Life

Alex Castellanos writes:

Imagine if, a week before he dispatched John McCain in November, Barack Obama had stood before the American people and told them what he would actually do.

"My fellow Americans, if you elect me president next Tuesday, I propose to grow our government to unprecedented size, increase federal spending to never-imagined levels and double the debt in our country. I will support $1.3 trillion in new taxes even as our recession deepens. I will take advantage of the crisis to expand federal control of health care, the energy industry, banks, Wall Street and the car business, fire GM's CEO and sign a stimulus bill with nearly 9,000 earmarks.

"I will undo much of Bill Clinton's welfare reform by giving 'tax cuts' to non-taxpayers. I will propose a crushing tax on energy, making it more expensive to drive to work or cook dinner. I will choose men who have not paid their taxes as my key economic advisers and will have no one in my Cabinet who can fairly be called a 'businessman.' I will shrivel the deduction charities count on for over 40 percent of their contributions.

"I will propose an omnipotent czar with the power to regulate, sanction and, ultimately, seize any business we judge could threaten the economy of this country. My Treasury Department will enable $165 million in bonuses to failed financial industry executives, and then I will give that industry an additional trillion-dollar bailout, indebting middle-class Americans to buy their toxic assets. All this I will do in my first two months, before April Fools' Day."

If Barack Obama had said this, he would not today be president. Yet this is the record he will run on in 2012. And this is the record Democrats in Congress will have to defend in 2010.