Obama’s job description (Part 1) — VOICES for REASON

In a recent speech criticizing his economic critics, President Barack Obama made a revealing statement about himself. From the New York Times:

“I love these folks who helped get us in this mess and then suddenly say, ‘Well, this is Obama’s economy,’ ” the president said before an overwhelmingly supportive outdoor crowd at Macomb Community College. “That’s fine — give it to me. My job is to solve problems, not stand on the sidelines and carp and gripe.” (Emphasis mine.)

While this statement is designed to invoke the sort of take-charge attitude we admire in, say, a great quarterback or an excellent CEO, it in fact exhibits the utterly dictatorial economic role Obama plays in the economy.

Think about what it means to say “give it to me” about the economy. The American economy is the sum of the producing, trading, and consuming of some 300 million individuals whose lives and choices rightfully belong to them—not to Barack Obama. Of course, Obama and most of the economic establishment believe that leaving these 300 million individuals free is what caused all of today’s economic problems. It is our freedom that is the fundamental “problem” that Obama thinks it is his job to “solve”—by dictating every realm of our economic lives, from the money we use to the interest rates we pay to the medical care options available to the forms of energy we may use.

But freedom is not a problem, and the President’s job is not to solve it—his job is to protect it.

(To be concluded in Part 2.)