Truly, Hope Springs Eternal

Truly, Hope Springs Eternal.  It has been quite a while since my last post.  To be honest about it, I was a bit embarrassed to continue my constant haranguing of Obama.  There is something to the old rule to say nothing if you can’t say something positive.  Believe it or not, I get absolutely no satisfaction out of ripping on our president; but it is what it is.  He is likely the worst president in my lifetime and I continue to be perplexed at how ignorant the public was in re-electing him, the press is in giving him so many passes, and the Democrats are in tolerating and supporting his cockeyed policies.  So, I have been waiting on an opportunity to write something positive for a change and I think I will take a poke at it this morning.

The catalyst for this post comes from an article I just read stating that the USA has now surpassed Saudi Arabia to become the world’s leading oil producer.  I thought about that for a moment and then allowed the thought to expand a bit.  What I find amazing, and what this article helped me to remember, is how truly remarkable this nation is.  Even with the roadblocks, impediments, and idiotic regulations that the Obama administration has strewn across our economy, our nation continues to plod along.  In spite of the tilt against it, our country continues to innovate (fracking), build new manufacturing capacity (Walmart), maintain some semblance of optimism for the future (Wall Street), and although it is clearly not widespread enough, build a good standard of living for our citizens. 

Who would have dreamed of the USA being the No. 1 oil producing country 15 years ago?  When you couple that fact with our huge natural gas deposits and our marvelous agricultural capacity, it bodes well for our future in this new global society.  Politics aside, we could very well find ourselves in a powerful position to dictate fair and reasonable international trading policies.  Walmart’s new push to buy and sell American-made products will result in not only increased manufacturing jobs, but also a new sense of pride in taking care of our own.  Liberals need to shut their mouths, get in their Volvos, and truck on down to their local Walmart; they are pretty cool stores and have sure done a lot to increase the quality of life in rural America.  Every week seems to bring a new high on Wall Street and honestly, this is a bit frightening.  When I look around the part of the country where I live, it is a mystery to me where this “sustained” economic growth is occurring.  I continue to fear that the pump-priming and cheap money policies of the Fed will result in another fiscal bubble burst but…the market continues to climb.  The one thing that appears to be certain is that there is a huge reservoir of cash being stashed away by corporations and individuals  and when this economy of ours does finally turn the corner and create some momentum, there is going to be a tremendous amount of capital available to fuel a real recovery that should create many opportunities for many people.

Without delving too deeply into geopolitical politics and warfare, I will say this:  The foreign policy of any President is a unique product of the environment in which he serves.  So it was with Lincoln; so it was with Truman; so it was with Johnson; so it was with W.; and so it is with Obama.  It is a dangerous game to compare one with the other because no two stood at the same place at the same time.  The world is a dynamic and dangerous stage; it is evolving at breakneck speed and there seems to be as many forces of evil as there are for good.  For better or worse, we as a government and a people are approaching a position of pulling back, taking care of our own, and coming to grips with the reality that we cannot be all things to all people and solve all of the world’s problems.  Part of that learning curve was trying to be the universal force for good and trying was a noble exercise; but there is an old saying that still bears fruit today…YOU CANNOT HELP PEOPLE WHO REFUSE TO HELP THEMSELVES. 

One way or the other, we are approaching the end to a grand experiment regarding the wisdom of the nanny state.  As with many grand experiments, this one has been plagued by hyperbole on both sides and excesses in policy.  Fiscal reality will ultimately dictate that we pull back from the extremes in social policy that Obama has created, but our compassion as decent people will dictate that certain elements of the honest compassion buried within liberal domestic policy will remain.  And at the end of the day, we will find that we have receded from being too far left, but have not quite gone back as far rightward as we were originally.  Isn’t that the way it’s supposed to work?

About the only thing I am certain about these days is  how very little I have actually learned in my 61 years of living; the hard knocks school is very humbling.  But I am pretty sure that the brief period in the 90’s when we had a Democrat in the White House and Republicans in Congress who actually negotiated, compromised, and implemented some commonsense fiscal policies that yielded a balanced federal budget were some of the best times ever for this country.  Nobody saw that coming and unfortunately, it did not last long.  However, it did demonstrate that you cannot underestimate the incredible capacity of our national economy to create opportunity when the government can find the wisdom and will to GET THE HELL OUT ITS WAY.  Here’s hoping that for a second time in my life, I will see before I die another episode of bipartisan government like we had with Clinton and Gingrich.  The curse of Obama will soon be lifted and we will move on past this bizarre chapter in our political history.  Perhaps there is a Democrat or Republican out there somewhere who can get elected and have a clear vision on how to unburden this great nation and allow it to once again pursue the greatness that still remains buried deep in its current turmoil. As stupid and sophomoric as it was to read about the President getting blowjobs under the desk, that is preferable to the downright lunacy and dysfunction that is going down in WDC these days.  If the worst we have to worry about are frat pranks in the White House, how bad can it be?