• Government Looks to Past, Free Enterprise to Future – Michael Barone, Real Clear Politics
• 10 Reasons Obama is a One-Term President – Daniel Flynn, Human Events
• Follower in Chief – Fred Barnes, The Weekly Standard
• Congressman joins Carlisle Barracks to greet ‘warrior ride’ – Carol Kerr, United States Army
• Democrats sing union song. With another election year approaching, President Obama is dancing with the ones who brought him. – Charles Krauthammer, The Philadelphia Inquirer

The Rundown

• Government Looks to Past, Free Enterprise to Future – Michael Barone, Real Clear Politics

The Obama Democrats’ February 2009 stimulus package doled out one-third of its $787 billion to state and local governments so that public-sector employees (and union members) would not lose their jobs, as so many private-sector employees were. That worked for a while but did not prevent painful cuts and layoffs later.

Then there were the various mortgage forbearance programs, designed to prevent foreclosures. Precious few homeowners took advantage of them, and many who did ended up losing their houses anyway.

And of course there was cash for clunkers, which increased car sales in the summer only to see them decline in the fall. Hundreds of millions were spent, but with no permanent effect except to increase used-car prices because clunkers traded in had to be junked.

Decision-makers have responded as if they were facing liquidity crises (we don’t have enough cash to pay off debts immediately) instead of solvency crises (we will never be able to pay off these debts). Too often pain has not been prevented, but just postponed — and prolonged.

In retrospect, much of the pain could not be avoided. As economist Tyler Cowen has put it, we were not as rich as we thought we were. Housing bubble prices did not turn out to be real wealth, unless you sold out at the peak and moved to a cave.

Trying to put everyone back in the position they once thought they were in simply won’t work. But it does sound attractive politically. People can remember what life was like in the past.

We don’t, however, know what it will be like in the future. Republicans want less government spending and more leeway for entrepreneurs to create new businesses and jobs. No one knows what innovative products and services will emerge.

That’s the beauty of free enterprise, but it also makes it a hard sell politically — unless voters have figured out no amount of government spending is going to restore the old status quo.

• 10 Reasons Obama is a One-Term President – Daniel Flynn, Human Events

It’s Still the Economy, Stupid The Misery Index, popularized by Governor Carter to hound President Ford only to be President Carter’s undoing, haunts Democrats again. The combined unemployment and inflation rates are at their worst level in twenty-eight years. The stock market has just spent six weeks in the red. The GDP grows at an anemic rate of 1.8 percent. The housing market has been in shambles for five years, and seems to be double dipping. Debt approaches GDP. Flat-lining and nose-diving trend lines make the president’s reelection precarious. Even a browbeaten Bill Daley, the president’s chief of staff, conceded to an incensed National Association of Manufacturers convention, “Sometimes you can’t defend the indefensible.” He said it.

Barack Obama is a formidable campaigner. His presidency is not without accomplishment (see, Osama bin Laden). And occupants of the White House have lost general elections just five times in the last hundred years. But he has governed ineffectively and stubbornly against the wishes of the American people. He could win reelection. But the preponderance of indicators suggests his defeat. This should make conservatives hopeful for change.

• Follower in Chief – Fred Barnes, The Weekly Standard

On almost every major issue since he took office in January 2009, Obama has dumped responsibility on someone else, merely paid lip service, or let the issue quietly fade away. Just this year, the issues that have gotten the no-leadership treatment from Obama include: the deficit, the debt, Medicare, Social Security, Medi-caid, energy, corporate taxes, medical liability, immigration, and Libya.

The president set his pattern of negligible leadership early on in his administration. Rather than draft his own proposals on economic stimulus, health care, cap and trade, and Wall Street reform—his top priorities—he delegated the job to Democrats in Congress.

Even Jimmy Carter, one of our weakest presidents, didn’t do this. And strong presidents, like Lyndon Johnson and Ronald Reagan, never considered deferring to Congress in that way. They followed the traditional practice of drafting specific legislation—two major tax bills and a military buildup in Reagan’s case, civil rights and Medicare in LBJ’s—and pressing Congress to ratify their recommendations.

Why is Obama so leadership averse? For one thing, it gives him flexibility since he’s not tied irrevocably to what congressional Democrats come up with. And it limits his accountability. He’s free to attack Republican proposals without attaching himself to an alternative that Republicans could attack.

• Congressman joins Carlisle Barracks to greet ‘warrior ride’ – Carol Kerr, United States Army

Schroeder was among the wounded warriors using adaptive bikes on a multi-day Warrior Ride through the central Pennsylvania countryside with a special stop to meet U.S. Congressman Todd Platts at the Army War College at Carlisle Barracks, June 17. You embody what is good about America, and remind us of the sacrifices you have made and the price paid for the freedom we all enjoy,” said Platts. “You are truly the heroes of America.”

• Democrats sing union song. With another election year approaching, President Obama is dancing with the ones who brought him. – Charles Krauthammer, The Philadelphia Inquirer

‘Shovel-ready was not as shovel-ready as we expected,” President Obama observed last week, enjoying a nice chuckle about the unhappy fate of his $787 billion stimulus. To be sure, Obama has also been promoting a less amusing remedy for anemic growth and employment: exports. In this year’s State of the Union address, he proclaimed a national goal of doubling exports by 2014.

One obvious way to increase exports is through free-trade agreements. But unions don’t like them. No surprise, then, that Obama has been sitting on three free-trade agreements – with Colombia, Panama, and South Korea – already negotiated by his predecessor.

Under the pressure of dire economic conditions and of the consequences of stiffing three valued allies, Obama appeared ready to relent – only to put up a last-minute roadblock. He’s demanding an expansion of Trade Adjustment Assistance – taxpayer money (beyond unemployment compensation) given to workers displaced by foreign competition, something denied to those displaced by domestic competition. It’s an idea of dubious fairness, but it’s nicely designed to hold up ratification while placing blame on Republican heartlessness, rather than political sabotage by Democrats beholden to unions for the millions they pour into Democratic coffers. (A deal reportedly may be near, but the years of delay have been costly.)

Nothing new here. In 2009, Obama pushed through a federally run bankruptcy of questionable legality for the automakers that robbed first-in-line creditors to bail out the United Auto Workers. Elsewhere, Delta Air Lines workers have voted four times against unionization. A federal agency, naturally, is investigating and, notes economist Irwin Stelzer, can order still another election in the hope that it yields the answer Obama’s campaign team wants.