Why does Obama do the things he does?

Victor Davis Hanson on Barack Obama:

For Obama the great tragedy of a Solyndra was not the corruption of old-style fast-buck artists masking their greed through insider green lobbying with members of his administration, but rather that such scandals (along with Climategate and the implosion of Al Gore) have sidetracked the entire green philosophy that mandated more government unionized employees, government technocrats, and government tax collectors to reorder society itself.

The result of all this is a sort of unending but rarely expressed war. The business man does not know what his taxes are, only that they should go up, given his privilege. He is judged not by the good that he does but by the excessive money he makes. The corporation does not know what the rules of the game are, whether his energy is too polluting, his workers not unionized enough, or his product not regulated enough. None believe Obamacare, as promised, will reduce costs. None believe that government borrowing and massive new entitlements are reducing unemployment and raising GDP. None believe that wealth can be created by record deficits and aggregate debt. None believe that printing ever more money will not lead to inflation.

What we have, then, is a war on two ends: the better off are hesitant to work more, given their fears that additional profits will either be more difficult to come by or not remain their own; the poor are hesitant to work more, given their expectations that entitlements will be extended and will be easier to come by. They both expect more government and they both as a result are not so eager to take risks and seek greater income in the private sector.

The result of Obama’s war is the current three-year slowdown. Obama in response counts on two strategies to nevertheless be reelected: either at some point the private sector will conclude that it is not going to get any better, and thus it is preferable to shrug, take its medicine, and get back to work, and so the economy picks up a little in 2012; or, to the degree that Obama can blame the lengthy pause solely on the minority of the undeserving rich, he believes that an angry and fearful bare majority may agree.

The question is truly begged: If we stipulate that the effective destruction of America's economy is not an actual objective of a president whose political orientation is the most radically leftist of any figure to occupy the office (or most any office in Washington, for that matter), then: what would he be doing differently if that really was his objective? He would be doing hardly anything differently.

This administration is not so baffling perhaps, when viewed through this lens:



Bill Whittle explains in detail: