‘Remake America?’ No thanks, Mr. President

On his 100th day in office, President Barack Obama renewed his inaugural address vow to “remake America.” While the grandiose phrase made me cringe in January, my reaction this time around was far more acute. Why? Because now we know he’s serious.

This nation —- the greatest and freest the world has ever seen —- most emphatically does not need to be remade, despite our imperfections. What would we think of an artist who declared his intent to remake the Mona Lisa or the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel? Not much, I imagine.

Obama’s pledge to remake America is an insult to our history and a threat to our future. Our country, after all, has achieved greatness because of the unique genius of our system in unleashing the creative and industrial energies of individuals. Government has helped largely by getting out of the way.

We cannot, as he proposes, tax and spend and regulate and redistribute our way to a greater tomorrow. To the extent it is enacted, Obama’s program will only dim our long-term prospects. (The European social welfare states Obama would have us emulate have a standard of living 30 percent lower than ours.)

When Obama deflects criticism by saying he is doing what he said he would do during the campaign, he is broadly right. Ideas and ideology matter, and key parts of the electorate chose to ignore this, at great peril to us all. We should have seen this train wreck coming.

Candidate Obama had a hard-left background and voting record. The moderate swing voters who elected him should have paid attention to his record and the heart of his big-government program and less to his winning personality and hollow, happy talk about cutting taxes and deficit spending. When core beliefs collide with empty rhetoric, they roll like tanks through tissue.

Many voters saw the growth of spending and government during the Bush years and figured it wouldn’t make much difference which party won. Some on the right, particularly libertarians, stayed home, discouraged by the same delusion.

Now we know how much it matters. Saying the Obama crowd spends like drunken sailors is an insult to overindulged seamen. Bush was pure bush league next to the spenders now running things into the ground. Halfway into the fiscal year, Washington has spent $1.95 trillion, borrowing $957 billion to do so. By his own account, Obama will double the national debt in five years.

Three decades ago, it resonated with Americans when Ronald Reagan and others decried the “tax and spend” policies of liberal Democrats and big-government Republicans. Voters then had a fresh memory of the failure of confiscatory tax rates and new spending to defeat either poverty in the 1960s or stagflation in the 1970s.

Lulled by a quarter-century of prosperity, too few voters were alarmed by Obama’s liberal agenda and his seemingly inexhaustible enthusiasm for ever larger government. Any Republican would have faced an uphill fight, but John McCain was a terrible candidate, unwilling or unable to draw bright lines of distinction between himself and Obama.

To be sure, America isn’t perfect. No civilization this side of heaven is. But we need tinkering at the margins, reforms that increase personal liberty and economic freedom, not far-reaching, radical programs that enlarge wholesale the scope and power and expense of government.

Obama’s hubris is off the charts. The making of America took generations of men and women, great and otherwise, from the political giants of the founding era and after to the prescient captains of industry and innovation to the millions of average citizens who built our country, day by day, with their decency and intelligence and hard work.

No, America does not need to be remade —- and it cannot be remade for the better by this untenured celebrity president and his cadre of cocksure radicals. Not in 100 days or 1,000 years. On the contrary, this administration promises to wreak all sorts of damage in just four.

Luke Boggs, an executive speechwriter, lives in Alpharetta.