The Crux of Obamacasting?

Peter Wehner, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center and former director of the office of strategic initiatives for President Bush offers this powerful and pointed critique of the gap between this President’s rhetoric and his actions.

As it is becoming increasingly clear to me, the narrative that best makes sense of the data is that Obamacasting is leveraging this President’s popularity to push radically Statist policies to a populous that wants (and I would say needs) more individualism.

In other words, Obama holds a government-centric approach to solving problems, and, thus, each crisis leads to policies that expand the size of government.  He genuinely believes this is best, and probably that he is righting historic wrongs through this.

But this stands in opposition to the traditional American ethos that stands behind the primacy of the individual.  And, oh by the way, this is encoded in our national founding documents, which root their authority on the “consent of the government” and not the plans of the state.  And, oh by the way, Obama as President has sworn an oath to defend the Constitution.  This is a violation.

This does not mean there have not been wrongs that need to be righted in America.  There have been, and they should be addressed.  But the way I hoped Obama would do that would be openly.  Instead, this idea of Obamacasting is being supported by more and more evidence.  And it provides sad and troubling evindence that our President is practicing deception to move his policies forward.

And these policies resemble the statist tyranny our founders revolted against.  And if deception is being used to move things towards statism, are we not seeing more wrongs and forces of oppression added to the American equation?

Here are some examples Wehner cites of Obama’s deception:

The President assures us that his budget moves America “from an era of borrow and spend” to one of “save and invest.” He speaks about our responsibility to our children “to ensure that we do not pass on to them a debt they cannot pay.” Yet according to the Congressional Budget Office, on Obama’s watch the national debt will double in six years and nearly triple it in 10 years.

…

Obama also insists he wants to “disabuse people of this notion that somehow we enjoy meddling in the private sector.” I’m sure he does. But he is overseeing the greatest intrusion of the federal government into the private sector in our lifetime…

…

[Obama] added, “What I hope is that we can avoid the political posturing and ideological brinksmanship that has bogged down this process, and Congress, in the past.” Yet when he served in the Senate, Obama voted against two extraordinarily qualified nominees, John Roberts and Samuel Alito. And Obama engaged in what could fairly be described as political posturing and ideological brinksmanship in not only saying he would join a filibuster of Alito, but then in voting against cloture.

I had hoped for real change in our politics with this man.  I had especially hoped for more transparency and accountability in government.  Lo and behold, we are getting that in the form of the Open Government initiative in the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), “which was put in motion by executive orders Obama signed on his second day in office, could actually bake transparency and accountability into government in a way that would be hard to undo down the line.”

So, perhaps I am wrong, and the wisdom of crowds is right.  Perhaps this popular hero of a President is really on the right track overall, and I am making the mistake of seizing on certain actions that are inconsistent with his words.

Perhaps he really believes that the ends justify the means, as Saul Alinsky taught, and that if we can just realize the future which he seems to see so clearly favoring a State-centric nation, then this former community organizer will then be vindicated.  I want to be charitable here.  Perhaps this thing I call Obamacasting really is happening purposefully, but Obama believes the end state will prove these so-called deceptions to have been necessary for deceived, obtuse guys like me were missing the big picture all along.

What do you think?