Matt Welch and Nick Gillespie Live Chat Online at WashingtonPost.com, 11a.m. ET Today!

July 20, 2009

Reason Editor in Chief Matt Welch and Reason TV/Online Editor Nick Gillespie will do a live online chat today at 11a.m. to discuss their assessment of President Obama’s domestic agenda, which appeared as an op-ed in Sunday’s Washington Post Outlook section. Here’s an excerpt:

Barely six months into his presidency, Barack Obama seems to be driving south into that political speed trap known as Carter Country: a sad-sack landscape in which every major initiative meets not just with failure but with scorn from political allies and foes alike. [...]

The key to understanding Obama's predicament is to realize that while he ran convincingly as a repudiation of Bush, he is in fact doubling down on his predecessor's big-government policies and perpetual crisis-mongering. From the indefinite detention of alleged terrorists to gays in the military to bailing out industries large and small, Obama has been little more than the keeper of the Bush flame. Indeed, it took the two of them to create the disaster that is the 2009 budget, racking up a deficit that has already crossed the historic $1 trillion mark with almost three months left in the fiscal year. [...]

In the same way that Bush claimed to be cutting government even while increasing real spending by more than 70 percent, Obama seems to believe that saying one thing, while doing another, somehow makes it so. His first budget was titled "A New Era of Fiscal Responsibility," even as his own projections showed a decade's worth of historically high deficits. He vowed no new taxes on 95 percent of Americans, then jacked up cigarette taxes and indicated a willingness to consider new health-care taxes as part of his reform package. He said he didn't want to take over General Motors on the day that he took over General Motors. [...]

What the new president has not quite grasped is that the American people understand both irony and cognitive dissonance. Instead, Obama has mistaken his personal popularity for a national predilection toward emergency-driven central planning.

Read the whole thing here.

Go here to participate in the live chat.

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Comments

phalkor|7.20.09 @ 9:50AM|#

The Washington Post is the libertarian newspaper, right?

Mike Laursen|7.20.09 @ 10:06AM|#

Did you read the WaPo commenters on Nick and Matt's article: The Washington Post is now the libertarian right-winger newspaper.

hmm|7.20.09 @ 10:13AM|#

I refuse to participate in any event with America hating traitors like these two.


I learned how bad they are in the WaPo comment section.

Spoonman|7.20.09 @ 10:13AM|#

I think most Obama fans just couldn't get through the article to comment on it, Mike. Reading things contrary to your beliefs is hard.

Xeones|7.20.09 @ 10:20AM|#

YOU ARE PETHETIC TRAITORS TO TEH OBMAMA how dare you

phalkor|7.20.09 @ 10:20AM|#

WIN!
When did Fox News start writing articles for The Post? That's the credibility of this article.

ALSO
ACORN THUGS are getting paid $16/hour from the stimulus bill to infect these conversations with their invectives and namecalling.

Where do I sign up? Sure it's less than I get paid now, but I get to infect things!

|7.20.09 @ 10:20AM|#

Wait- I thought Obama totally reversed the course of American history.

hmm|7.20.09 @ 10:25AM|#

I think most Obama fans just couldn't get through the article to comment on it, Mike. Reading things contrary to your beliefs is hard.

Both sides did just that. I commented on it in the other thread. I think someone coined it "bar room politics." It's like watching kids argue over who's dad can kick who's dad's ass.

phalkor|7.20.09 @ 10:28AM|#

I didn't know libertarian writers were nothing but "kinder, gentler Limbaughs". I'm glad the fine commenters at WaPo could clear that one up for me. This is illuminating, Imma read more.

phalkor|7.20.09 @ 10:43AM|#

I see I missed the boat on the comments. It's good to know that reason is turning me into a rightwing hack.

Mike Laursen|7.20.09 @ 3:39PM|#

Mixed in with all the clueless WaPo commenters decrying Welch and Gillespie as right-wingers, there was one who also threw in an insult about Gillespie's leather jacket. I had to give him some props for at least knowing something about Gillespie.

jk|7.20.09 @ 10:01PM|#

Gillespie goes off on the Von Trapp family, Welch reaches for a bong, and a questioner calls them neocons.