Riverwood Presbyterian Church

Politics

Static Analysis

by Clay Staggs

If Barack Obama comes out of Denver the winner this August, one of his biggest liabilities is going to be his wife, Michelle. If I were advising the Obama campaign, my very first piece of advice would be that she get out from behind the microphone. She has this tendency to say things that Obama really doesn’t need to be associated with his campaign.

For instance, remember her comment earlier this year that for the first time in her life, she’s now proud of America? I suppose that the fall of the Berlin Wall had no effect on her.

Then she whined about the financial stress that folks like her have to live under these days, noting that she and Barack were in debt with student loans - until he wrote two best-selling books - and how now they have to spend $10,000 per year on after-school and summer activities for their kids.

She’s pooh-poohed those who [shudder] work in corporate America:

“We left corporate America, which is a lot of what we’re asking young people to do,” she tells the women. “Don’t go into corporate America. You know, become teachers. Work for the community. Be social workers. Be a nurse. Those are the careers that we need, and we’re encouraging our young people to do that. But if you make that choice, as we did, to move out of the money-making industry into the helping industry, then your salaries respond.” Faced with that reality, she adds, “many of our bright stars are going into corporate law or hedge-fund management.”

Like going into corporate law (a la yours truly) is tantamount to selling your soul to the devil. Oh, but, nevermind the corporate boards that she sits on making fat directors’ fees. And the $300K plus salary she makes working for a hospital. Those don’t count.

And it’s not just what she’s saying now. She’s got a paper trail. From a 2004 interview with the Chicago Tribune:

What I notice about men, all men, is that their order is me, my family, God is in there somewhere, but me is first. … And, for women, me is fourth, and that’s not healthy. (Emphasis mine.)

That’s bound to reel in LOTS of male votes.

But here’s her most recent pronouncement, on the subject of economics:

If we don’t wake up as a nation with a new kind of leadership…for how we want this country to work, then we won’t get universal health care,” she said. “The truth is, in order to get things like universal health care and a revamped education system, then someone is going to have to give up a piece of their pie so that someone else can have more.

Wow. Does everybody get that? The solution to education and healthcare is - SOCIALISM!! We’ll take from those who have too much of that “pie” and give to those who don’t have enough. And guess who will do this? The government - you know, because their track record of spending money efficiently is just SO GREAT.

This is wonderfully clarifying. John McCain is no Reagan when it comes to being a free-market supply-sider, but he’s Adam Smith compared to this nonsense. Ed Morrisey does a fantastic analysis of the vast increases we’ve seen in government expenditures on healthcare, education, and veterans services with almost zero increase in quality to show for it.

What bothers me most, though, is the completely static understanding she displays (remember this woman has a law degree from Harvard) of economics. The metaphor is a pie. Pies don’t grow or shrink - the only question is how they get divided. And, naturally, they need someone to do that dividing - the government.

I reject all of this. If anything should be obvious to even the most casual observer of the American economy, it’s that it is always changing - mostly growing, sometimes contracting. As the economy grows, and more folks earn more income, they pay more income taxes. Thus, revenue to the treasury always increases. The inconvenient truth is that the folks in the federal government are spending faster than the rate of increase, and with little to show for it. So, she’s either ignorant or dishonest.

McCain’s ad folks should be following her around with a camera every day.