A Failure to Communicate

With the exception of people like past party Democratic chairman, Howard Dean, who is whistling in the cemetery, Left-leaning commentators cannot help but admit to the coming election tsunami that is about the inundate Democratic candidates for the House and the Senate. But undaunted, they’ve begun to spin a narrative that has been magnified by much of the MSM—Barack Obama’s programs and “accomplishments,” as terrific as they are, have fallen flat because the public simply doesn’t understand them. It’s really all a failure to communicate, nothing more.

If only the President was better able to explain the benefits of big-government job creation, we’d all applaud the $700 billion stimulus and see how well it has succeeded. If only the President was more forceful in his defense of higher taxes on the “rich,” we’d all recognize that these tax increases will dramatically increase government revenues and reduce the debt, while moving us quickly toward social justice.

But somehow, the great communicator has failed, or maybe it’s just that those of us who question his judgement simply don’t get it—we’re not sophisticated enough to appreciate the subtleties of the Obama doctrine. Then again, maybe not.

Linda Chavez suggests that communication has very little to do with the coming tsunami:

In his first year in office, the president gave 411 speeches, sat for 158 press interviews, conducted 42 news conferences, and visited 30 states, according to a compilation by CBS News.

Failing to communicate was not the issue.

The president's problem is that he has neither experience in, nor understanding of, the private economy. He has worked exclusively in the nonprofit and government sector.

He has an unlimited faith in government and limited trust in private industry. And the president surrounds himself with people who share his myopia.

When the president visited plants from Buffalo to San Francisco on his much-touted jobs tours during the spring and summer, he was there to tell workers that government saved or created their jobs.

But that is not how it's done. Job creation happens when individuals take personal risks: A man notices that all his friends and neighbors have garages stuffed with junk they don't want and starts a new business with $700 in startup capital and an old beat-up truck. A few years later, Brian Scudamore's 1-800-GOT-JUNK has 100 franchises across the country.

Chavez goes on to relate the stories of other successful entrepreneurs, each taking personal financial risk to create wealth, but far more importantly, to create jobs—lots of jobs.

In the President’s worldview, government is the center of the job creation universe. “Corporations” are somehow suspect and rapacious. The Chamber of Commerce (a national business organization) is an evil political force. And all work against social justice, Obama’s apparent raison de etre.

Again from Chavez:

But government can never be as efficient as the market. Scudamore, Fields, and Dell [three successful entrepreneurs] might just as well have failed as succeeded.

When entrepreneurs fail, they've lost their own money and that of investors who have freely chosen to take the risk.

Government programs, however, play with other people's money -- since government has no money of its own. When government programs fail, the consequences aren't born by the people making the decisions but by the taxpayers.

Maybe that’s part of the problem. Maybe politicians should put their own money—their personal fortunes—behind the programs they advocate. If they succeed, we’ll double their fortune, but if the programs fail, they’ve bet our money (often, without our approval) and lost it. It might be appropriate to have them lose all of theirs.

Yeah, I know, that isn’t really possible, but it’s a nice thought, nonetheless.