Three thoughts on the election

For what they might be worth:


1. By far the most troubling thing about the re-election of Obama is what it says about what the American electorate has become. It might seem puzzling that the ongoing economic implosion of the European economies did not serve as a warning, an admonitory example, of where Obama's policies necessarily lead. But in my experience we learn unwelcome lessons only through personal, immediate, and direct revelatory experience, and that's what it will take. To coin a metaphor for the holidays, our economic thinking will clarify when this Christmas Train finally flies off the tracks and lands us in Greece.

2. There is a perverse feedback loop between economic failure and the expansion of the entitlement state: The worse the economy gets, the more people become dependent on government support -- and they naturally will vote for the continuation and expansion of benefits someone else is paying for. The common view was that Obama's failure to revive the economy made his re-election less likely, but I think it made his re-election more likely. What was presumed to be a bug turned out to be a feature. Worse, the entitlement state, which Obama represents, inevitably expands with every round of economic failure, because, once instituted, benefit increases are forever. The ratchet goes in one direction only. Or, to loosely quote David Frum, "Over the long run, the knife of government always cuts left."

3. The re-election of Obama is not the disaster that his election in 2008 was, because with the GOP retaining control of the House, government remains divided. The principle of divided and competing powers has always been the keystone of our system, the only reliable protection the individual citizen has from the depredations of government. The words that should send a shiver down the spine of any thinking American are these: "It's time for those people in Washington to finally set their partisan disputes aside and begin to cooperate so they can get things done."  A chilling idea if there ever was one. Gridlock is good, and the more of it, the better.

Byron