An Obama Allegory

Chris Dodd Explains Away Bonuses For Political Allies

The Obama administration's recent misadventures can be encapsulated in allegory. Imagine a car in the snow. The President is slamming the pedal to the metal with a budget proposal, plans for health care reform, measures to prevent climate change, and the euphemistically named Employee Free Choice Act, but he's spinning his wheels. At the same time, he's wasting gas at approximately the same rate at which Congress wastes taxpayer money. That's fast. The next gas station is at least a year away.

To complete the allegory, attach administration figures and political objectives to their representations. President Obama is the car and driver, the snow is his political opposition, gas is his political capital, and the gas station is the next point where the President might fill up on political capital. The American economy is a good horse to bet on, so chances are that when it recovers the Democratic Party will get a good deal of credit no matter what they do to saddle it with bad fiscal policy. Depending on your political persuasion, the President's difficulties are either cause for celebration or desolation. The fact of the matter, though, is that if the President gets traction, he will run down the American economy on the road paved with his good intentions. All the highfalutin campaign rhetoric about the urgency of cap and trade may have real consequences in the political arena. Deficits will skyrocket to levels unheard-of since the end of the Second World War. The Employee Free Choice Act, which American workers don't actually want, could deliver another blow to labor markets. American voters bought the Obama-Mobile, but can they stomach the maintenance costs? The President insists that his agenda is on track despite growing opposition, but so too Saddam's information minister deny that there were Americans in Baghdad.

The staff at the Age of Pericles don't intend to emulate Ebenezer Limbaugh. We wish President Obama the very best of luck, but for the sake of the American people, we hope that he runs out of gas before slamming through any legislation that would cause the aforementioned consequences. After all, we all know what happens when bills get run through Congress and signed before they're read; ask all the taxpayers whose hard-earned dollars were funneled to AIG executives through a special clause in the stimulus package. Could that possibly have anything to do with AIG's largesse during election years? Add that to the questionable constitutionality of selective 90% tax rates for AIG bonuses, and you have a roller-coaster of government expansionism. Next stop- a banana republic!