Fancy Store-Bought Dirt

How Frequently Has George W. Bush Been Right, as President?

"But the record's clear: John McCain has voted with George Bush ninety percent of the time. Senator McCain likes to talk about judgment, but really, what does it say about your judgment when you think George Bush has been right more than ninety percent of the time?"
--Barack Obama's acceptance speech, as prepared

Granting that I'm an economic libertarian and a defense/foreign policy hawk, I say "90%" is a pretty darned good estimate of how frequently George W. Bush has been right. Certainly not much more than that (if any) but not much less either.

You may respectfully disagree, but to dismiss that estimate as "take a ten percent chance on change" is to be an idiot, a demagogue, or both.

More thoughts on [the prepared text of] Obama's speech after the fold; maybe he had a damn good delivery of it, but on paper, with all the hard-left economic rhetoric, he's not even trying to win over someone like me, and he's certainly not a centrist reformer.

"We measure progress in the 23 million new jobs that were created when Bill Clinton was President" -- and by golly, Obama will see to it that while he's in office the next version of the dot-com bubble happens.

"[B]usinesses should live up to their responsibilities to create American jobs, look out for American workers, and play by the rules of the road." Why did people give Obama so much undeserved crap for calling himself a citizen of the world, yet so little for pandering to native jingoism above economic sense?

"Our government should work for us, not against us. It should help us, not hurt us." True at face value, yet I'm absolutely reminded of Ronald Reagan's line about some of the most terrifying words in the English language, "I'm from the government and I'm here to help."

"That's the promise of America - [...] the fundamental belief that I am my brother's keeper; I am my sister's keeper." That's almost an Orwellian about-face, like claiming that the promise of the Soviet Union was the right to pursue individual happiness.

"And now is the time to keep the promise of equal pay for an equal day's work, because I want my daughters to have exactly the same opportunities as your sons." The sort of red tape required to enforce this as a rule of law is exactly the sort of thing no government has any business taking part in.

Posted by Matt Bruce at August 28, 2008 11:32 PM