A Good Crisis is a Terrible Thing to Waste

Before Obama was even sworn into office, his Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel, made a statement that should go down in the annals as one of the most nakedly cynical statements ever made by a politician. “Rule 1: Never allow a crisis to go to waste,” he told the New York Times. “They are opportunities to do big things.” Little did we know at the time that this would become the new administration's motto.

Not only did the Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, repeat this "rule 1," but the president himself repeated it in his Saturday radio and Internet address: "there is great opportunity in the midst of the great crisis” befalling America.

It is incredible enough that the "mainstream press" hasn't made much of this malevolent "Rule 1" and is further proof that the supposed "4th branch of government" is in the tank for Obama, but I don't want to address that here. Instead I'd like to analyze the administration's actions in light of this "rule".

First Obama leveraged the crisis to prophesy gloom and doom ("impending disaster" he called it) if his "stimulus" ("porkulus" more like it) wasn't promptly passed. Then the "porkulus" bill was jam-packed with things that had absolutely nothing to do with the causes of the crisis (Does anyone think that the lack of health care caused the economy to tank? Anyone? Anyone?). Obama not only leveraged the crisis but tried to stoke fears ever higher so that no one would notice that he had forced his socialist agenda onto the country without one word of debate.

Fresh off his success in ramming through his "porkulus" bill, Obama was asked by the press for details on his plans for the bank bailout plan. He dodged the question, promising that his Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner would unveil the plan when he testified before Congress. During his testimony, however, Geithner spoke only in vague generalities and gave no details about what the administration planned to do to shore up the struggling banks. The market promptly dropped like a lead balloon.

At the time, most thought that this was just a rookie mistake by what I like to call "our affirmative action president," but as the days have gone by, I'm not so sure. I think it was planned to extend the crisis as long as possible. The longer the crisis, the longer the administration could foist its leftist program on a public that was too frightened to object.

This conclusion is reinforced by other Obama actions. Every time that someone from the administration spoke publicly about the economy, the stock market plunged. Then the president told the press, "The stock market is sort of like a tracking poll in politics. ... if you spend all your time worrying about that, then you're probably going to get the long-term strategy wrong." Unfortunately for the president, investors knew that the market hadn't been bobbing up and down as he contended, but had steadily declined since his inauguration. The statement was also taken as a sign that the administration totally ignored the market which sent it tumbling further.

Since Obama's inauguration, this country has lost over $1.6 Trillion in wealth in the market and we have lost over 600K jobs. Obama's statements have been so negative during that time that even former president Clinton had to chide him on his constant negativity. Beside the negative statements, Obama refuses to focus on the economy, instead proposing some new initiative that is totally unrelated to the causes of the economic crisis. Thus we have a "health care summit" followed by an "education summit" etc. This combination of negativity and complete neglect, is an effective one-two punch that has succeeded in keeping the economy on the canvas.

FDR said, "all we have to fear is fear itself." But for Obama, the saying should instead be, "all we have to fear is the fear that the crisis will pass too quickly." His actions and statements seem directed towards prolonging this economic malaise while the Democrats in Congress are working on furthering the country in its left-ward slide. While the president is trying to "remake" this country in his leftist image, real Americans are suffering as markets plummet and unemployment skyrockets. That makes the actions of this administration not only cynical, but evil.