Obama Begins to Turn

The beginning of the Obama Administration smelled good. Despite the president's hard-left credentials, he avoided pushing a strongly socialist agenda. His early flaws were forgivable rookie fumbles (an iPod for the Queen?) and spreading the already pandemic bailout flu.

Slowly, the administration is turning, like raw pork left on a picnic table. The slow stench of rich big-government interest groups twisting administration policy is wafting: D.C.'s successful voucher program getting the axe, anti-consumer labor policy being pushed through, and deficits growing to record proportions.

George F. Will, the very apotheosis of a traditional moderate, smells it too. He lowers the boom on the Obama administration in an editorial today.

The Obama administration's agenda of maximizing dependency involves political favoritism cloaked in the raiment of "economic planning" and "social justice" that somehow produce results superior to what markets produce when freedom allows merit to manifest itself, and incompetence to fail. The administration's central activity -- the political allocation of wealth and opportunity -- is not merely susceptible to corruption, it is corruption.

Of the last several presidents GW Bush, Clinton, GHW Bush, Carter, Nixon, Johnson, Kennedy and now Obama have furthered the control of the 'Federal' government over the states. Is local control and accountability doomed in America? What the Bush people never understood is that the content of Federal policy is a secondary issue to the extent of Federal control. Will the Republican Party find another leader who can articulate an agenda for responsible, limited, truly federal government?