Obama Socialism

What Kind of a Socialist is Barack Obama? No Kind | FrumForum: "One can examine his time in the Illinois and U.S. Senate to investigate whether he ever proposed the nationalization of the American economy."

Dear Mr. President,

I have long known you are not a Socialist. Neither for that matter was Saul Alinsky. I'm sure like me you have little interest in these labels. They exercise the paranoid, put money in the pockets of the Drudge-ites and provide Dick Morris with new ideas. Face it. You are a centrist. It takes one to know one.

Doesn't mean we are not radical in this or that respect. Just that we have no use for anything but what works. Socialism has proved wanting in the it works department.

What you want to do is repair capitalism. By infusing it with a bit of American fair-play spirit. By actually getting the financial community to take some risks. Like employing people. Dreaming up new ideas. Changing the product trajectory from junk and McMansions to something, er, useful.

My real reason for writing, sir, is that I saw you behind the wheel of a car looking happy. That to me is a stern and ominous sign. It suggests you think we can recover without moving away from the automobile, away from oil and away from metrosprawl.

Take it from me, you can't.

Now will it take nationalization in the future to create the sort of society that would actually be just to all its residents? If you don't believe this question has to do with the paragraph immediately above, we are not seeing eye to eye.

You see, sir, the crisis is too pronounced not to be faced. And the answer will require you to be a visionary beyond anything you have done to date.

Building a world beyond oil the American way is the project. Being honest the mission. And achieving it the prize.

What say? You will not get there behind the wheel of a car.

Dear Mr. President, On This Socialism Business . What Kind of a Socialist is Barack Obama? No Kind, says David Frum. But how about the future?