NRO's Mark Hemingway on Obama Infomercial

...As for the format of the special itself, aesthetically it was a bit nauseating with all the soft focus and generically uplifing music constantly swelling in and out. As for the content: I'm sorry . . . it's not that I don't care about those experiencing hardship — quite the contrary — but the last thing that should be driving America's voting habits is a half-hour of Manipulative Portraits of Downtrodden Victims of Shadowy Governmental Forces. Whatever our problems are right now, America is not one big breadline. To be fair, all politicians exploit these anecdotal cases but I think Obama's special really pushed the boundaries of my bile duct here.

Just as one particular example, I was struck by the guy at the Ford plant; it noted that his father and grandfather had worked at Ford and retired with full benefits. And now he's only paid to work every other week. Is he suffering currently because of the state of the economy and George Bush's economic policies, or because his dad and grandad's union extracted exorbitant benefits and retirement packages that mean Ford is now saddled with crushing financial obligations?

Trade-offs and moral hazards don't seem to exist in Obamerica and his policy proposals reflect that. There's tax relief in the form of "refundable tax credits" that might as well be welfare subsidies because you get them regardless of whether you're one of the bottom 40 percent Americans that already pay no income tax; he says with a straight face that creating affordable insurance at the same time you dictate who insurance companies must cover is somehow attainable — without destroying the private insurance market; and he talks earnestly about education reform when your party is in the pocket of the NEA and is currently controlling Congress. And again, I was struck by how craven it was that he was adopting a foreclosure freeze that not that long ago he correctly said was a bad idea.

If you really think that Obama's policy perscriptions for our most serious problems are grounded in what is practical, let alone attainable, well then you really are voting for hope — and nothing else.

Link here.