So Obama’s “Small Government”?

In a recent interview with the Wall Street Journal, President Obama offered up this little gem that should really clear things up for all of us:

I think the irony — and you wouldn’t know this from reading your publication’s editorial page — (laughter) — is that I actually would like to see a relatively light touch when it comes to the government.

A “relatively light touch”? Thank God for that!

You see, when I think of the term “a relatively light touch”, I think of telling GM and Chrysler that as much as it’ll suck for every sector of this country, we’ll be better off over the long haul by letting them sink or swim on their own. It’s telling them that our tax dollars, while very attractive, weren’t meant for that use.

A “relatively light touch” would be to look for Constitutional incentives in health care, rather than creating a government run health insurance that will directly and negatively impact the health insurance industry for decades to come. A “relatively light touch” wouldn’t involve ramming through bail outs for the International Monetary Fund so that they can bail out banks all over the world. After all, we don’t need to bail out banks here so why would we want to bail out banks overseas?

Another fun tidbit was this:

And so it’s puzzling to me sometimes to hear the standard conservative critique of what we’re doing, when essentially every step we’re taking really involves cleaning up the mess that we found when we arrived here at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

Mr. President, please. The American people are tired of you yelling about how you’re trying to clean up President Bush’s mess. Yes, this started under his watch, I won’t argue that one bit. But you are the President now. Six months into the job, you’ve only got a limited amount of time before people start saying that it’s now officially your mess. Instead of saying “But this is Bush’s mess”, it’s time to start saying that it’s now your mess and you’re responsible to fix it. Harry Truman thought that the buck stopped with him. You seem to be content to pass it on a little more.

Another bit worth discussion is this:

I’ll use one more example because I think this is salient, and that’s the whole issue of executive compensation. I don’t think I’m alone in believing that the incentive structure in many companies has not been to reward high performance; that you had huge compensation packages for people who ran their companies into the ground, and that there was very little oversight from either shareholders or compensation committees on the board.

First, I do believe that it’s wrong that people got multi-million dollar bonuses for running their companies into the ground. On no planet does anyone, liberal or conservative or libertarian, believe that is right. However, there’s nothing the government has the legitimate power to do about it. The fault falls onto the stockholders, and they’re the ones who needed to do something. Of course, if the government hadn’t bailed out those firms in the first place, the market would have ultimately taken care of this issue.

Of course, the President was right in that there’s little oversight from shareholders. Where he’s wrong is in thinking that it’s the government’s responsibility to pick up that slack. Let those firms fail, and shareholders all over the market will step up their oversight, I promise. Shareholders and bond holders want to recoup their investment, and if failings on their part can result in not getting their money back, they’ll not fail in those areas again. It’s just natural.

Speaking of which, it’s great to see the President is concerned about investors. What I’m curious about is where that concern was when he shafted bond holders in Chrysler’s bankruptcy, and in GM’s by extension. He had no problem pushing the UAW ahead of bond holders, showing little concern for investors, but he tells the WSJ that he’s looking out for them?

I think the thing to keep in mind is that President Obama doesn’t believe in a real small government approach. Instead, he uses phrase “a relatively light touch” because that’s what he honestly thinks he’s using with all this, despite what anyone else may try and say. The key word here is “relatively”, meaning that he feels that compared to what some want, he’s going pretty tame here. Really, that’s scary because for the President to know about those thoughts, he has to be listening to the people having them. I may well be kept awake tonight wondering how despotic those thoughts may actually be, and how long before Obama decides that maybe the “light touch” isn’t going to cut it anymore.

A heavy touch is something that I’m personally terrified we may see before his time in office is up.