The American Spectator : Thank You, Barack Obama

Thank You, Barack Obama

By Ben Stein on 9.14.09 @ 12:36PM

Dear Mr. President:

As a 64-year-old, lifelong fiscal conservative and Republican since Nixon, may I humbly thank you? In the eight months or so since you took office, you have succeeded in reviving a party, the GOP, that many had left for dead.

1) You have named men to office so wildly irresponsible, so extreme in their positions, so vulgar in their means of expression, that they have made the Republican Party regain its of gleam of gentility and good graces. I am not talking only about the tough guy/ballet dancer Rahm Emanuel, who screamed like a jilted drunken sorority girl at GOP leaders after Joe Wilson's outburst (itself a disgrace) last Wednesday night. I am talking about a high White House official who called Republicans by a barnyard epithet at a public speech recently. This is the same guy who signed a petition to investigate whether the government caused 9/11 -- itself a favored position of Neo-Nazis and other nut jobs. Thank you. I thought no one could outdo an appointment like Henry Paulson, Bush 43's Treasury Secretary -- but you have.

2) You have proposed a national health care plan so wildly extravagant, incomprehensibly complex and over the top that it makes President George W. Bush's budget gaffes seem like blips -- plus you have told fibs about it so immense that you have embarrassed yourself as a public figure:

• Obviously, no responsible leader in government thinks there are enough savings in Medicare to pay for national health insurance. That old canard -- that you'll pay for a huge program through cutting out "...waste, fraud, and corruption..." was old and lame and pitifully untrue in the days of John Adams. It is a bad joke now...unless, unless you really are planning to totally gut Medicare and basically end decent health care for the elderly. This has become a legitimate fear after last Wednesday's speech. If you really do believe you can squeeze enough out of Medicare to pay for your health plan, maybe the "death panel" myth wasn't really a myth after all.

• The idea that you can do a trillion dollar plus program with no new taxes and not add to the deficit and you swear that's true is all too much like your promise to "...read every line..." of the federal budget to root out "fraud, waste and corruption." (How are you doing on that reading, by the way?) Lies that big make the Grand Old Party -- who also told whoppers about the effects of the Bush 43 tax cuts -- look like Honest Abe. Thank you for being an even bigger tale teller than we were. You have given us the opportunity Clinton took away from us to make us look fiscally prudent. No one else but you could have done it. THANK YOU!

• No one who has ever been to the Department of Motor Vehicles, no one who has ever been audited, no one who has ever tried to get a Social Security problem corrected believes your fibs that your health care plan will not come between patients and doctors. When your bullying partners in Congress get your bill passed and Americans start to see what havoc you have wrought in the doctors' offices and the hospitals, the party of Ronald Reagan is going to look awfully good.

• Thank you for creating a massive federal entitlement program that will push us closer day by day to national bankruptcy while you fiddle. Every large government entitlement program -- Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid -- is racing towards bankruptcy. Now, you have created a new one to sink the ship of state. A rescue party led by the Republicans will, sooner or later, look mighty handy to the voters.

Oh, and there is so much more -- coddling Iran while it gets ready to nuke Israel, hugging the worst person in South America, our mortal enemy, Hugo Chavez, not demanding any accountability for the hundreds of billions you -- and Bush 43 -- handed out to the multi-millionaire bonus babies of Wall Street.

Thank you, thank you, thank you. We thought we were down and out, and now you have given us a fresh start. You have, so to speak, let us hit the "reset" button on all of our messy recent history. You guys are so bush league, so to speak, you make us look like seasoned, sensible, prudent professionals. And it only took eight months. Thank you, President Obama, and we'll look for more. You truly are the gift that keeps on giving.