Manchester Union Leader: Obama's agenda: Forcing us to 'share'

"There is no question, Barack Obama the man is a new and exciting presence on the national stage. His plan for governing the country is not. It is nothing more than failed redistributionism wrapped in pretty new paper. That isn't change. It is a failure of imagination. And it is a betrayal of trust in the American people and of the ideals on which this great and free nation was founded."

While I agree with the Union Leader that Obama's plan is nothing more than regurgitated redistributionism re-packaged for the 21st century, I take issue with the newspaper's description of the Senator from Illinois. There is nothing exciting about failed socialist policies or a politician who lacks the moral courage to take a stand against his increasingly radicalized party.

I suspect the Union Leader meant to say that Senator Obama is "charismatic." And I wouldn't argue with that. But then, so was Adolph Hitler. A person may be charismatic when they engage in oration but remain dull intellectually. Ian Kershaw, writing about Hitler, explains that, "By any stretch of the imagination Hitler’s rise and fall was extraordinary. He was not an intellectual. He produced no great works of philosophy or art. He was not a military leader of genius or insight yet this petit-bourgeois Austrian came to power constitutionally in 1933 and remained in power for 12 years and by 1941 he commanded a European empire not seen since the days of Napoleon. He was also the instigator of a genocidal war of unparalleled scope and brutality."

Now obviously I'm not trying to compare Senator Obama with Adolph Hitler in the strict sense. I merely intend to show that an intellectually dull human being can rise to power. And in their rise to power, such people (while remaining charismatic in oration) offer agendas which really suffer from a "failure of imagination."

Senator Obama is indeed very charismatic. Sadly his economic agenda, which is anything but inspiring, is the real "bridge to nowhere." Let's hope Joe American realizes this before he takes a drive onto that bridge.