not addressing crucial issues such as bloated public workforces and entitlement reform.
But even Gov. Moonbeam can’t hold a candle to what’s going on in Washington, where President Obama (in between rounds of golf) is still blithely blabbering on about green jobs and high-speed rail and the unfairness of tax breaks for corporate jets.
His allies in Congress are no better. With the deadline for raising the debt ceiling (now $14.3 trillion) looming next month, talks have broken down over the Dems’ insistence on raising taxes if any spending is to be cut.
Now Dems led by Sen. Chuck Schumer are floating the notion that the president can simply ignore Congress, citing section four of the 14th Amendment, which has to do with the validity of the nation’s public debt.
Under this scenario, America would go on running up a tab for as long as anyone will lend us money, paying interest on the debt and doling out appropriations and entitlements without a care — using as its authority a Reconstruction-era amendment primarily crafted to redress some wrongs of slavery.
The administration is taking a similar who-cares tack in foreign affairs. Recently, Congress stamped its little feet over Obama’s ignoring of the War Powers Act of 1973, which requires congressional approval of unilateral presidential military action. But the House voted to disapprove of the US involvement in Libya while at the same time refusing to cut off funding for it — so why should Obama or anybody else take them seriously?
Meanwhile, the Taliban has greeted the announcement of US troop withdrawals in Afghanistan with a lethal assault on a Kabul hotel. Oh, and we’re now flying attack drones over Yemen and Somalia, running the list of countries in which Americans are engaged in “kinetic military action” to (at least) six.
Where does it stop?
Forget the politicians. Their job is to get re-elected in perpetuity, not save the country. They do that by buying votes with other people’s money.
Only an engaged (and suitably enraged) citizenry has the power to turn around the ship of state — to reassert the American values of self-reliance and hard work over those of the European welfare state the Left has been busily trying to impose for decades.
That’s the real meaning of the Tea Party. The only question is whether it can carry its momentum from last year’s elections forward to 2012.
If not, well, we can always amuse ourselves with the Casey Anthony trial.