Obama Knows Best

"Those Were the Days"
by Lee Adams and Charles Strouse

Boy the way Glenn Miller played. Songs that made the hit parade.
Guys like us we had it made. Those were the days.
Didn't need no welfare state. Everybody pulled his weight.
Gee our old La Salle ran great. Those were the days.
And you know who you were then, girls were girls and men were men.
Mister we could use a man like Herbert Hoover again.
People seemed to be content. Fifty dollars paid the rent.
Freaks were in a circus tent. Those were the days.
Take a little Sunday spin, go to watch the Dodgers win.
Have yourself a dandy day that cost you under a fin.
Hair was short and skirts were long. Kate Smith really sold a song.
I don't know just what went wrong. Those were the days.

"Those Were the Days" is the quintessential theme song of conservatives, or at least the charicature of conservatives. Conservatives have long been depicted as yearning for a simpler age of years long past - a time when "girls were girls and men were men." If one were to put a decade to that simpler time, it would probably be the 1950's. It is ironic, then, that the first year of the Obama administration can be summed up with a reference to an iconic television series from the 1950's, "Father Knows Best." Or, in this case, Obama knows best.

Health care is a good example of this. We are being asked to forget the fact that health insurance companies are in the business of providing health care to people, and they are pretty good at it. In order to be successful, a health insurance company has to provide a service (health care) that people want and are willing to pay for, and they have to turn a profit for their shareholders. Charge too much for the service, and people will take their business elsewhere, causing profits to dry up. Charge too little, and you won't cover costs, and again, no profits. Insurance companies have armies of bean counters, armed with actuarial tables, whose sole purpose is to identify what the proper cost of health insurance should be. Enter the Obama Administration, because they know best. They know that the health care industry is broken, and that if only we had a little competition, competition with the full faith and credit of the United States of America behind it, competition that didn't care if it turned a profit or not, then we could get even better health care and pay less for it. Heck, just take a look at Medicare, they can cut 500,000,000 from Medicare right off the bat, so you can only imagine what they could do with the rest of the industry. Trust us. Obama knows best.

Then there is the matter of how we should handle suspected terrorists captured on the battlefield. What have we learned in the past 10 months? Enhanced interrogation, such as waterboarding, is torture, and, contrary to the findings of CIA, does not provide reliable intelligence. Guantanamo Bay's internment facility is a recruiting tool for Al Qaeda. And terrorists such as Khalid Sheik Mohammed should be tried in civilian courts, in New York City of all places, rather than military tribunals. We are told, by Attorney General Holder, that this gives us the best chance of a conviction, which is interesting in light of reports from former US Attorney Andrew McCarthy that KSM was ready to confess, plead guilty, and accept execution. Yet again, Obama knows best.

Perhaps the best example, however, is Afghanistan. Afghanistan, remember, is the good war. The war we should have been fighting the entire time, rather than this diversion in Iraq. So, what happens when General McChrystal, whom President Obama appointed to the post, requests a minimum of 40,000 additional troops? We don't know yet, because no decision has been made. Forget the fact that General Patreaus, now in charge of Central Command, as well as the Chairman of the Joint Cheifs of Staff have backed McChrystal up. President Obama needs more time to evaluate the request. Recently, it was floated that the President would be sending additional troops to Afghanistan, in numbers close to, but not quite at, the minimum levels requested. If this were true, where did these "appropriate" troop increases come from? With whom would the President be consulting, and if they are better able to assess the needs on the ground than Generals McChrystal and Patreaus, why aren't they the ones in command? But no... what am I saying??? Obama knows best.