Pandora's Box

It's been well over a month since my last post—the press of work required to nurture and grow a small business gets in the way of posting. But domestic and international news continues to astound.

For those of us who believed in 2008 that Barack Obama was uniquely unqualified to be President of the United States, the last month has been an "I told you so" period. Over the past month, a number of true Watergate-level scandals have exploded onto the national scene, and each in its own way is an indictment of Barack Obama's hyper-partisan approach to politics, his divisive rhetoric, his incompetent leadership on the domestic front (e.g., "I learned about the IRS scandal from the media"), his administration's stonewalling on important events, and his incoherent foreign policy. In little over a month, we've had a continuation of Benghazi, the ominous IRS scandal, the DoJ scandals which featured unprecedented, dishonest, and partisan investigations of the media, the little-mentioned FDA scandal in which favored groups received gentle treatment and politically-incorrect groups got ravaged by an out-of-control bureaucracy, and, of course, the blossoming NSA scandal in which broad-based data collection is occurring without proper boundaries and controls. And now, a hesitant and ill-planned approach to Syria (a policy blunder but no scandal) that is neither appropriate nor wise.

What is truly ironic is that Barack Obama and his shrinking band of staunch defenders, all avid proponents of big government, have shaken the public's trust of big government in significant ways. Those of us who worry that big government does far more harm than good, wastes far more that it contributes, and constitutes a increasing threat of tyranny via bureaucracy have been validated by the missteps of big government itself.

As these myriad scandals play out, I would hope that things might change, that controls might be implemented, that the federal government might shrink. But none of that will happen. Past presidents, such as Richard Nixon, cracked open Pandora's box, and were severely punished for lying to the American public, misusing the Federal government, and arrogantly stonewalling when investigation into their behaviors were initiated. With his Chicago-style political worldview, Barack Obama has torn the lid off of Pandora's Box. The big question is whether he will be punished. The bigger question is whether a government that is far too big and too intrusive can be reigned in. I suspect the answers to both questions are No and No. Sad.