I have to disagree with one small thing about Ezra’s otherwise excellent post—-I think Obama’s speech last night was incredibly inspiring. Since Reagan especially, Americans have been conditioned to think “inspiring” looks like empty but well-spoken platitudes, but history actually shows that the greatest speeches are the ones made during hard times, to buck people up for the fight ahead. Sure, the media will try to handicap Obama by comparing him to Reagan and suggesting that he would have been better to just lie to people about the state of the economy, because that’s more “inspiring”, but I prefer the Churchill method of going straight for the “We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender, etc.” method of speaking during hard times. And that’s what Obama did. Marc described it as a half time speech when you’re 21 points down, and while I usually blanch at sports metaphors, I thought that one was apt.
Pop quiz: Who said what?
In other words, we have lived through an era where too often, short-term gains were prized over long-term prosperity; where we failed to look beyond the next payment, the next quarter, or the next election. A surplus became an excuse to transfer wealth to the wealthy instead of an opportunity to invest in our future. Regulations were gutted for the sake of a quick profit at the expense of a healthy market.
Faced by failure of credit they have proposed only the lending of more money. Stripped of the lure of profit by which to induce our people to follow their false leadership, they have resorted to exhortations, pleading tearfully for restored confidence. They know only the rules of a generation of self-seekers. They have no vision, and when there is no vision the people perish.