The legacy of a President depends not only on his own actions, but on those of those who preceded him. The history of one’s predecessors often shapes that legacy. President Hoover left the last great depression to his successor Franklin Roosevelt, who only made inroads into the problem with the outbreak of World War II. I am sure that I am not the only one who wonders why our Navy was such a sitting duck in Pearl Harbor. An unthinkable conspiracy, you ask? Why not? Politics is neither a clean nor an honest profession. Remember, old men declare war, young men die. FDR certainly did not end the depression with his attempts a social engineering legislation or his alphabet soup of make work legislation. He ended it with a costly war and the industrialization of a post war America, left in the hands of his Vice President.

Roosevelt left Harry Truman the war in the Pacific and a weapon of mass destruction, of which Truman was never informed as he served as Vice President. Truman used the bomb to end the hot war and left Dwight Eisenhower with a Cold War, which he in turn left to Jack Kennedy who in turn left it to Lyndon Johnson, who passed the buck to Richard Nixon, along with a defective bulwark of social engineering, from which the nation suffers today. Nixon, who, although an excellent President, when it came to foreign affairs, ruined himself and his legacy through his paranoia and distrust of his opponents.

Today’s students, who have never been given the true history of the French and American wars in South East Asia, do not realize that the Viet Nam war was a product of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. And yet, Nixon bears the burden of that shameful war, thanks to the revisionists who run the National Education Association.

Nixon, was followed by Jimmy Carter, whose feeble attempts at social engineering, a seemingly common trait among Democrat Presidents, almost destroyed our economy, and left inflation and a butchered foreign policy to Ronald Reagan, who saved us from a second Carter term and who, besides standing up to the Soviets, bringing the Cold War to an end, brought America to the pinnacle of its international power. Reagan, despite the Iran Contra Affair, left a strong America to his Vice President, the first President Bush, whose administration ran in neutral for four years, but for the first Gulf War, probably qualifying him for a second term, but for another wave of social maladjustment, and the campaign of another Socialist wannabe.

A misleading campaign for “change,” along with a desire for “spreading the wealth,” ( sound familiar) brought us William Jefferson Clinton, who shamed himself and the office of Chief Executive, through the numerous “….gates” for which his administration and his First Lady and staff will always be remembered. Clinton took over a nation which still retained the Reaganesque claim of authority and power and left office with an America vulnerable to foreign interests, through his failure to respond appropriately to the attacks of our newest enemy – radical Islam. He and his party also set the stage for perhaps the biggest housing, credit and banking failures since the great depression, again through their attempt at social engineering and a reconstruction of society. Clinton’s Reconstruction was about as successful as the Reconstruction under Presidents Andrew Johnson and U.S. Grant.

Clinton left President George W. Bush to face the growing threat of a radical religious upheaval, and the heating embers of a credit and banking bubble. Bush did what had to be done, despite the dissent of notables such as Senators Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi, to name but two of the Socializing Left, to protect American soil, protect American interests abroad and to protect our allies. However, even with his turn to the Right, and a favorable Supreme Court, with a obstructive Democrat Congress, he was unable to prevent the planted seeds of the Clinton administration from blossoming into a full fledged domestic and world wide recession and threat of nuclear confrontation in the Middle East.

Today, President Obama, on the domestic front, finds himself inheriting a spoiled harvest, initially planted by those who tried to create a social system where there are no classes, where everyone is “entitled” to home ownership, just as Adolph Hitler promised, in 1933, a VW cheap enough for every German’s garage, no matter what their means. In Obama’s world, the left does not seem to find fault with a woman giving birth to 14 children, while having no husband nor means of support, other than the state and federal government. Obama is heir to the state of California, where the leftist legislature must look to the Federal Government for bail out funds versus going bankrupt. Obama finds the U.S., once the greatest industrial power on the earth, stymied by areas of wrongful over regulation and lack of oversight of foreign competition to the point of American industrial demise, and a banking system and stock market with just the opposite – no regulation or oversight at all. Obama inherits an aging baby boomer population whose retirement savings have evaporated into a stock and bond market, riddled with corruption and greed.

What “change” does he offer? Sen. Dodd to nationalize our banking system, while at the same time using his position of power to garner a favorable mortgage on his personal home. I really will feel safe with Dodd overseeing a nationalization of our banking system. Oversight like that we don’t need. Obama offers us a Secretary of the Treasury who does not even know the income tax system well enough to pay his own taxes. Oversight like that we don’t need.

No matter what Obama’s good or bad intentions were, prior to taking office, and I am willing to give the man the benefit of doubt, he will waste his administration’s resources trying to repair the damage previously and currently done by his own party. I believe that the next four years of an Obama administration are already etched in stone. America will have another Carter gloom and doom period, in its history, and the canvas has already been prepared for his artistic work, the first brush stroke of which is the now famous “stimulus package.”

President Obama, knowing full well what he was facing, during his campaign, promised America “change.” Now we are seeing the change, as it appears in the Obama White House and the Democrat majority Congress. The “stimulus package,” as it is written in those 1000 plus pages, is simply more of the same old Democrat spending policy, which we all know has to be followed by the proverbial “tax” policy, that brings “spend” to the big dance. Perhaps that is why the stock market continues to fall and the credit markets continue on their dry spell, while the precious metals rise. Those who know the truth just wont invest in a future which is so predictable and dour. You cannot throw good money after bad money and expect success. The so called “toxic assets” must be swallowed and digested by those who both sold and by those who swallowed the poison. It is too late for an antidote. All this “stimulus package” is going to do is prolong the suffering. Besides, I would prefer not to pay for my neighbors, whose home purchase was way beyond their means. I have problems enough paying for mine, now that the bursting bubble has wiped out any equity I may have built up in my home.

The talking heads cry, however, that something must be done at this “crisis.” “We cannot just sit still and do nothing.” Yes we can. We can sit back and take a hard look at the situation rather than jumping in with our eyes closed. Sometimes, doing less is better than more. Time will begin to detoxify those assets and produce new answers to the current questions, which seem to be going without answer by our elected officials. If, prior to the Clintonian era of total home ownership, these same folk were renting because they could not afford a home, then perhaps they should be renting again, and allow their home values to fall to that level commensurate with their true value. Then the process of home ownership can begin again, but at a lower price level. Of course the values will begin to rise, and those who remained in their homes will see equity develop. Yes, billions of dollars will go up in a negative equity conflagration, if we allow the process to follow to its natural end. How though is that any different than the trillion dollars being spent on absolutely nothing but empty holes and bottomless pits?

We cannot bail out everyone and everything each and every time that we go through one of these “Dutch Tulip Manias.” If we do, then we never learn from our mistakes, and all we do is inflate the economy without, at the same time, stabilizing values. I am not saying that the new administration cannot assist in stabilizing legislation, to prevent widespread banking and auto industry failures, while at the same time placing demands on the use of those bailout dollars, just as it places limits and regulations on the states, when federal dollars are dolled out for state projects. However, a gross, poorly thought out bailout of every person who reached for the golden ring is not within reason.

Perhaps the Dutch government should have bailed out each and every fool who paid fortunes for tulip bulbs, only to find out that said bulbs had little if any value. Our Constitution limits not only the size of our government, but it also limits its reach into our private lives. The more we “allow” it to do, as in the form of this stimulus package, the less freedom we shall have when the smoke clears. Perhaps that is the purpose of this “stimulus” package. I certainly hope not, but I would not put it beyond the Democrat party to reach their Socialized goals in this manner.

History, our past, if not studied and understood, not only repeats itself, but it shapes the future as well. Your future and the future of your children and grandchildren has been written. It is not a comforting story.

JLK