It had all seemed so perfect just a few months ago—The dashing and urbane Alexi had burst on the political scene only four years ago spending millions of his parents money to win statewide office in his very first foray into politics.  He shot hoops with his role model and political patron, Barak Obama.  He had wealth, charisma, connections and unbridled ambition and a solidly blue state in which to make all his dreams come true.

But things started to go poorly from the start.  His entry into the race for his idol’s Senate seat was met with a collective wince from Democrats.  From the White House on down, political operatives made overtures to nearly every possible alternative candidate short of Rod Blagojevich.  State Attorney General Lisa Madigan, Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart, Chris Kennedy, and Dem mandarin Bill Daley are just the alternatives that readily come to mind.  Even with all these A-listers taking a pass, Alexi still drew four primary opponents.  The scuttlebutt was that Democrat insiders felt Alexi lacked depth and that, coupled with troubles at his family’s Broadway Bank, he would be a very weak candidate.

He spent a ton of cash to eke out a primary win.  But 61% of Democrats wanted someone else to be the nominee.  Meanwhile, moderate GOP Congressman Mark Kirk cruised with nearly 60% of the Republican primary vote against six challengers.  Since then, things have gotten progressively worse for Alexi.

The Democrat’s plan to paint Kirk as a callous Wall Street Republican who cares not a whit about the suffering of Americans never got off the ground because the Chicago media seemed a little more interested in the issues surrounding the impending failure of Broadway Bank.

When the political neophyte Giannoulias sought the State Treasurer’s office in 2006 his only claim of legitimacy was his highly-touted work as a Vice President and Senior Loan Officer at the stunningly successful Broadway Bank that his immigrant dad had founded.  He claimed he was a financial wunderkind who could manage the state’s finances with the same innovative style that led to Broadway’s success.  The repeated six-figure donations to his campaign from his immediate family helped push this narrative in spite of some emerging questions from the press.

Now that Alexi sought to make a quantum leap in the political world, those lingering questions came back and, to put it mildly, Alexi’s answers did not all add up.  There were conflicting representations of how much authority Alexi had had at the bank.  Had he been the hot-shot executive on the cutting edge of the bank’s success, or was he parked in a job with significantly less responsibility as he now claims?  Was he just doing what his dad and brother told him when he loaned $20 million to a couple of convicted mobsters and visited their Miami hotel to check on the bank’s investment?  Was he unaware of the federal investigation of political fixer Tony Rezko as he continued to loan him millions as his empire crumbled?  As Broadway sank into insolvency in the recession, did he help devise a plan to cash out $30 million of the family’s equity to “diversify holdings,” before the bottom dropped out?

Sadly, many banks that got greedy in the real estate bubble have been busted in the downturn.  But it is important to note that for every bank that has failed, hundreds have survived through sound management, better diversification, and, to some extent, luck.  But the narrative that was inexorably taking hold in the media and among the political classes in Illinois was that these issues raised debilitating questions about Alexi’s qualification and character—his fundamental fitness for office.

In the meantime, what was supposed to be the signature program of the State Treasurer’s office, the Bright Start college savings program has been hammered in the market, raising questions about the way Giannoulias meted out lucrative contracts to invest the program’s funds.  Hundreds of thousands of families are negatively impacted.

Democrats began making snippy comments about Alexi in public and some pundits began calling for Alexi to get off the ticket before it was too late to find a suitable replacement who might not drag the whole slate down with it.  And then the poll numbers started coming in.  After the primary Alexi held small leads in several independent polls.  Now, his numbers were tanking fast.  Kirk hasn’t moved an inch.  But negative opinions of Alexi jumped, particularly among independents.  Kirk had barely lifted a finger and the numbers had flipped in six weeks.

Back to Alexi sitting in his high-rise bachelor pad, wondering how to get his mojo back.  As he flips through the cable channels he lands on a re-run of Patton and hears George C. Scott (inaccurately) quote Fredrick the Great—“L’audace, l’audace, toujours l’audace.”  And it hits him.  He will turn the tables in this battle by being utterly audacious.  No matter what, he will drive his message forward in the face of, well, reality.

When anyone wants to question how his shaky resume, his shady business associations and his family’s management decisions reflect on him, Alexi and his apologists go on the attack.  They respond that Mark Kirk wants to take health care away from sick children and that Kirk is a right-wing extremist.  One Giannoulias claim that is legitimate, but immaterial, is that Kirk has sought to focus attention on Alexi’s bank-related problems and has said much less about policy issues.  There will be plenty of time for Kirk to go toe-to-toe with Alexi on the issues.  Kirk would just prefer that Alexi come into that debate with a giant albatross around his neck.

But Alexi’s handlers recently disclosed that they had hit upon a new strategy that would make Patton proud.  Mustering up every ounce of audacity available on the earth, they recently told reporters that their focus groups had shown that voters don’t really care if Alexi misrepresented his qualifications and consorted with pimps and bookies.  What got a response was portraying Alexi and Broadway Bank as, yes, indeed, victims.

Alexi and the Giannoulias family, who squirreled away $30 million as the bank regulators circled and who funded the mob’s real estate investment portfolio, are innocent victims of the Kirk/Bush recession.  The Giannoulias Building and Loan was done in by George W. Potter.  Alexi, like the average American, is down to his last few million, barely able to buy his next Brioni suit.  And Kirk, whose father worked for the phone company and who has supplemented his public servant salary for twenty years by serving as an intelligence officer in the Naval Reserves, is supposedly living the high life with Karl Rove and Dick Cheney.

Alexi recently whined to an audience that Kirk is being mean by constantly bringing up the bank issues and that it is just Kirk’s way of avoiding the issues.  He wants voters to believe that his experience, his qualifications and his character are off limits.  True, his only hope appears to be a straight up debate over the candidates’ competing visions of doctrinaire liberalism versus center-right fiscal conservatism.  Polling numbers indicate that, even in this blue state, the electorate is pretty split this year.  Add into that mix, Alexi’s chance to become the ethical heir of Blagojevich it is clear why he and his allies are deeply worried.

Giannoulias seems to be so comfortable with the new “All Audacity, All the Time” strategy that he now calls Kirk’s moderate credentials “absolute farce.”  Considering that National Journal has consistently rated Kirk as one of the most centrist legislators in Washington, considering that Kirk is pro-choice and has moderate positions on gay rights and the environment, considering that nearly every conservative pundit, including Laura Ingram has publicly vilified him, considering that nearly every right-wing activist in Illinois opposed his nomination, considering that some conservatives actually want to run a third-party candidate in the race, Alexi may not be able to make this accusation stick.  In fact, it may exacerbate his credibility problems even more.

And now, Alexi continues to push the audacity envelope.  He told reporters that, if elected, he will aggressively seek a position on the Senate Banking Committee saying he could bring “very important perspective” to the Committee.  If it weren’t for the fact that Cuba and China are members of the UN Human Rights Council, this would set the global standard for irony.

While Kirk has yet to tap deep into his considerable war chest to make his case for why he deserves to be promoted to the Senate, it appears he can bide his time while Alexi continues to struggle harder against this quicksand.

Of course, those outside the delusional bubble of the White House know that the only truly unprecedented thing this administration has done is to destroy its own popularity faster than any other modern president, primarily thanks to its ham-handed push for a left-of-center realignment of the nation.

Nowhere is this more apparent than in the titanic health care “reform” struggle.  The administration cannot seem to grasp the reality or the reasons for the public’s rejection of Obamacare.  The White House is correct that Americans want to reform health care and make it more affordable, accessible and understandable.  But the people know intuitively that a government takeover, or just a much bigger government role, won’t achieve those goals.

Reforms that would result in improved national health, better access, and enhanced cost effectiveness were well underway under the Bush administration.  The kinds of reforms that many pundits have suggested could be achieved if the White House would ditch its overly ambitious plans and start from scratch.

When it comes to some of the most popular elements of “reform,” the Obama team has simply picked up Bush initiatives and represented them as their own ideas.

The Bush administration launched a major initiative to promote use of new health information technology.  The Department of Health and Human Services, under two very capable secretaries, Tommy Thompson and Mike Leavitt, launched complex efforts to create interoperable health IT standards, to promote the adoptions of electronic medical records, the aggregation and exchange of data throughout the system, and the use of this data to improve outcomes.  The Bush administration also knew that the only way to get a handle on how and why costs were increasing so rapidly and what to do about it, was to have consistent and universal data to examine.

Secretary Mike Leavitt traveled the country tirelessly to promote the creation of health information exchanges—in which health care providers, in cooperation with employers and public health agencies built infrastructures and designed systems to begin the collection of this vital information.

But the difference between the Bush and Obama administrations was that the Obama team sees this data aggregation as the key to centralized control of health care, while the Bush team saw it as the foundation of a value-driven health care system where consumers were informed and empowered in making critical health care choices for themselves.

The Bush administration also launched an aggressive expansion of Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHC’s) to expand access to traditionally underserved communities, particularly in minority and rural areas.  During the Bush tenure, visits to FQHC’s rose over fifty percent, providing easier access to community-based primary care services—the lynchpin to improved overall health in the economically disadvantaged population.  These clinics are vital to providing patients with the “medical home” the Obama team often touts, which was the same objective in the Bush administration.

The Obama administration also talks about overall population health, or “wellness,” as if they had invented the concept.  They also crow about how they will harness “prevention” to lower health care costs.  These ideas were well ingrained in the Bush HHS policies.  But the Bush team knew that the government couldn’t wave a magic wand and change behaviors that hold the key to improved health.

Under Bush two new programs came online that offer us a realistic blueprint of how real reform can work and how the government can be a helpful partner in empowering the patient/consumer, better manage cost, and enhance the quality of care.  They are also a strong counterpoint to the Obama approach.

The Medicare Advantage program provided beneficiaries the option of enrolling in a comprehensive insurance plan that would end the patchwork of Medicare Part A, Part B, Part D, and private insurance.  Millions of Medicare recipients spend billions each year to purchase private insurance to cover the gaping holes in government coverage.  Medicare Advantage allowed seniors to get coverage from one private insurer in a managed care construct that better controls costs and delivers better service to the patient.

Medicare paid a higher premium for Advantage plans, which allowed higher payments to providers to encourage participation in the program.  Satisfaction rates for Medicare Advantage are sky high and early indications are that they enhance the coordination of and effectiveness of care for beneficiaries.

Democrats want to gut Medicare Advantage because it features private insurance participation.  The government’s role is to set standards and subsidize coverage and then get out of the way.  Insurers design products to appeal to certain customers and then market them accordingly.  Patients maintain choice and can vote with their feet if they don’t like the quality or service they are provided.

The Bush administration also supported and implemented the Medicare prescription drug program.  While many conservatives thought it was a costly expansion of a government entitlement (and it was), it was at the same time a sensible add on and maintained the role of private insurance and consumer choice.

Again, the government subsidizes the purchase of drug coverage on a sliding scale according to need.  The individual picks an insurance plan according to their wants and needs.  Insurers design plans with customers in mind and are financially rewarded by building a better mousetrap.  The program overall has benefits on the wellness and prevention side.  Since the taxpayer is already on the hook for seniors’ health care, it makes sense to pay for the drugs to manage hypertension rather than waiting for the very costly heart attack or bypass surgery.

The Bush administration also promoted Health Savings Accounts (HSA’s) that allowed individuals to save tax free money to pay for routine health care costs out of pocket while purchasing a low-cost, high-deductible insurance policy for unexpected major health issues.  HSA’s have proven very popular for both employers and beneficiaries.  For families with routine health issues, they make sound economic sense and also encourage patients to look for cost-effectiveness in purchasing primary care.

In comparison to the proposed expansion of government direct involvement and control over health care, Medicare Advantage, Medicare Part D and HSA’s, offer examples of how the government can help individuals according to need, but allow them to maintain their control over their coverage and care.  Because they all represent counter-arguments against to the argument that only a government takeover of health care will work, Democrats hate these programs or want to either eliminate them or make government the dominant player.

The Bush administration was forward looking in its promotion of prevention and wellness programs.  It was a pioneer in harnessing information technology to improve the quality of care.  The Obama administration simply continued the push for these ideas that were well accepted across the ideological spectrum.

What the Bush team, and particularly Secretary Leavitt did that was the direct opposite of the Obama White House, was try to bring the idea of value back into the health care sector.  They knew an empowered and informed consumer would make cost-effective choices for themselves and their families and that the resulting competition and improved quality would lead to more manageable costs and better overall health.

For those political junkies who just assumed when Uncle Ted passed away that his seat would stay firmly in the grasp of the Howard Dean wing of the Democratic Party, take note, and take heart.  State Attorney General Martha Coakley won the Democratic Primary with under 50% of the vote and has taken a cavalier attitude towards what she expected would be her coronation in the general.

Meanwhile, Senator Brown, and Army Reservist and an energetic campaigner, has been waging an insurgent battle that has pulled him to within nine points in the latest Rassmussen poll. According to Rassmussen, Brown’s surge is entirely due to a swing among independent voters, who can make the difference in Massachusetts in spite of the Democrats’ 3 to 1 edge in registration.  Just ask GOP Governors Weld, Romney and Cellucci, who all have won statwide in the past two decades.

Even the New York Times, which would normally ignore any news that does not support its pro-Democrat narrative, has taken notice.  It may be that the Gray Lady is trying to wake up the moribund Coakley campaign before it’s too late, but it is none the less a sign that this race is for real.

The Times also could not help but play its usual games trying to mischaracterize Brown, saying he hammered Coakley “as a ‘crusader’ for abortion rights,” implying that Brown is on the other side of the issue.  Brown is, like almost all the remaining New England Republicans, pro-choice…apparently not pro-choice enough for the Times.  The Times also fired shots at the messenger, joining others on the left to criticize Rassmussen’s methodology.

The fact remains that in normal circumstances, a state-wide elected Democrat with high name identification should be mopping the floor with an unknown state legislator in a state that Barack Obama won 62% of the vote.

The bottom line is that the movement among independent voters is attributable to Brown’s opposition to the Democrats’ health care bill.  In Massachusetts, the state held up by Democrats as the example of how their idea of reform can work, the voters know differently.  They are not pleased with the early results of the state’s health care reform.  While it has brought many uninsured into the world of the covered, it has led to higher premium costs and tightened access for the vast majority of people with private coverage.  This race is their chance to have their say on the Bay State’s experience and whether or not the idea should be taken much, much further in geographic, economic and regulatory terms.

It is also the only opportunity for Americans to have any say what so ever on the pending bill.  Since the White House has weaseled out of its promise of transparency and Congressional leadership is holding the details closer than their ATM pin numbers, Americans can make a statement by helping Scott Brown in this race.  If Brown has the resources to make a competitive media buy in the next two weeks, he could close the gap.  Even if he falls short, the message will be unmistakable and could make other Democrats even more skittish about this albatross of a bill.  Opponents of Obamacare across the country can easily toss a few dollars to Brown via his web site and it is the best way that Americans can actually prevent passage of the bill being crafted behind locked doors at this very moment.

When opponents claim that Obamacare will lead to rationing of medical services, defenders counter with an irrelevant but true retort that care is already rationed by insurance companies.  By this logic, everything is rationed by economics.  Housing is rationed by the availability of capital to invest in housing which is a collective market choice.  Cars are rationed in that you can’t just walk into a dealer and drive off the lot.  So, yes, currently the health care market, mostly in the form of third-party payers (insurers and public programs), rations care in that there are finite resources to pay for treatments and everyone cannot have everything any time they wish.

The reason that argument is irrelevant is that the debate here is about government rationing of care, which represents an entire new level of restrictions on individuals.  When the government sets up panels of “experts” to make recommendations of what kind of care is appropriate under what circumstances and those recommendations are implemented in the form of regulations over what care will and will not be paid for by both private and public insurance, it limits the rights of patients to control their care in consultation with their physicians.  It also destroys the market for those excluded treatments which then become either prohibitively expensive or entirely unavailable.

Under Obamacare, new cost effectiveness panels will join the advisory panels like the Preventive Services Task Force.  Instead of just making clinical recommendations primarily intended to improve the quality of patient care, they will make recommendations intended to also contain the cost of care.  So when the cost effectiveness folks decide that mammograms are only indicated every two years and only for women over 50, that will become the reimbursement policy for Medicare and Medicaid, and the mandate for private insurance that must comport with coverage standards.  Sure, you could pay higher premiums for more coverage or pay out of pocket if your and your doctor think it wise to have annual mammograms at age 40, but wait, we were told Obamacare would save us money and wouldn’t decrease our coverage.

So we have a federal panel of “experts” setting policies for medical treatment.  That will hopefully prevent people from consuming unnecessary care that drives up the total cost of health care.  (Never mind that defensive medicine caused by liability concerns are strictly off the table.)  But we have just seen the knee jerk reaction of Congress and the White House to what is only a non-binding recommendation, where they instantly caved to public opinion and special interests (in the form of radiologists and the American Cancer Society) and disavowed the recommendations and assured American women that they could go right ahead and keep getting all the mammograms they want.

What will Congress do when the cost effectiveness folks decide that expensive colonoscopies should be denied to all but a limited group of patients?  Is it possible that when voters start calling their offices that Congress will step in to protect access to limitless colonoscopies?  Every time Congress or future administrations bow to pressure cost containment becomes more and more impossible.

Health and Human Services Secretary Sibelius made the farcical excuse that the Preventive Services Task Force doesn’t make policy or coverage decisions so all the controversy is a political ploy.  But that is not the point.  The entire purpose of the various new panels created under Obamacare (and already created in the stimulus bill) is precisely to make policy and coverage decisions.  In fact, the Preventive Services Task Force will play just such a role in the new world order.  So if everyone is reacting this way to a mere recommendation, how will they react to an actual policy dictate that meets opposition from some constituencies?  And when they create political pressure and the politicians give in, what happens to cost containment?

Health care professionals who agree with the Task Force recommendations to reduce the use of mammograms recognize this for exactly what it is—politicization of health care.  Under Obamacare, the most effective lobbying efforts will have more impact on the care you can get than the opinion of your physician.

The White House has launched its usual ad hominem attacks against those who have pointed to this instance as a taste of things to come.  They accuse opponents of lying and being disingenuous. They even try to imply some sinister motive to the Task Force by pointing out that its members were appointed by the Bush administration.  Since they have reduced this debate to the level of a playground back-and-forth, the “rubber and glue” principle applies and these charges are beginning to bounce right back on to the administration.

Favorite son Barack Obama has so muddled his administration policy on terror detainees that we are left with an approach that nearly everyone eight years ago agreed was to be avoided.  That is, incarcerating terrorists on American soil.

An issue like this is always bound to elicit histrionics from both sides of the partisan divide—and no one has disappointed.  This new policy won’t lead to mass escapes of terrorists who will roam the heartland bombing at will.  Jihadist camps won’t spring up along the Mississippi River and Al Qaida is not likely to launch an assault on a rural Illinois prison.  But neither is this a simple economic development project that will create jobs and boom times for rural Illinois.  It is not an inconsequential relocation away from the politically charged Gitmo to a morally superior prison that  will win favorable international opinion.

What this is, however, is a poorly thought out proposal, that panders to the far left, and markedly improves the footing of the radical terrorist network dedicated to destroying America.

At its core, this proposal is a poor security decision.  The simple fact is that the American public is safer with hundreds of known terrorists imprisoned on a foreign island surrounded by five thousand Marines and the Caribbean Sea, than it is with those same prisoners housed within our shores.  No matter how unlikely an escape, insurrection or attack on such a prison may be it can never happen to our injury at Guantanamo Bay.

It is also a certainty that the moment these terrorists set foot on the mainland, their ACLU and other leftist legal shills will be assaulting the courts with litigation intended to win them rights, privileges and, eventually, freedom, based on sacred rights guaranteed to American citizens who are accused of a crime.  Just as placing terrorists on trial in New York will undermine the (apparently abandoned) war on terror, the litigation that will result from domestic incarceration of terror suspects will force the disclosure of intelligence and could win prisoners privileges that further undermine our safety.

It is also laughable that Democrats like Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois seem to morally equate this proposal with building a new General Motors plant in a small Illinois town.  His position ignores the pathetic state of his state’s finances (created by his own party’s criminal mismanagement) that makes renting rooms to mass murderers a sound revenue enhancement strategy.  Durbin is also playing the pliant locals for fools in implying that they will benefit from great new jobs as a result.

If the Department of Defense, which is slated to run this mainland terrorist prison, does anything other than bringing in a crack unit of highly trained troops to run and guard this facility, they will be guilty of dereliction of duty.  The local folks, fine as they are, will not be staffing this prison.  The troops will spend some money in the local economy.  But this won’t be Fort Bragg or Newport News.  They won’t buy houses and cars.  It will be a temporary billet and (something the locals ought to remember) it will eventually go away.

There are sound legal reasons why we don’t want terror suspects brought to our soil.  It provides them with the ability to lay claim to rights they currently cannot.  Those rights may be granted by the right judge (read: Clinton or Obama appointee).  More liberty for terror suspects, even while behind bars, razor wire, electric fences and a moat with sea monsters, is less security for everyone else.  Add to this even the very remote chance of escape or attack and that is enough to recommend against this idea.

In this case, the incompetence of the administration in not developing a cogent and safe policy for bringing these terrorists to justice, coupled with the fiscal morass Democrats have created in Illinois that makes this financially attractive, should steel the resolve of residents of the Land of Lincoln to defend their sovereign state against this unwarranted and unwise encroachment by the federal government.

The State of Illinois dutifully began doling out this newfound largess to boost funding for low income schools under the Title 1 program, and to fund special education under the IDEA Part A program.  One can see the rationalization to increase funding for schools in poor areas in a recession, but it’s a bit of a stretch to see how the economic downturn has increased demand for special education.  But, again, that is not the subject of this piece.

As the Obama Administration has ramped up its efforts to portray the stimulus as an unqualified success that has rescued us from certain doom, they have resorted to the kinds of shoddy claims that smack of political desperation.

Reports by the Associated Press, the Wall Street Journal and others questioned the veracity of the administration’s claim that 650,000 jobs were created or saved thus far by the stimulus.  The response from the White House stimulus czar, Ed DeSeve, was to essentially admit that the numbers they were shouting from the rooftops were inaccurate.  But DeSeve noted that the stimulus was enacted, “to create jobs, not count them.”  Nor, one might remind his czarness, was it enacted so that the administration could just make up job numbers from thin air.

One of the more telling media reports on the stimulus appeared in the Chicago Tribune which studied the administration’s claim that stimulus spending saved or created over 14,000 education jobs in Illinois.   They were able to do a more precise analysis since school districts were instructed to report exactly how many jobs were preserved by new federal funding and how many new positions were funded by the stimulus and the results were compiled by the always trustworthy Illinois state government.

The results, in some instances, were nothing short of astounding—defying the very laws of mathematics and economics.  One school district that employs a total of 290 teachers was listed as saving 473 teaching jobs thanks to the Obama administration, all for only $4.7 million tax dollars.  Another district saved 665 jobs with stimulus money, even though a district official told the Tribune that their entire headcount is only 600 workers.  And in a feat that Doug Henning would appreciate the state reported that the Wilmette Public Schools saved 166 jobs while the district superintendent told the Tribune that “the number should be zero.”

The Tribune does report that the Chicago Public Schools did not submit any stimulus job claims to the State Board of Education, which admittedly could represent a large number of potential layoffs prevented by the $293 million the city received from the stimulus.  But this also indicates the overall unreliability of the numbers that the State of Illinois compiled and, thus, the dubious nature of the administration’s overall claims.

The White House asked the administration of Governor Pat Quinn to compile these numbers for the feds.  Quinn’s people gave the task to the State Board of Education.  Along the way, it would appear that one of two things happened.

It could be that in dealing with an unprecedented task the attempts made by the state to capture this data went horribly awry, resulting in completely unreliable numbers that must be summarily dismissed.  In which case the state should seek independent auditors to develop a methodology to calculate more accurate data and it should be scrupulously reviewed and verified prior to its being released.

On the other hand, the political operatives who run the White House may just be engaged in wanton misrepresentation and will conspire with their allies to put forth any number they feel like to try to justify what increasingly appears to be a failed stimulus package.  They are asking states, most of which are politically aligned with them, to produce numbers justifying the expenditure of billions.  The states, as well as all the other stimulus recipients, have skin in this game too.  This possibility is all too plausible given the track record of the players involved and it makes it all the more important that the people demand a thorough examination by independent reviewers of the way these numbers were calculated and how the entire effort was directed.

Either way, incompetence or malfeasance, the administration has put forth fictitious data to try and gain political advantage and this White House has further eroded the trust it asked for from the American people.  Another example of the change we were all hoping for.

It is blatantly absurd to award the Nobel Peace Prize to a nine-month president with absolutely no foreign policy achievement of note.  Especially when there are so many other fields where the Academy could justify lavishing glory, (and money–one wonders what POTUS will do with the cash?) on their secular savior. 

 President Obama has written two highly acclaimed (by the left) books.  Dreams from My Father is his accounting of his unique life story and his journey to understand his roots and his father’s abandonment of him and his mother.  It was called, “the best-written memoir ever produced by an American politician,” by fawning sychophant Joe Klein.

 His second book, The Audacity of Hope (the first campaign flier published by Crown) was his soaring vision of a nation and world guided by the kind of social justice that only a community organizer can envision.  No less a literary critic than Gary Hart called Obama a, “figure who possesses perseverance and writing skills that have flashes of grandeur.”  The book occupied the New York Times Bestseller List for thirty weeks and won a Grammy to boot.

Almost any writer would kill to have sold as many volumes and have his or her books become so influential.  Surely the Nobel Prize for literature would have been much more justifiable.

Come to think of it, one could justify almost any other Nobel Prize for Obama other than the Peace Prize.  As has been exhaustively noted by questioners around the globe, the prizes are awareded for acheivement, not for good intentions, not for speeches or sound bites or just not being the guy you replaced.  It could be rationalized if Obama had spent decades striving for peace and had kept coming up short, to give him the prize for persistency.  Kind of like the Irving Thalberg Award for sticking around long enough.  In other words, Jimmy Carter’s Nobel Prize.

How about the prize for medicine?  Come up with some new discovery of how this gene or this virus works and help some people live a better life?  Pfooey!  Completely restructure the way 300 million people get treatment, invade people’s lives to an unprecedented level, decide what care is government-sanctioned and what isn’t, and in the process undermine the best care in the world, and you can really lay claim to having an impact on medicine.  Even without a bill passed yet, there is something there to hang your hat on.

But without a doubt, the prize to which Obama can most reasonably lay claim is that for economics, awarded by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.  His nearly one-trillion dollar stimulus package has been a major achievement in the field.  It has been the most high-profile repudiation of Keynesian theory ever launched.  Of course, that wasn’t Obama’s intent, but so many scientific breakthroughs have come about while academics were trying to determine something else entirely.   The president conducted one of the highest-cost economics experiments in history, (with taxpayer money) to see if J. M. Keynes theory that massive government spending could essentially end economic recessions. 

The answer is, of course, no.  In an era where economic cycles, like all others are compressed, the consensus is that the stimulus has fallen far short of its desired impact.  Even if we grant that Congressional Democrats hijacked the initiative to pay off organized labor, environmentalists, and special-interest advocates of pet social projects, the package has not delivered.  Unemployment continues to creep upward, no matter how much dissembling the administration undertakes about “jobs saved,” and how many more would be out of work without the stimulus.

In a few short months, Professor Obama has achieved what many economists spend a life time trying.  He has provided concrete evidence to support an economic theory.  Fortunately for the future of the republic and the solvency of generations to come, the theory he has helped prove is that Keynes’ theory is garbage.  Government cannot borrow and spend its way to prosperity.   Obama’s experiment shows that government is an inefficient agent for redistribution of resources.  Its efforts are subject to political whims, its actions are slow and entail unforeseen costs and consequences that diminish, rather than increase positive economic activity. 

Now that is an achievement worthy of a Nobel Prize.  Come to think of it, a few more years of this and Obama will be a lock for the Milton Friedman Prize for Advancing Liberty.