Obama's poor judgment

George Will:

THE fact that Barack Obama lost nine of the final 14 primaries might have something to do with the fact that, when he descends from the ether to practicalities, he reprises liberalism's most shopworn nostrums.

Russia, a third-world nation with first-world missiles, is rampant; Iran is developing a missile inventory capable of delivering nuclear weapons, the development of which won't be halted by Obama's promised "aggressive personal diplomacy." Yet Obama has vowed to "cut investments in unproven missile-defense systems."

Steamboats, railroads, airplanes and vaccines were "unproven" until farsighted people made investments. Furthermore, as Reuel Marc Gerecht of the American Enterprise Institute notes, Democrats will eventually embrace missile defense in Europe because they "will have nowhere else to go short of pre-emptive strikes against Iran's nuclear facilities."

Obama, who might be the last person to learn that schools' cognitive outputs aren't simply functions of financial inputs, promises more money for teachers (who, as usual, are about 10 percent of the Democrats' convention delegates and alternates). He waxes indignant about approximately 150,000 jobs sent overseas each year - less than 1 percent of the number of jobs normally lost and gained in the creative destruction of America's dynamic economy.

US exports are fending off a recession while he complains about free trade. He deplores NAFTA, although since it was implemented in 1994 the US, Mexican and Canadian economies have grown 50 percent, 46 percent and 54 percent, respectively.

Recycling George McGovern's 1972 "Demogrant" notion, Obama promises a $1,000 check for every family, financed by a "windfall profits" tax on oil companies. He is unintimidated by the rule against legislating about subjects one can't define.

Obama thinks government is not getting a "reasonable share" of oil companies' profits, which in 2007 were, as a percentage of revenues (8.3 percent), below those of US manufacturing generally (8.9 percent). Exxon Mobil pays almost as much in corporate taxes to various governments as the bottom 50 percent of American earners pay in income taxes. Exxon Mobil does make $1,400 a second in profits - hear the sharp intakes of breath from liberals with pursed lips - but pays $4,000 a second in taxes and $15,000 a second in operating costs.

Obama's rhetorical extravagances are inversely proportional to his details, as when he promises "nothing less than a complete transformation of our economy" in order to "end the age of oil." The diminished enthusiasm of some voters hitherto receptive to his appeals might have something to do with the seepage of reality from his rhetoric.

...

You have to be a liberal to be that wrong on so many subjects that confront a President. One of the real ironies is that Obama claims missile defense is unproven when it is not, but he is willing to go all in on unproven technology to replace our energy supply. That is a guy who is out of touch with reality.