The Orange Way Editorial

The Administration

President Obama is going for it all. It a new, but somewhat admirable, political approach, President Obama is foregoing the one big issue at a time tack that many previous administrations took; rather, he is choosing to go for every issue at one time, thereby taking advantage of his party's majority and splintering opposition into numerous different areas. As a result, the opposition cannot band together behind one single position- the way Democrats fought united against President Bush's plan for more individual control over Social Security or the way Republicans fought against "Hillary Care."

And even if Republicans did find the leadership and resolve to defeat, or more likely weaken, one of the President's proposals, he would still be able to achieve the rest of sweeping changes. Whether this strategy works out in the long run is yet to be seen, but it is certainly a daring and bold approach...

Peggy Noonan has a interesting article on the government's increasingly vague diction which prevents anyone from knowing what officials are actually talking about. Ms. Noonan writes of the "simple and wholly understandable suspicion that the government doesn't speak clearly about what it's doing for the reason that they know that if people fully understood they would say, 'Oh that's not a good idea,' or, 'The cost of that will kill us.' "

I think it is just as likely that the officials often do not have a firm idea of what they are talking about yet, which is why they speak with such little concrete concepts. Either way, the fact that the Obama administration is proposing and succeeding in passing the most fundamentally sweeping changes in decades without providing clear details is concerning...

The few things that the President does say with clarity, though, are not encouraging. Likewise, this commencement speech from his wife is not reassuring. She implored graduates to "[r]emember that you are blessed. Remember that in exchange for those blessings, you must give something back. You must reach back and pull someone up. You must bend down and let someone else stand on your shoulders so that they can see a brighter future."

First of all, I don't have to do anything, and I certainly do not have to bend down and let some other person stand on my shoulders to see a brighter future. Anything I do to help another person is because I want to, not because I have to. Likewise, allowing another person to succeed over me because I embrace such self deprecating behavior is counter to the American ideal and counter to the concepts that create a healthy and vibrant capitalist nation.

At its heart, I believe one of the most pressing concerns about the administration is that it does not have a basic understanding of what has made this country great and what will allow it to thrive into the future. Capitulation to the lowest common denominator is not a plan for success...