EXCERPTS:
"Two historic events happened in the Gulf of Mexico this spring: Unimaginable amounts of accidental oil rose from a hole one mile below the water's surface. Bigger than that, the federal government was exposed as the Wizard of Oz, unable to do anything about it.
In the movie, Dorothy and her friends in Oz admit the Wizard's limits. Not here. After a century of faith in the government's omnipotence, the discipleship can't believe this is happening....
[They believed] that with things like health care for the poor or protecting the environment, the private sector would never step up. [They were] willing to pay high taxes to let government do it, no matter how stupid, corrupt and inefficient the government might be, because that was better than the alternative, which was nothing.
Whatever the validity, for most of the postwar period, many people bought into this Faustian bargain. Throw money, accept the inefficiencies, and hope the government does more good than harm.
Arguably, achieving certain public goods this way could have endured for the Democrats—but only if programs like Medicaid remained as modest as their originators promised. Or if government's advocates had made choices. We can do this (Medicare for the elderly), but not that (Medicare for all, now called ObamaCare). But any liberal suggesting judgment or restraint—a Sen. Pat Moynihan— was tossed off the magic bus.
Now government's inefficiency has become indefensible and its fantastic costs, its oceanic spending, a clear and present danger.
Re-read Barack Obama's nomination-acceptance speech in Denver, an amazing compendium of promises ending with: "America, we cannot turn back (applause) not with so much work to be done; not with so many children to educate, and so many veterans to care for; not with an economy to fix, and cities to rebuild, and farms to save; not with so many families to protect and so many lives to mend."
The speaker of those words can't stop the oil, but his language shows how indiscriminate faith in government omnipotence has become, and how incapable the believers are of targeting discrete goals, rather than vapor-filled clouds such as "saving the planet" or "mending lives."
This truly is the land of Oz.
But Toto has pulled the curtain back, and it looks like this year's clear-eyed electorate is ready to go home to Kansas.
