Obama: Egypt’s Hostage
by Dick Morris and Eileen McGann

President Obama better hope that the crowds clamoring for an overthrow of the Hosni Mubarak regime really do achieve a functioning liberal democracy rather than an Iranian-style theocracy. His re-election hopes may be doomed if Iran takes over.

Just as Richard Nixon helped to discredit Harry Truman and defeat Democratic presidential nominee Adlai Stevenson in 1952 by trumpeting the question, “Who lost China?” Obama may well have to explain how and why he lost Egypt. If he permits Egypt to slip through our fingers and go over to the Iranian sphere of influence, he will pay for it politically in 2012. Imagine if this president, whose domestic policy initiatives are coming apart at the seams, loses office over a foreign policy blunder.

The Muslim Brotherhood is allied closely with Hamas. To the extent that it masquerades as a peaceful body, it is a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Any coalition with the Brotherhood is as likely to remain secular as Adolf Hitler’s early coalition with Paul von Hindenburg in Germany was likely to stay non-Nazi. The Muslim Brotherhood will take over if it gets its foot in the door.

By failing to back Mubarak, Obama is committing the same sin that Dwight Eisenhower did in Cuba and Jimmy Carter did in Iran. He needs to understand that the radical Islamists mean us ill and that any effort to appease them is bound to fail.

If Egypt falls, Obama will have permanently damaged America’s vital interests. Look at what Carter’s abandonment of the Shah has cost the world and is likely to cost it in the future. We now face the possibility that a radicalized Egypt could be Obama’s gift to the globe.

Until now, Americans have regarded Obama’s flirtation with the Arab street with a mild concern that he may be too naive in his understanding of that part of the world. But his policy of appeasement toward radical Islam has yet to have any bad consequence. We have had some terror attacks, to be sure, but none have risen to the level of a cataclysm. But losing Egypt to the grip of Islamic fundamentalism would be a huge blow to the United States, to Israel and to the entire Western world.

It would literally open the door to a theocratic Iranian-style empire stretching from Morocco to Iran. Inspired by an Islamic takeover in Egypt, he may find himself confronted with a Middle Eastern version of the old domino theory, where one nation after another falls to Islamism, with each new theocratic conquest destabilizing its neighbor.

Remember that Iran has a population of 79 million and Egypt has 75 million. Together, their 154 million almost equal the combined population of all the other nations in North Africa and the Middle East. If Egypt and Iran were to work in tandem, they could control the region.

By failing to back Mubarak and telling the Egyptian military to pull its punches and let the demonstrators take over the streets, the Obama administration has come to own responsibility for the outcome of the Egyptian revolution. If it goes south and leads to a disastrous outcome, it will be his foreign policy that will rightly shoulder the blame.

Obama should be backing Mubarak. Remember that Egypt was the first Arab nation to sign a peace deal with Israel and the only one to work with the Jewish state. It was in pursuit of peace that Anwar Sadat, Mubarak’s predecessor, gave his life.

With the U.S. supplying $1.3 billion in annual aid to the Egyptian military — in addition to $700 million in other assistance — we have great leverage, particularly over the military. Our demands that they behave gently toward the demonstrators may doom their efforts to preserve the regime.

How much damage can one misguided American president do? We are about to find out!

The Republican Senate
by Dick Morris and Eileen McGann

Republicans gnashed their teeth in frustration as the national tide of GOP resurgence washed up against the massive Democratic fortresses in Nevada, Washington state, Colorado and California. When they neither toppled nor faltered, most conservatives resigned themselves to a divided Congress with the Republican House and the Democratic Senate forever at war.

Not so. The vote on the extension of the Bush tax cuts reveals that the Republican Party has, in fact, gained effective control of the U.S. Senate. We are facing the same situation Ronald Reagan confronted in 1980 when his revolution brought him control of the Senate, but left the House under the nominal reign of Tip O’Neill and the Democrats. But, in fact, as the new president soon discovered, the House Democratic majority was subservient to the tide that had swept the Senate. Terrified by the Republican sweep, the Democrats were unable to muster a coherent opposition in the chamber they controlled. So it will be in 2011.

The Democrats will keep the corner offices in the Russell, Dirksen and Hart Senate office buildings and retain their committee chairmanships, but their ability to summon a majority to sustain their president on crucial votes is gone. The defection of Sens. Jim Webb, D-Va., Ben Nelson, D-Neb., Joe Manchin, D-W.V., and independent Joe Lieberman of Connecticut indicates that the 53-47 Democratic tilt of the Senate is more apparent than real.

Webb, Nelson, Manchin and Lieberman are all up for re-election in 2012. Each is very good at reading the handwriting on the wall left by Sens. Blanche Lincoln, D-Ark., Evan Bayh, D-Ind., Chris Dodd, D-Conn., Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., Arlen Specter, D-Pa., Bob _Bennett, R-Utah, and Russ Feingold, D-Wis., on their way out the door. It reads, “The conservatives are coming!”

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., could well afford to lose four votes while he controlled the Senate 58-42, but he can ill afford four defections when his margin is only three. And Sens. Nelson, Jon Tester, D-Mont., Bob Casey Jr., D-Pa., and Claire McCaskill, D-Mo. — all from red states and all facing close re-election battles — cannot be far behind these four in considering periodic abandonment of the ship on key votes. Only the likelihood of retirement saves Sen. Kent Conrad, D-N.D., from a similar fate. Sens. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, Herb Kohl, D-Wis., Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., and Robert Menendez, D-N.J., also vulnerable in 2012, probably think they can ride out the tide in their more Democratic states. (And in any event, Brown, Stabenow and Menendez are too liberal to notice what has just happened.)

So, on key votes, the endangered Democratic senators are likely to dodge the bullets coming from the House and defect from Reid’s majority. Why should they take the rap for blocking conservative legislation when they have a presidential veto backing them up at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue? “Let the president take the rap; why should I have to?” they will ask as they lend their assent to House-passed bills. The inability of President Obama to re-elect those who supported him hardly encourages others to risk their careers doing so.

Indeed, Reid can only regain his functioning majority if more Democrats choose to retire rather than face the music in 2012. If Kohl, Bingaman, Webb and Ben Nelson decide to retire after this term, the Democrats could have enough lame ducks to keep control of the Senate floor for one more cycle — hardly a pleasing prospect for their party.

The result of the functional _Republican control of the Senate is that the forum for decision-making in a divided Washington will not be the conference committee, but rather White House negotiations between the two political parties.

It remains to be seen whether the endangered Democrats can save their Senate seats from the likely GOP tide of 2012 by switching in time to pretend to be moderates. What is clear is that they are not going to block the Republican bills coming over from the House.

The Democrats will still control the committees in the Senate, but the Republicans will own the floor.

Republican Trend Continues
by Dick Morris and Eileen McGann

The mainstream media is peddling the line that the Democrats are staging a comeback, slicing Republican leads. It is absolute nonsense. A close review of polling in every close House race in the nation indicates that Republicans now lead in 53 seats currently held by Democrats and are within five points in 20 more.

And the trend is Republican, not Democrat. Of the races where comparative data over the past few weeks is available, Republicans have gained in 33 while Democrats have gained in only 10.

On the Senate level, Republicans now lead in all ten states that are necessary for GOP control of the Senate, the smallest margin coming in Nevada where the Rasmussen Poll has the Republican, Sharron Angle, four points ahead. In West Virginia, Wisconsin, Washington State, and Illinois, the Republican has surged ahead dramatically in recent days and only in Colorado and California has there been slippage. The ten states which are now represented by Democrats where Republicans have the lead are:

North Dakota = +45

Indiana = +18

Arkansas = +18

Wisconsin = +12

Pennsylvania = + 7

West Virginia = + 6

Colorado = + 5

Washington State = + 5

Illinois = + 4

Nevada = + 4

Republican gains should be even greater than this polling indicates. The trend lines are decidedly in the GOP’s favor and Gallup Poll indicates that Republicans are twice as likely to be enthusiastic about voting as Democrats are.

The only note of caution for Republicans is that their leads in Democratic House seats are not substantial. In only 14 seats does the Republican candidate lead by more than ten points and most of those are open Democratic seats. But the Republican turnout machine – animated by Tea Party activists — will likely outperform its Democratic rivals.

And the Democratic Party has no message. Its campaigns are a hodgepodge of personal negatives and fabricated issues. No Democratic candidate is even trying to defend Obama’s health care legislation or argue that his stimulus program is working. Cap and trade is never mentioned by Democrats on the campaign trail. We have the spectacle of the most substantive legislative program in generations having been passed by Congress and now finding that it has no defenders in the election campaign, only Democrats scurrying to prove their independence.

All signs point to a growing Republican landslide.

The gigantic Republican gains of the past week indicate that party trend is now beginning to kick in big time. The Republican leads until this past week are largely due to the voting decisions of people who closely follow the process. The surge in Republican support in the past seven to ten days indicates that the less educated voters who do not follow politics as closely are breaking for the Republicans. Normally, these downscale voters are Democrats, but the economy and the alienating values of the Obama Administration (e.g. Ground Zero Mosque) seem to be driving them to the GOP.

Also boosting Republican prospects is the absence of social issues in the national debate. These elections are turning on unemployment, deficits, the economy, health care, and the national debt, not on gay rights or abortion. So, social liberals and libertarians see no reason not to vote Republican. Only in California are these traditional issues working in driving voters to the Democrats.

A landslide without precedent appears to be in the making.

The Turnout Gap
by Dick Morris and Eileen McGann

As hard as pollsters try, it is almost impossible to glean a sample of actual likely voters in an off-year election. Particularly this year, it is difficult to distinguish between dutiful voters who say they are likely to vote and those who are actually going to make it to the polls. As in any off-year election, turnout matters.

According to the latest Gallup Poll, Republicans only enjoy a 3-point lead in the generic party ballot among all registered voters. But among those most likely to vote, the edge expands to 18 points (56-38). Twice as many Republicans report themselves to be “very enthusiastic” about voting as Democrats in the survey.

Remember that Barack Obama got about the same percentage of white votes in 2008 as Kerry won in 2004. His victory was entirely due to a big increase in black turnout (from 11 percent of the vote in 2004 to 14 percent in 2008) and in his greater popularity among Latinos. Turnout elected Obama, and turnout will defeat his congressional majority. The Democrats are widening the enthusiasm gap against them by running exclusively negative campaigns against their Republican insurgent rivals. The vast proportion of Democratic and allied independent expenditure media is negative, portraying Republican congressional candidates as tax evaders, spousal abusers, mob-linked, eccentric flakes, sexual molesters and absentee officeholders (all actual charges against key GOP candidates). While these ads may chip away at the Republican vote share in the polls, they do nothing to generate a Democratic turnout.

The Democrats are without a theme, a message or a positive reason to go to the polls and vote. Negative ads are supposed to depress turnout — the last thing Democrats need. But when they come up against Republican enthusiasm, they may not do much to check the GOP rise.

But advertising is not the central event of the 2010 elections. Mass rallies and one-on-one soliciting are the keys to the outcome. Between the tea party groups and Americans for Prosperity, there is a vast army of conservatives bringing the GOP message to the streets of America.

And the Republicans are just gearing up to turn out their voters. I have collaborated with Citizens United — whose Supreme Court case so roiled the Democrats — to produce an election-themed movie titled “Battle for America” (www.battleforamericamovie.com).

With Newt Gingrich, Ann Coulter, Fred Barnes and I describe how crucial are the stakes in this coming election. This film and others are spreading like wildfire through the ranks of the tea party groups and are being shown in tens of thousands of homes throughout the nation to the friends, family and neighbors of activists.

Republicans realize that our entire way of life and national idea is at stake in the 2010 elections. The radicalism of the Obama agenda and the mindless complicity of House and Senate Democrats who didn’t even read the bills they were passing have left a sense that America as we know it is on the line. For all the rhetoric of past years, this election is one in which our entire world hangs in the balance.

The regimented ranks of labor union members enlisted by their leaders to turn out for Democratic candidates cannot compete with the fired up intensity of the Republican grass roots. Democrats have gotten lazy and lethargic. The prolongation of the war in Afghanistan and the residual U.S. military presence in Iraq have sapped the left of its vitriol and undermined its faith in Obama. The new left groups like Moveon.org, ACORN and Americans Coming Together can’t gin up the enthusiasm that they could in 2006 and 2008. They are finding it far easier to attack than to defend, and their turnout is suffering as a result.

When polls show Republicans even with their Democratic opponents, read into them that the GOP will win. Undecided voters generally go against the incumbents (usually the Democrat in the swing races of 2010), and the vast difference in voter enthusiasm will tilt these races to the Republican challengers.

Prediction: The Republicans will win the Senate, capturing seats in Indiana, Arkansas, North Dakota, Pennsylvania, Colorado, Wisconsin, West Virginia, Washington state, Illinois and Nevada. And they could prevail in New York, Connecticut, Delaware and California, to boot.

The GOP will capture the House by a goodly margin, winning upward of 60-plus seats now held by Democrats. And it could go a lot higher!

The Myth of Conservative Vulnerability
by Dick Morris and Eileen McGann

This week’s primary victories of Christine O’Donnell in Delaware and Joe DioGuardi in New York illustrate how the tea party is cleansing the Republican Party and installing true believers over professional politicians. It is a healthy trend that will continue to recreate the Party of Reagan.

But the conventional media, instead of hailing this trend, warns that conservatives cannot be elected and bemoans the victory of true believers saying that it is equivalent to handing seats to the Democrats and the liberals. This reasoning, which made sense in other times, is badly flawed in today’s political climate.

When social issues like abortion, gays and guns dominate the political discourse, moderates have a big advantage. Voters in these times tend to measure themselves on a left to right spectrum and find those flanked sharply to their right to be extremist on these issues and reject their candidacies.

But these days, social issues are in remission and economic/fiscal problems have, understandably, taken center stage. In this environment, purists of the right have a big advantage because nobody doubts the sincerity with which they embrace the goals of limited government, low taxes and reduced spending. Politicians of all stripes — including most Democrats — vow allegiance to them, as does the overwhelming majority of the electorate.

In this environment, the distinctions of left and right give way to the difference between sincerity and insincerity, leaving the voters to judge. With candidates like Sharron Angle in Nevada or O’Donnell in Delaware or DioGuardia in New York, voters don’t have to guess. They know real conservatives when they see them.

Of course, Rep. Mike Castle had a big advantage in the Delaware Senate contest because of his name recognition and voter support after having run successfully statewide more than a dozen times (congressmen in Delaware serve at large). But don’t count O’Donnell out. She is the real thing — a conservative small-government devotee whose advocacy of low taxes is sincere and heartfelt. The national Republican establishment was stupid and short-sighted in the negatives they threw at her during the primary. Now they will have to eat their words at great financial and political cost.

But, in a way, their obduracy gives O’Donnell a great opportunity to run as the anti-establishment candidate, putting a plague on the houses of both parties and calling attention to the corruption of each. By separating herself from the Washington Republicans, she is able to embrace the values of small government and low taxes without doubt about the depth of her commitment. She is free of party labels and can luxuriate in that liberty.

For his part, DioGuardi has a very good chance to defeat Kristin Gillibrand. The appointed Democratic senator has not used the primary period, when she had a monopoly of the airwaves, to solidify her incumbency and generate familiarity among voters. Now she opens the general election likely at or even below 50 percent of the vote.

DioGuardi has a great chance to close the gap between them if he can get enough funding. Republicans looking for a lock on the Senate should send him plenty of funding. The Republicans running in Wisconsin, California, Illinois and West Virginia are largely self-funded. It should be possible to concentrate resources on those states where the need is the greatest, and if the GOP is smart, Delaware and New York will be high on the list.

An Epic Dem Disaster
by Dick Morris and Eileen McGann

The magnitude of the catastrophe facing the Democratic Party in the fall elections is only gradually becoming clear to the leaders of both parties. The Democrats will lose both the Senate and the House. They will lose more House seats in 2010 than the 54 they lost in 1994, and they will lose the Senate, possibly with some seats to spare.

In state after state, the races that were once marginal are now solidly Republican, those that were possible takeaways are now likely GOP wins, and the impossible seats are now fully in play.

Colorado offers a good example. Betsey Markey was supposed to be a marginal new Democratic member. But Cory Gardner, her Republican opponent, is now more than 20 points ahead. John Salazar, the brother of the interior secretary and a well-established Democratic incumbent in a largely Republican district, is now almost 10 points behind his GOP challenger Scott Tipton. And Ed Perlmutter, a solidly entrenched Democrat in a supposedly nearly safe district, is running 1 point behind his GOP opponent, the unusually articulate Ryan Frazier (a black Republican with Obama-esque charisma). The Republicans will probably win all three seats.

Or take Arkansas. Blanche Lincoln is clinically dead, trailing John Boozman 65-27 in the latest Rasmussen poll. In the race that was supposed to be close for the open seat in AR-2, Republican Tim Griffin is massacring Democrat Joyce Elliott by 52-35. In the race that was thought to be a likely Democratic win — AR-1, the East Arkansas district — Republican Rick Crawford is running seven points ahead of Democrat Chad Causey. And, in the district that was considered a safe Democratic seat, the home of Blue Dog leader Mike Ross, Republican Beth Anne Rankin is showing surprising strength and may topple her opponent.

In the Senate, Republicans are solidly ahead in Delaware, North Dakota, Indiana and Arkansas. They have good leads in Colorado, Pennsylvania and Washington. The Democratic incumbents are perpetually below 50 and basically tied with their Republican challengers in Nevada, California and Wisconsin. Illinois is tied. Connecticut and New York (after the primary) are in play. That’s a gain of up to 13 seats!

And, then consider West Virginia, where the hugely popular Democratic Gov. Joe Manchin — who boasts of a 70 percent job approval rating — looked like the certain successor to Robert Byrd. But, in the latest Rasmussen poll, he leads Republican challenger John Raese by only 48 to 41. When 22 percent of the state likes the job you are doing as governor but doesn’t want to vote for you for senator, you are in deep, deep trouble. That’s 14!

Why the disaster? Obama’s poll numbers alone don’t account for it. With a job approval in the low 40s, he is not as radioactive as Bush was. He still has a ways to fall to reach those depths. So why the unbelievable wipeout in the congressional races?

Obama has a lot to do with it. But so does Congress itself. With congressional approval at 23 percent in the realclearpolitics.com average, the Democrats in the House and Senate have contributed mightily to their own demise. The Charlie Rangel and Maxine Waters investigations and the impending decision to let each keep his and her seat does a lot to undermine Congress’ image. So did the deals surrounding health care reform, as the public watched sausage being made in Washington. The spectacle of Congress voting on bills the members have not read adds to public discontent.

In most off-year cycles, it is the president’s party that is judged in the voting. But, this year, Congress has been in the forefront of most of the legislation — up to actually writing the stimulus and health care bills — that the body itself is attracting its own negatives. Republican insurgents’ success in derailing incumbent senators in Alaska and Utah attest to the bipartisan nature of the disaffection.

But, for whatever reason, the only mistake either party can make as 2010 approaches is to aim too low. It is not the marginal seats that are in play, it is the safe ones!

How Republicans Will Win the Senate
by Dick Morris and Eileen McGann

It gets tiresome hearing the conventional wisdom say that the Democrats will likely keep control of the Senate. Far from it.

To gain control, Republicans must win 10 new seats. An analysis of the latest polling data suggests that Republicans currently hold the lead in eight pick-up states: Pennsylvania, Colorado, Wisconsin, Washington state, Arkansas, Delaware, North Dakota and Indiana. In a ninth, Illinois, the candidates are tied, and in the 10th — Nevada — Harry Reid is ahead by only one point. And, for insurance, Barbara Boxer in California and Kirsten Gillibrand in New York are both below 50 percent of the vote. In Connecticut, Richard Blumenthal is only at 50 percent. That’s a potential pickup of 13 seats and a likely gain of at least 10 (enough for a majority).

Any incumbent who is running at less than 50 percent of the vote is in serious trouble. It means that a majority of the voters have decided not to vote for him or her. (Asked if you are likely to be married to the same person next year, a vote of “undecided” does not bode well for your marriage.)

So here are the numbers:

Aug. 27 polls

Nevada: Reid (D) 45, Sharon Angle (R) 44 (Mason Dixon)

With Reid this far under 50 percent, Angle is likely to win

Aug. 26 polls

Florida (currently Republican): Marco Rubio (R) 40, Charlie Crist (I) 30, Kendrick Meek (D) 21 (Rasmussen)

So much for Crist!

Pennsylvania: Pat Toomey 40 (R), Joe Sestak (D) 31 (Franklin-Marshall)

Aug. 25 polls

Colorado: Ken Buck (R) 49, Michael Bennet (D): 40 (Reuters)

California: Boxer (D) 49, Carly Fiorina (R) 44 (Rasmussen) Boxer has gained a bit, but still in trouble

Louisiana (currently Republican): David Vitter (R) 51m Charlie Melancon (D) 41 (PPP)

Wisconsin: Ron Johnson (R) 47, Russ Feingold (D) 46 (Rasmussen)

Illinois: Alexi Giannoulias (D) 45, Mark Kirk (R) 45 (Rasmussen)

Aug. 24 polls

Missouri (currently Republican): Roy Blunt 54, Robin Carnahan 41 (Rasmussen)

Aug. 21 polls

Washington state: Dino Rossi (R) 52, Patty Murray (D) 45 (SurveyUSA)

Aug. 20 polls

Arkansas: John Boozeman (R) 65, Blanche Lincoln (D) 27 (Rasmussen) This is not a typo!

The most likely results are that Republicans win the eight seats in which they now lead and also take Illinois and Nevada for a gain of 10 seats and control. They also have a good shot in California and possible upsets in New York and Connecticut.

Responding to Obamacare: Restore, Defeat, Defund, Repeal
by Dick Morris and Eileen McGann

Let’s begin our reaction to the passage of Obamacare by remembering Winston Churchill’s famous formulation with which he introduced his war memoirs:

In defeat: defiance.

In war: resolution.

In victory: magnanimity.

In peace: goodwill.

Now is the time for defiance! Here’s what we must do:

1) Restore the Medicare cuts mandated in this bill. Block the reduction of physicians’ fees by 21 percent scheduled to take effect this fall. Override the cuts in Medicare that require annual approval by Congress. Challenge the Democrats over each and every cut. Try to peel away enough votes to stop the cuts from driving doctors and hospitals to adopt the course already taken by the Mayo Clinic in refusing to take Medicare patients.

2. Defeat the Democrats in the 2010 election! Start with the traitors who voted no in November and then switched to a shameful yes when it counted in March. Then go on to win the open seats in the House and Senate. And then fight to replace as many Democrats as possible. Remember: Any Democrat who voted no would have voted yes if they had needed his or her vote. The only way to repeal Obamacare is to vote Republican.

3. Defund. Once we get the majority in both chambers, defund appropriations for the Obamacare program. The bill passed by the Congress and signed by the president is simply an authorization measure. Funds must be appropriated for it each year by Congress. Through zero funding these changes, we can cripple them before they take full effect.

4. Repeal. And, once we defeat Barack Obama, we need to proceed to repeal this disastrous plan before it can ruin our health care system. Then, we must replace it with a Republican alternative that relies on the marketplace, tax incentives and individual responsibility to provide health care to all Americans.

Above all, we must finally learn the fundamental lesson this political process we have been through has to teach: that there is no such thing as a conservative or moderate Democrat. Blue dogs don’t exist in real life. Only yellow dogs.

The days when there were Democrats who refused to follow their radical left-wing party line are over. There are no longer “state” Democrats who vote conservative as opposed to “national” Democrats who vote with the left. They are an extinct species. Some senators and congressmen capitalize on our memories of those days and pretend to be moderates. But they are just faking it.

Nancy Pelosi knew — as Harry Reid knew in the Senate — that she had the potential support of every single Democrat in her chamber if only the price was right. The sole difference between moderate and liberal Democrats is their asking price. Moderates require slightly higher bribes to assure their votes.

There are only two kinds of congressmen or senators: Democrats and Republicans. We have had a national education, and it’s time to learn from it. In days gone by, intelligent people liked to say that they voted for the person, not the party. Now those who say this are fooling themselves. There is only party! The most conservative Democrat is way to the left of the most liberal Republican.

The Democratic victory on Obamacare will prove the most expensive in the party’s history. It will lead to the eradication of their majority, the defeat of more than 50 of their congressmen, the switch of Senate control and Republican domination for decades. And, in the end, it will have done nothing to improve health care. But, fortunately, we can win the 2010 election to stop it from doing much damage.

More Dems Will Call It Quits
by Dick Morris and Eileen McGann

Other than the H1N1 virus, the most contagious disease in our nation’s capital is retirement. It is catching. The more Democrats that quit, the more others are also encouraged to hang it up. Retirements like those of Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., and Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., turn off donors to Democratic incumbents, encourage viable Republican challengers to get in races around the nation and lead other incumbent Dems to think about spending more time as lobbyists making money in Washington.

And the retirement bug is in full reign in Washington. In the week before Christmas, three Democrats from red districts retired (two from Tennessee and one from Kansas) and a fourth, Parker Griffith of Alabama, became a Republican. Now, with Dodd’s and Dorgan’s retirements, we can expect the blue legislators from red states to start falling ever more quickly.

But these retirements also send a signal to voters that is anything but helpful to President Obama: They signal that Democrats expect to lose. Nobody buys that these folks are leaving to spend more time with their families. Voters all realize that Democratic senators and congressmen are reading the handwriting on the walls, which sends the same message as the polls — that voters are fed up with the Obama administration and with the Democratic Party.

To see Democrats stand up and, in effect, admit defeat is a bit like watching repentant sinners confessing at a revival meeting. One outburst triggers another. And the specter of Democratic leaders running from having to face their constituents again convinces swing voters that maybe there is something rotten in the party and in its congressional delegation.

Dorgan and Dodd both retired because they felt they would lose. But each had new scandals to fear had he actually run.

Dorgan never had to account to the voters of North Dakota for his role in accepting almost $100,000 in campaign contributions from Jack Abramoff’s firm or the Indian tribes it represented. In return for these funds, Dorgan interceded on behalf of one tribe in Massachusetts and another in Mississippi, both far from his home state. Because his involvement came out after the 2004 elections had been held and he was safely returned to Congress, he never had to face the voters.

Indeed, he was the ranking Democrat on the Indian Affairs Subcommittee and led the investigation of the Abramoff bribes, never mentioning that he was one of their recipients. It would have been fun to watch him try to escape the criticism.

Dodd, at last being held to account for his role in fronting for AIG for his entire career, also faced issues related to his wife’s employment by a subsidiary of AIG at the same time that Dodd was running errands for it in Congress. Dodd, of course, was the largest single recipient of AIG funds in Congress, getting more than twice as much as the next largest recipient.

The scandals that attach to Dodd and Dorgan would have injured the party and cost them angst not only in Connecticut and North Dakota but throughout the nation.

Obviously, the North Dakota seat will go Republican, probably to the North Dakota governor, John Hoeven.

But the Connecticut seat is hardly the automatic Democratic seat most pundits predict. While State Attorney General Richard Blumenthal is quite popular and enjoys broad support, Connecticut voters are fed up with the Democratic agenda and opposed to the health care bill. The more all Democratic senators march in lockstep to pass legislation the people of America oppose, the more voters are willing to look past the candidates and vote based on party labels.

Rob Simmons, a former Connecticut congressman, would be a strong challenger to Blumenthal and, with the tide as pronounced as it is becoming for the GOP, who is to say that he can’t pull it off?

Ditto, by the way, for anyone who challenges Kristen Gillibrand. Her record of flacking for the tobacco companies and her flip-flops on most major issues since her appointment make her very vulnerable to any GOP challenger who steps up to the plate.

When a tsunami is coming, it’s very hard to predict how high the tide will go. Will it just lap over the swing states like Arkansas and Nevada? Will it go up to the lean-Democrat states and cost them seats in Delaware and Colorado? Or will it surge so far that it takes away Democratic Senate seats in solid Democratic states without elected incumbents like New York with Gillibrand, Illinois and Connecticut? Or will it so swamp the nation that even where Democratic incumbents are running in blue states, they are not safe in states like California, Washington, Indiana, Oregon and Pennsylvania?

Our bet is that the rising tide will swamp all their boats.

Elderly Swing Against Obama Plan
by Dick Morris and Eileen McGann

The most ominous signal yet for the Obama health-care plan emerged in the poll by Scott Rasmussen released today. While public support for the plan fell to a new low (42 percent support, 53 percent oppose — down five points in two weeks), the elderly emerged as the strongest opposition group. Those over 65 rejected the plan by 39 percent to 56 percent, while almost half — 46 percent — said they were “strongly opposed” to it.

The group that supports the plan most strongly are those likely to be least affected — voters under the age of 30, 67 percent of whom support the proposals.

The Democratic senators and congressmen can well choose to ignore polls. Polls go up. Polls go down. They may figure that the public will have moved on by the time they run for re-election, particularly those senators who are not up in 2010. With four or six years to go in their terms, they can afford a relaxed view of polling data.

But the Democratic Party as a whole cannot afford to ignore a massive defection in the ranks of the elderly, one of its key building blocks. Ever since the New Deal coalition was cobbled together by FDR, the elderly have been a major component. Worried about Republican designs on their Social Security, they vote overwhelmingly Democratic. But the Obama proposals, which many see correctly as a major cut in Medicare, might be seminal in driving them en masse away from the Democrats.

The Democratic Party is built on six pillars — blacks, Latinos, single women, young people, union members and the elderly. If legislation threatens one of those pillars, it threatens the stability of the entire partisan structure. And Obama’s health-care reform seems to do just that.

With 40 percent of the savings in medical spending coming from Medicare, the senior citizens of America are coming to see the Obama proposals as an assault on their health-care system. Since their needs are fully met by Medicare, they see no need for monkeying with the system and are highly suspicious of any changes. When they watch as their fellow seniors attend town meetings to protest to their congressmen about these cuts and are labeled “un-American” for their pains, their alienation from the Democrats just grows.

The fissure Obama is driving between his party and the elderly will not soon heal. When the elderly change their voting habits, they tend to do so for a very, very long time. Even senators who are up in 2012 or 2014 should worry that their votes for the Obama plan could doom their ability to attract elderly support.

As to the young people who back the plan, once they learn that they will have to pay steep premiums for health-care coverage, whether they want to or not, their support is likely to cool. Under the bill, for example, those making $30,000 a year would have to pay up to 7 percent of their income in health-insurance premiums before they could get a government subsidy. A $2,100 bill for such a young person might seem affordable to Obama, but perhaps not to them. Thus, the legislation may well come to be seen as a tax on the young, another of the key constituencies of the Democratic Party.

The cost of Obama’s health-care changes just keeps growing — financially and politically.

The Failure of Obamanomics
by Dick Morris and Eileen McGann

The data is in for April. Here’s what happened:

1. Household personal income (inflation adjusted) rose, but every penny — and then some — went into savings or paying down debts. Consumer spending, on which Barack Obama is betting to stimulate the economy, actually fell. None of the stimulus money was sent. None.

2. Meanwhile, to pay for this stimulus spending that didn’t stimulate, Obama had to borrow so much money that long-term interest rates have almost doubled since he took office, forcing postponement or abandonment of business expansion and hiring across the board.

What a record!

Here are the details. In April, personal household, inflation-adjusted income rose by $122 billion. Of that increase, one-third — or $44 billion — came from the government’s stimulus program. But while personal income was rising, household savings (which includes paying down credit-card balances, mortgages, student loans, car loans, etc.) rose by $132 billion — $10 billion more than the rise in income. So personal consumption dropped 0.1 percent.

The stimulus package was a total and complete failure. As predicted, as happened with Bush’s 2008 tax cut, as happened with the Japanese stimulus packages of the ’90s, fearful consumers sat on their money and wouldn’t spend it. Keynesian economics didn’t work. Again.

But the debt sure piled up. The deficit quadrupled and is sending interest rates soaring, as the government elbows aside businesses and consumers at the loan window, all in a desperate effort to borrow enough money to spend enough money to stimulate the economy, which isn’t happening.

Keynesian economics doesn’t work. The theory for rational expectations has taken its place. Consumers are not idiots. They know that when their paycheck is fatter — either because of tax cuts or government spending — that it is not the beginning of Nirvana, but just a short-term, one-shot respite from hard times. They know the difference between standing in front of an electric fan and a windy day.

Barack Obama has fatally undermined our currency, our solvency, our financial stability and — ultimately — our economy, all to spend money that has had no economic effect!

Is Obama a failure? Not by his lights. His goal was never to stimulate the economy. His goal was to expand government spending, and he used the recession as an excuse to do so. And, by this standard, he is a raging success. With the stimulus spending, the government proportion of gross domestic product will rise from about 35 percent to about 40 percent, and with health care “reform” it will go soaring into the mid-40s, bringing us to parity with Germany en route to France!

But the results are in: None of Obama’s spending is doing anything to help the economy.

Of course, the process of household savings, designed to pay down debt, is very healthy.

Economists call it de-leveraging. By the start of the recession, the debt American households owe had risen from 70 percent of their annual income in 1995 to 140 percent (excluding mortgages). Now it’s on its way back down again. And, eventually, that will lead to a real recovery — if Obama doesn’t wreck the currency and bring on mega-inflation before then (but he probably will).

The Seeds of His Own Destruction: Obama’s Hundred Days
by Dick Morris and Eileen McGann

When the Obama administration crashes and burns, with approval ratings that fall through the floor, political scientists can trace its demise to its first hundred days. While Americans are careful not to consign a presidency they desperately need to succeed to the dustbin of history, the fact is that this president has moved — on issue after issue — in precisely the opposite direction of what the people want him to do.

Right now, Obama’s ratings must be pleasing to his eye. Voters like him and his wife immensely, and approve of his activism in the face of the economic crisis. While polls show big doubts about what he is doing, the overwhelming sense is to let him have his way and pray that it works.

But beneath this superficial support, Obama’s specific policies run afoul of very deeply felt feelings by American voters. For example, the most recent Rasmussen Poll asked voters if they wanted an economic system of complete free enterprise or wanted more government involvement in managing the economy. By 77 percent to 19 percent, they voted against a government role, up seven points from last month.

And in the Fox News poll — the very same survey that gave Obama a 62 percent approval and reported that 68 percent of voters are “satisfied” with his first hundred days — voters supported a smaller government that offered fewer services over a larger government that provided more by 50 percent to 38 percent.

By 42 percent to 8 percent, the Fox News poll (conducted on April 22-23) found that voters felt Obama had expanded government rather than contracted it (42 percent said it was the same size), and by 46 percent to 30 percent they reported believing that big government was more of a danger to the nation than big business. (They said Obama felt big business was more dangerous by 50 percent to 23 percent).

By 62 percent to 20 percent, they said government spending, under Obama, was “out of control.”

So if voters differ so fundamentally with the president on the very essence of his program, why do they accord him high ratings? They are like the recently married bride who took her vows 100 days ago. It would be a disaster for her if she decides that she really doesn’t like her husband. But she keeps noticing things about him that she can’t stand. It will be a while before she walks out the door or even comes to terms with her own doubts, but it is probably inevitable that she will.

For Americans to conclude that they disapprove of their president in the midst of an earth-shaking crisis is very difficult. But as Obama’s daily line moves from “I inherited this mess” to “there are faint signs of light,” the clock starts ticking. If there is no recovery for the next six months — and I don’t think there will be — Obama will inevitably become part of the problem, not part of the solution.

And then will come his heavy lifting. He has yet to raise taxes, regiment health care or provide amnesty for illegal immigrants. He hasn’t closed down the car companies he now runs, and he has not yet forced a 50-percent hike in utility bills with his cap and trade legislation. These are all the goodies he has in store for us all.

Obama’s very activism these days arrogates to himself the blame for the success or failure of his policies. Their outcome will determine his outcome, and there is no way it will be positive.

Why?

A) You can’t borrow as much as he will need to without raising interest rates, which hurts the economy.

B) The massive amount of spending will trigger runaway inflation once the economy starts to recover.

C) His overhaul of the tax code (still in the planning phases) and his intervention in corporate management will create such business uncertainty that nobody will invest in anything until they see the lay of the land.

D) His bank program is designed to help banks, but not to catalyze consumer lending. And his proposal for securitization of consumer loans won’t work and is just what got us into this situation.

So, Mr. Obama should enjoy his poll numbers while he can.

Obama’s Anti-American Foreign Policy
by Dick Morris and Eileen McGann

Apparently, here’s the deal: If you are a longtime enemy of the United States, count on a grand reception from the Obama administration. All is forgiven and, worse, forgotten. But if you have a track record as an ally or friend, you won’t get the right time of day.

Consider how our enemies are being treated:

Fidel Castro’s Cuba? The travel restrictions will be lifted and, doubtless, soon the embargo will be repealed.

Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela? Despite the proof of political imprisonment, repression of liberties, confiscation of newspapers, and electoral violence and fraud, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton tells Chavez that “ideology is so yesterday,” and Obama give Chavez a “yo bro” handshake.

Vladimir Putin’s Russia? It invaded Georgia, but who’s counting? We are “resetting” the relationship.

Hamas? $900 million of foreign aid, channeled through the UNRWA, a United Nations front filled with Hamas operatives.

Iran? No need to stop uranium enrichment — the United States will begin endless talks while Tehran nears nuclear capacity.

And our friends?

Israel? Vice President Biden warns against military action to stop Iran from getting the bomb. And Defense Secretary Gates joins the chorus. The administration pressures Israel to buy into the two-state solution, requiring it to recognize a Palestinian state dominated by Hamas and dedicated to the destruction of Israel. The last time Israel ceded territory to the Palestinians, they used the land for new rocket launching pads.

Britain? Obama returned the Churchill bust and humiliated Prime Minister Gordon Brown by giving a gift of some DVDs on his visit.

Colombia? While President Uribe battles those who want to send drugs into our country and faces a military buildup from neighboring Venezuela, Obama won’t submit the free trade deal with Bogota to the Senate.

And, within the United States, we free the Guantanamo terrorists while we investigate and potentially prosecute those who interrogated them in an effort to protect us all from their planned mayhem.

What a great time to be our enemy! What a terrible time to be our friend!

Oblivious to the record of terror attacks thwarted by enhanced interrogation techniques, Obama opens the door to prosecuting — criminally — those who authorized them.

Does he not realize that there would be no Brooklyn Bridge — and ten thousand people would have died in the waters of the East River — if we had not waterboarded Khalid Sheikh Mohammed? After the National Security Administration picked up mentions of the “Brooklyn Bridge” in its warrantless wiretaps, it alerted New York City Police Commissioner Ray Kelly to the possibility of a terror attack against the bridge. Kelly flooded the bridge with cops and commissioned an engineering study to determine how one could bring down the bridge, plunging ten thousand people into the East River during rush hour.

The study said it was impossible to blow the bridge up — one would have been discovered — but that a terrorist could sever the cable holding it aloft with a torch. It would take weeks, but the terrorists could work, undetected, in a vacant building that housed the cables under the bridge. The traffic noises would mask their efforts, and the building was not patrolled or even visited by anyone.

The terrorist noted the cops on the bridge and sent a message, intercepted by the NSA, that it was “too hot on the Brooklyn Bridge.” But it was not until we waterboarded Mohammed that we learned the identity of the al-Qaida operative — Lyman Farris. On learning his name, the New York Police raided his Brooklyn apartment. Chillingly, they found the equipment he would need to bring down the bridge and an engineering diagram (akin to that which Kelly had ordered) identifying where they would have to stand to cut the cables.

Does Obama really want to prosecute the anti-terror investigators who saved thousands by waterboarding Mohammed and learning this information?

Yes, he damn well does!

The Anti-Success Presidency
by Dick Morris and Eileen McGann

Sit in on a corporate boardroom struggling to come to grips with the new economic climate Barack Obama has created. Do we expand? Create more jobs? Launch a new product line? Step up our marketing efforts? Ratchet up production?

But, wait a minute. The bigger our company gets, the closer we come to being “too big to fail,” a “systemic risk.” The nearer we are to intrusive government oversight, limits on executive pay and regulators breathing down our necks. We better watch out. We may even get taken over. Stay small. Forget the new jobs.

An investor ponders where to put his 401(k) retirement money. Should he invest in robust, growing companies? Firms with a bright future? But, be careful, they could get so big that they get taken over by the government and you lose your entire investment. Don’t invest in firms that will fail, but stay away from those that will succeed, too.

Meanwhile, at the kitchen table, a middle-class family discusses their career moves. Should she go back to school to pursue a better job at higher pay? Should he put in overtime? Move up in the company?

Hey, wait a minute. Our combined income is just under $200,000 a year. If we go any higher, our tax bracket goes up, we start having Social Security withheld on our new income, we lose our current deductions for our mortgage, state and local taxes, and charitable donations.

Forget the promotion. Forget the new job.

Downtown, investors in a hedge fund are meeting to consider participating in the bank bailout scheme by buying toxic assets from failing institutions. We could make a killing. The investments could pan out big time. It’s a risk, but the reward could be great.

But hold on a second. If we make tens of millions, hundreds of millions, while taxpayers are having to pay for failed banks, won’t we get hit with a 90 percent tax? Won’t we get to see our pictures on the front page with the president shaking an angry finger in our faces? Yes, now he wants us to invest, to help him rescue the banks, but once we do, won’t he be on our case like he was on AIG’s?

The Japanese have a saying that, thankfully, has no English equivalent: The highest nail gets hammered down first. Obama’s perverse view of fairness threatens to create reverse incentives, militating against growth, jobs, expansion and upward mobility.

For decades, astute observers of national welfare policy warned of the perversity of the incentives that kept the poor on welfare and discouraged them from taking jobs. Employment meant that their slightly higher income would be more than offset by the loss of other benefits like food stamps, day care, rent supplements and Medicaid. Work didn’t pay.

Now Obama is applying the same crazy policies to the upper end of the economic spectrum. Upward mobility is alive and well in the United States, at least until Obama took over. A study conducted in the late 1990s examined the economic fate of those consigned to the bottom 20 percent of incomes in 1980. The analysis concluded that more than four out of five had left the bottom quintile and one in five was now in the top 20 percent!

It is true that the top quintile is getting richer while the bottom is getting poorer, but the bottom is not the same people. There is, fortunately, a constant churning at the bottom as new immigrants move in and those who used to be on the bottom begin their long, thrilling upward climb to the American dream.

But Obama does not believe in individual upward mobility. He would penalize it, tax it, regulate it, inveigh against it and disincentivize it. We will be like salmon swimming upstream to mate. We will overcome the currents, the waterfall, the rocks and the predators, and will grapple our way up the stream. Then, at the top of the waterfall, will stand Obama the Bear, waiting to scoop us up and have us for dinner. The taxman cometh.

Does Obama Know What He Is Doing?
by Dick Morris and Eileen McGann

Conservatives are so aghast at the huge spending going on in Washington and the $1.75 trillion deficit (13 percent of our gross domestic product) it is causing them to overlook an even more basic question about the president: Is he competent? Does he know what he is doing?

To be specific: Does he know how to do anything other than spend money? His stimulus package, of course, took no special ability. He left the details of the projects up to the House Democrats, who are more than willing to fill in the blanks. But his two other major initiatives — his banking and mortgage relief plans — are both flawed and highly unlikely to solve their respective problems. Indeed, they are so wide of the mark that one has to ask if Obama is not only a radical but also an incompetent.

The bank bailout plan seems to be largely stillborn. Having wished that the private sector would flock to invest in toxic assets if they are offered the right incentives, the treasury secretary is still hoping. Crossing his fingers seems to have replaced effective policy in his planning. To date, no massive infusion of private sector capital seems in view, and Washington is doing little more than writing checks on its overdrawn account to prop up the failing banks. That doesn’t take a genius. But the difficult task of relieving the banks of toxic assets so they can rekindle the flow of loans seems to be beyond the ability of the president and his administration.

But conservatives can dismiss the utter failure of Obama’s bank rescue plan, saying that he doesn’t really want it to succeed. He probably wants to nationalize the banks — and never let them go. But he can’t say that, yet, and has to make a good show of doing all he can to rescue them before swallowing them whole.

But then came Obama’s mortgage rescue plan, an equally flawed proposal. Clearly, Obama, liberal that he is, wants his rescue plan to work. He is anxious to bail out homeowners facing foreclosure. Those are his constituents, after all. But the mortgage rescue plan he has proposed will fall far short of the mark.

Incredibly, it excludes anyone who has lost their job and can’t afford to make their payments, even if they were to spend 31 percent of their income trying to do so. If you can’t come close to affording your mortgage, even if only because of a hopefully temporary loss of employment, forget about it. Obama is not going to help you.

Nor will he help you if your mortgage exceeds your home’s value. One out of five mortgages now fall into this category. Obviously, the fall in property values occasioned by the depression will put more and more homeowners in this category. Certainly, a great many of those who need relief to keep their homes find that the amount of their loan exceeds the value of the underlying house and land. But they can expect no help from Obama’s rescue plan.

Why would a liberal be so callous? Why would he leave so many out in the cold? Could it be that Obama simply lacks the competence to figure out how to help these folks? Could it be that he cannot devise a counter to his financial advisors who presumably wanted to exclude these folks?

And … who induced these poor folks to buy homes they couldn’t afford, anyway? It was the Clinton administration’s Housing and Urban Development Secretary Henry Cisneros who urged Fannie Mae to spend 42 percent of its money buying mortgages for lower-income people and who suggested that they no longer require down payments. And it was his successor, Andrew Cuomo, who upped the ante to 50 percent of the Fannie portfolio. After Democrats inveigled people to buy homes they cannot afford, how can they justify passing a plan that excludes them from assistance?

It appears that Obama is at sea when it comes to financial policy, economic recovery planning and credit rescue efforts. We are not only stuck with a radical and a socialist, but possibly an incompetent one at that!

It’s Obama Spreading Panic
by Dick Morris and Eileen McGann

Ultimately, all recessions and depressions resolve themselves into crises of confidence. The instant, global, 24-7 communications of today make them ever more so. President Obama, in his pursuit of liberal big-government spending, has totally neglected the role of the president of the United States in reversing global panic. To the contrary, his every remark and the constant preoccupation of his Cabinet is to heighten the sense of crisis and to escalate the predictions of doom if we do not do as they tell us and raise spending now and taxes later.

Instead of being a firewall, reassuring Main Street even as Wall Street crashed, he has become a conduit of panic, spreading the mood of desperation from the stock exchange floor to kitchen tables across the world.

There are bad loans, which became bad assets, that lie at the root of the crisis. Through deregulation by the government and the greed of financial institutions, they spread to every portfolio in the world. But these basic facts have metastasized out of all proportion to their real harm into job and financial insecurity for every family on Earth. It is President Obama, not the markets themselves, who has spread this fear. A global Paul Revere, he has not only aroused us, but incited fear and trepidation in his wake.

Previous panics have been global in impact, but local in focus. The world panicked because of developments in Mexico or Argentina or Thailand or South Korea. Now, with Collateralized Debt Obligations spreading the poison of a bunch of bad loans all over the world, infecting every portfolio, the panic is not only global in impact but in focus as well. Modern communications have hastened the spread of the virus of panic throughout the global bloodstream.

In addressing this panic, the president of the United States must truly be the leader of the world — showing the way back to confidence.

Instead, Obama has been instrumental in purveying fear and spreading doubt. It is his pronouncements, reinforced by the developments they kindle and catalyze, that are destroying good businesses, bankrupting responsible people and wiping out even conservative financial institutions. Every time he speaks, he sends the markets down and stocks crashing. He doesn’t seem to realize that the rest of the world takes its cue from him. He forgets that he stands at the epicenter of power, not on the fringes campaigning for office. This ain’t Iowa.

Why does Obama preach gloom and doom? Because he is so anxious to cram through every last spending bill, tax increase on the so-called rich, new government regulation and expansion of healthcare entitlement that he must preserve the atmosphere of crisis as a political necessity. Only by keeping us in a state of panic can he induce us to vote for trillion-dollar deficits and spending packages that send our national debt soaring.

And then there is the matter of blame. The deeper the mess goes — and the further down his rhetoric drives it — the more imperative it becomes to lay off the blame on George W. Bush. He must perpetually “discover” — to his shock — how deep the crisis that he inherited runs, stoking global fears in the process.

So, having inherited a recession, his words are creating a depression. He entered office amid a disaster, and he is transforming it into a catastrophe, all to pass every last bit of government spending and move us a bit further to the left before his political capital dwindles.

But the jig will be up soon. The crash of the stock market in the days since he took power (indeed, from the moment he won the election) can increasingly be attributed to his own failure to lead us in the right direction, his failed policies in addressing the recession and his own spreading of panic and fear. The market collapse makes it evident that it is Obama who is the problem, where he should, instead, be the solution.

Obama Gambles Boldly … But Will Likely Lose
by Dick Morris and Eileen McGann

In one of the most eloquent presidential addresses to Congress, with strains of FDR and JFK and a touch of Winston Churchill thrown in, President Obama has clearly staked his presidency on the outcome of the economic crisis.

Whether you agree or not with his prescription for recovery — I don’t — it is clear that he is not hedging his bets. If it works, his place in history is assured. If it fails, so is his early retirement.

The speech made it apparent that Obama’s Administration’s response to this crisis will either go down in the history of political science as a success Americans will admire for decades or become a case study in economic failure students and scholars will study and pick apart for generations.

The speech began where it needed to begin — with a bold affirmation of faith in the rebuilding and recovery of America. Then the president listed some of the more popular parts of his spending-stimulus program. The specific items he recalled from the package were attractive.

But Americans know, by now, that much of the program, largely unmentioned by the president, is a mountain of pork, money spent for the sake of spending it to spur recovery, not to achieve particularly important ends.

Obama did not seek to justify the spending for the specific purposes to which it is dedicated. Courageously, he said that he passed it because it will work. For his sake, it better. But I doubt it.

Then the president spoke unconvincingly about his bank rescue plan. Promising to punish and regulate bankers even as he stressed the need to restore their confidence, he reminded me of the facetious sign posted in a friend’s workplace, “The beatings will continue until morale improves.”

How he plans to restore the nerve and confidence of our bankers as he castigates them was unclear. But so is his program for financial rescue. One suspects that he knows full well that he will nationalize the banks. But even that step says that politicians can do what bankers cannot — act quickly, ruthlessly and honestly — never a notable attribute of elected officials.

Halfway through the speech, the president got to the minefields of Social Security and health care reform. He avoided any specifics, but it is clear that he plans to salvage the former by increases in the payroll tax and implement the latter by government rationing of health care. If you like your HMO, you will love Obama’s health plan.

And then, Obama affirmed that he will support big tax increases on the richest 2 percent of American families. Disregarding the fact that these households already pay upward of half of the income taxes, while earning only a quarter of the national income, he singled out the entrepreneurs, professionals, innovators and businesspeople of America for taxation. But he won’t raise taxes until he’s had a few years to stimulate the economy. He makes one feel like one of the huge hogs in the Chicago stockyards, being fattened up to slaughter the next year.

Can all this work? Can Obama get banks to lend even as he terrorizes them? Can he get the engines of our economy back to work even as he announces that he will take away more of their earnings? Can he persuade the American people to accept bureaucrats deciding their health care choices? And can his economic stimulus survive a huge increase in the payroll tax on the most productive citizens?

Probably not. Obama will likely not succeed. This speech will be viewed as his high water mark, the time before we came to realize how flawed is his understanding of economics and how supreme is his commitment to expanded spending. It will be seen as a sort of age of innocence before we realized what he had in mind. But it was a great speech … while it lasted.