First Principles

There are three different things that can happen in the next four years that will make me happy as an American.  I hope for them in this order:

1.  McCain wins – and succeeds.

Well, duh.

The second part of that is key, though.  When Republicans try to be liberals, such as George Bush did with his inability to rein in spending in any meaningful way, they fail because liberalism will always fail when tried.  And McCain has liberal tendencies.  See e.g. Bailout; Amnesty; McCain-Feingold.

When liberal policies fail under a Republican President, we are told that Conservatism has failed, that it’s the end of the Reagan Revolution, etc.  What’s so horrible about that is that then we are told we need an “alternative,” which winds up being policies that are even more liberal than the ones that failed, which wind up being even worse.  That’s what happened during the Carter years, and what happened during the first two years of the Clinton Presidency, before the Republicans swept into Congress with conservativism to save his administration’s legacy.

It’s also what has happened in the last two years.  Bush’s spending and inattention to what the Dems were doing with regard to Fannie and Freddie caught up with him.  But things only got worse with Democratic majorities in the Congress, as the spending rose and economic bills coming out of Congress became more liberal.

Conservatism works when it’s allowed to work.  Just because a politician has an “R” behind his name is unfortunately no guarantee.

2.  Obama wins – and succeeds.

I sincerely hope that I’m wrong.  I hope that Obama will be a great president who brings economic prosperity, greater personal freedom, and greater security at home and abroad.

I hope, despite his abysmal record on guns, that he will protect my right to own one.

I hope, despite never before having proposed or voted for a tax cut, he cuts my taxes.

I hope his soaring oratory will awaken the world’s monsters to our shared humanity, instead of merely signaling that talk is all the new President can muster.

I hope unemployment goes down, the Dow goes up, and American businesses can grow and expand.

I hope he doesn’t arrest people who disagree with him, or attempts to reimplement the “Fairness Doctrine.”

I hope that he keeps his promise to match every dollar in new spending with a cut in existing spending, and that when (not if) Democrats in Congress attempt to add additional spending, that he vetoes that pork.

I hope he doesn’t surrender Iraq to al Qaeda.

I hope he governs as the centrist and moderate unifier he has campaigned as, as opposed to the radical socialist he has actually been his entire life.

3.  Obama wins – and fails spectacularly.

This is the, “It takes a Carter to get a Reagan,” argument.  I don’t like it.  I don’t want to see my country or its President fail.  We all lose that way, and at this point in history there we don’t have the margin of error to recover.

But if Obama wins and fails marginally – that is, we limp along economically with stagnant growth and narrowly avert crises abroad – the continued liberal “solutions” to each problem will sink the ship of state almost imperceptibly.  The press that’s covered for Candidate Obama will not stop their dishonesty for President Obama, blinding us to the growing problems.  By the time the real problems are perceived by enough people to matter, it will be hard to fix them and to clear out the entrenched liberal government “solutions.”  By then, America may well have lost what makes us exceptional, and we will become just another European nanny state – a country on the decline (just as Western Europe is on the decline), with the only difference being more money in the bank to let us limp along for awhile.

If Obama and his liberal Democrats who will be in charge must fail, then I hope they fail quickly and spectacularly.  That way, not even the in-the-tank press can hide the truth of it from the American people, and we will be able to correct ourselves at the very next opportunity – the 2010 midterm elections.

I only pray that the failure, if it must come to that, results in the loss of as little life as possible.  Bad presidential decision making – or the inability to make them – can be a very bloody thing.

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There it is.  In that order.

Here’s hoping.