The Hope Hype

After hearing President Obama speak so eloquently about hope, I listened to the inaugural address wondering who had absconded with his hope.  I then took a glance at his op/ed piece yesterday in the Washington Post and found the President of “hope and change” beating the same “doom and gloom” drum that Democrats have used for years.  The phrase from the op/ed piece was that without this stimulus bill, the American economy might be irrecovably damaged; meaning that without this particular stimulus bill and this particular effort by the federal government, America will fall a part.

This kind of rhetoric annoys me.  It is not the federal government that has made America an exceptional nation.  It is the blood and sweat of hardworking, dedicated, honest Americans that have made this an exceptional nation.  Our rescue from the jaws of economic disaster will have little to do with President Obama, our elected officials and the trillions of dollars worth of useless bills they seem more than ready to print at the drop of a hat. 

Rescue from the jaws of the so-called impending economic disaster will come from the hearts and hands of the everyday bread makers and bread winners who will double down and roll with the financial punches so that the American (and subsequently the global) economy will again flourish.

President Obama would do well to encourage us to double down, roll with the punches and do what Americans have always done:  slap some old-fashioned Yankee ingenuity and elbow grease to the problems that ail our national economy.  

Instead, the new President has successfully convinced us that we are a weak and misguided people who have no real capacity to make it through times like these.   He continues to convince us - if not by his words, by the substance of his policies, that the federal government, and an increase of its powers and influence, are the only things that can pull the weak, poor, misguided American masses into a new age of enlightenment.