Harsanyi on Obama and fear

The Denver Post's David Harsanyi, like a lot of people, watched Barack Obama's Gitmo speech yesterday and came away with a reaction different than the president would want.

Early in his address, Obama said "Our government made decisions based upon fear rather than foresight."

Former Vice President Dick Cheney certainly disagrees with that statement.

But is fear a bad thing? Writing for Commentary Magazine, John Podhoretz mused, "Fear was an entirely responsible response to September 11. Indeed, it was,
in some ways, the only responsible response."

Harsanyi recognizes that, and more:

Which brings me to the second query: What president doesn't couple
policy and fear? Obama, after all, has been as masterful as anyone in using dread to ram through ideology-driven legislation and silencing political opposition.

During the "debate" over the government's "stimulus" plan, the president claimed that the consequences of not passing his plan would mean the "recession might linger for years. Our economy will lose 5 million more jobs. Unemployment will approach double digits. Our nation will sink deeper into a crisis that, at some point, we may not be able to reverse."

To contend that a country that survived the Great Depression, world wars, a Civil War and the social upheavals of the past century could not reverse a recession without an immense government bailout is farcical. (Moreover, almost nothing the president's economists predicted has come to fruition; the opposite has. We are still
approaching double-digit unemployment and sinking deeper into crisis, despite the passage of the "stimulus" plan.)

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