Obama We Hardly Know Ye

As Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) becomes the presumptive presidential nominee of the Democratic Party today, The Wall Street Journal comments on just what an extraordinary moment this is.

Democrats are nominating a freshman Senator barely three years out of the Illinois legislature whom most of America still hardly knows.

It’s also remarkable that a major political party in the United States has chosen, for the first time, an African-American to be its presidential nominee.

But for me, the parallel with President Carter is palpable. I remember first hearing about Jimmy Carter a couple of years before the 1976 election, and I remember being impressed. But I also remember that the closer we got to the actual election the less I liked him. The concept was great; the details told a different story.

And so it is with Sen. Obama. He is an inspiring speaker who talks about “unity” and “change.” But all the details point to a conventional liberal with conventional liberal views on everything.

Every president, upon entering office, has the opportunity to make a difference on two or three big things. But on all the host of little things he is probably the hostage of his party activists, the up-and-comers who appear out of the campaign and the think tanks to take the executive-level appointments in the Executive Branch.

Up to now we haven’t heard about any Big Things from Barack Obama beyond the conventional liberal position on nationalizing health care and the conventional anti-war stance on the Iraq War.

In other words we have no information that gives us an indication that Obama, the product of a conventional elite education, will be anything other that conventionally liberal. Chances are he’ll expand government power in education, health care, and, of course, the environment. That means more rigidity, more subsidies directed at Democratic voters.

We conservative folks think that this century-long expansion of government is approaching its limits. Education is an expensive mess that produces little. Health care is an expensive mess that delivers little in life expectancy beyond what you could get with a robust public health program and neo-natal care. Pensions are unaffordable in the medium term.

We believe that the conservative ascendancy of the last 30 years gave Americans an opportunity to reverse direction and reduce government power and expense it was too late.

Now it looks like we are going to do it the hard way.

Because we cannot expect a President Obama to go back on all his supporters and change the whole direction of government. Not from what we already know about him.

But maybe he will surprise us.