Obama’s Grand Plans Will Reverse Reagan’s Legacy of Liberty

Type_webhead_here Barack Obama is an honest man. He promised change that would shake the heavens. The American voters endorsed his vision and handed him a resounding mandate to go forth and shatter the many weak institutions of mere mortals. And he intends to deliver.

Who would have guessed -- even a year ago -- that mortgage brokers passing out easy money, that families moving into four-bedroom homes years before they dreamed, that Wall Street CEOs admiring stout profits and soaring bonuses, that Republicans pushing the American dream deeper into the populace were in fact creating a great storm that would allow one man the power to create an entirely new economy -- an economy directed not by the emotional and unreliable masses but by a highly educated, coolly calculating, visionary elite elected by their fellow citizens to fix this mess.

The Founding Fathers feared the unruly mob. Our Republic's checks and balances were designed not only to ensure government for the people but also to protect against the foolish passions of the people. In this respect, at least, Obama is more republican than democrat.

He has declared -- unambiguously -- that the era of Ronald Reagan has ended, even as he admires Reagan's legacy as a transformational president.

But where Reagan placed deep faith in the unbridled wisdom of free people governed primarily by limited and time-tested boundaries, Obama seeks to invent new pathways paved by enlightened and compassionate rulers. He no doubt intends to lead the people to a new and improved promised land through the power of his ideas and his example. But he seems to admit little reluctance to use the accumulated authority of the state to compel appropriate behavior when mere leadership will not suffice.

His ambition is both personal and public.

Obama is in all ways -- except in his emotional bond with so much of America -- the polar opposite of Reagan. It is not surprising that Reagan's appeal has endured, has actually grown, since he entered the White House a little more than 28 years ago. He was the great apostle of America's central virtue -- its love of liberty. He carried that message around the world -- and built a pragmatic program for applying its healing properties to an ailing economy. The result was a quarter-century of progress and prosperity.

Obama, too, has risen because the people see him as an embodiment of one of the nation's core values -- the thirst for justice and fairness. He was elected in a year in which many of his fellow citizens had lost faith in the ability of the country's institutions -- primarily its financial system -- to protect the fruits of their hard-earned work and honesty. He pledged -- more or less openly -- to use government to restore faith and promote the interests of everyday Americans.

So now he begins. And he does so with much support -- among the public and in Congress. The president has, as I wrote not long after his election, earned the chance to govern based on the philosophy he revealed during the campaign. Those of us concerned about the direction of his policies must concede as well that he was elected not only because the voters embraced his political positions. They also endorsed his judgment.

In the past two weeks, Obama's plans have become more clear, his favored methods more concrete. The scope of his ambitions takes away your breath, whether from hope or fear or both.

He intends to reinvent the way Americans receive and pay for health care -- and the way doctors and hospitals provide it. Ultimately, government will dictate all the important decisions.

He expects to change the way the country generates and consumes energy. Washington will direct the flow.

He wants to create a new model to govern our financial system, beginning with the assumption that today's troubles are primarily a result of too little federal regulation.

He will decide what kind of cars we drive.

The era of big government is back. Washington is preparing to boldly go where no American government has gone before.

In the wake of a crisis in our banking system and credit markets, the new president is ready to change everything. The government will guide our lives, command our economy, and claim our assets. The rich will pay the taxes at the beginning. The rest of us who work will soon follow, simply because there are not enough rich to finance such immodest objectives.

Change is coming and we are not its architects. We the people will instead be its supine beneficiaries -- or its victims.

For freedom lovers who remember the foundation of Ronald Reagan's revolution -- the moderating, empowering influence of expanded individual liberty -- it is time to rejuvenate a loyal opposition that will offer principled objections and alternatives to the grand plans of our new president.

If this financial crisis has taught us anything, it is to beware of the best and brightest who know all the answers.

Contact Bob Rayner at (804) 649-6073 or .