Reflecting on Predictions from a Year Ago

Below is a "letter to the editor" that I wrote on October 5, 2008. When it was written I wondered if it was perhaps a bit too pessimistic. Alas, it now appears that things are even worse than contemplated in this letter from a year ago. Take a look and let me know what you think.

Letter to the Editor from October 5, 2008:

“Hope” – untethered from logic and principle - can’t change the world, or our country, for the better. Promises of “change” are meaningless without a clear plan of action. Unfortunately, Barack Obama – without demonstrable logic or principle - seems to have gained considerable political momentum without any clear plan of action to actually create the “change” he seeks and which he has yet to clearly define.

Senator Obama appears to be an empty political vessel, into which can be poured the very worst of liberal doctrine and orthodoxy from the most leftist of ideologues, and from which may flow the class and identity warfare, income redistribution and suppression of alternative thinking that have proven disastrous multiple times throughout history.

Senator Obama has no record of being able to create or lead any substantive change. He’s a great orator, no doubt, but a man who voted “present” 130 times as a state senator clearly has no track record of making tough decisions in crunch time. Neither he, nor his supporters, can clearly articulate any reason Americans should consider voting for him. All they can talk about is what they are against, which is apparently George Bush, a man who is not even running for office. One has to wonder what the liberal democrats will do when they don’t have George Bush to hate, since they are seemingly more driven by hate for him than love for our country.

If Obama is elected, we will have turned our country over to the most liberal senator on record. A man who has taken more money from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac over the last 3 years than anyone, and has the failed CEOs of those organizations advising him on economics, of all things, yet blames George Bush and John McCain for their failure. And he will be assisted in implementing his socialist vision by Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, a team that has led the most partisan and least productive congress in history. Obama, Reid and Pelosi running the country – so much for checks and balances.

We can avoid this fate, but only if the American public votes on the basis of logic and principle, and not on emotional reaction to empty political platitudes and clichés.