While watching the overwhelmingly negative political ads this election season, something has become glaringly obvious to me. President Obama really doesn't have much to run on. Have you seen one ad about the signature achievement of his first term in office – the passage of the Affordable Care Act? Nope. And you never will. Why? Because his $1T program is turning out to be a $3T program. Beyond that, it is so thickly layered that even people in the health care industry don’t fully understand it. The law's complex reach into the private sector has stifled investment and inhibited job creation as business owners – and their capital – sit on the sidelines. What else could President Obama’s ads tout? His stimulus? I am pretty sure there won’t be any ads about that. We’re talking 42 consecutive months of an unemployment rate above 8 percent. The price tag for this achievement? An additional $5 trillion in government debt. This plays into President Obama’s “You-didn’t-build-that” idealogy. That’s where the president notes that while maybe you did work hard to build you’re business, you couldn’t have done it without the help of the government. The government provides the roads, the electric grid, the utilities, etc. (Never mind that taxpayers – the employees the aforementioned business – provided all the revenue for these government projects.) All right, perhaps the president has a point. So let’s see an ad pointing to one positive thing – just one – that his profligate government spending has provided. Have we shored up the nation’s bridges? Have we trended toward energy independence? Have we made great strides toward a cleaner environment. (All things promised by candidate Obama.) No. But what we had done is shored up the Service Employes International Union. Will you seen any ads touting the president’s Cap-And-Trade program? Probably not, since he couldn’t even get that program pushed through a U.S. Senate under a Democrat majority. Will you see any ads about his poster child for clean energy, Solyndra? Probably not, since it and other companies like it have filed for bankruptcy. Will you see any ads about the Gulf of Mexico drilling moratorium? How about the nixing of the Keystone Pipeline? The one thing that the president likes to talk about on the stump is his bailout of the auto industry – specifically General Motors. But you won't see any ads about that either. According to an Associated Press article, “The engine that powers General Motors is running rough. And if the company doesn’t tune it up soon, GM’s comeback from bankruptcy is in danger of stalling. The Detroit automaker said Thursday that its second-quarter net profit fell 41 percent on a big loss in Europe. And there are signs that North America, GM’s main income source, also is slowing. Profits there have fallen for two straight quarters, the first time that’s happened since the company left bankruptcy in 2009.” So what ads will you see? Mitt Romney is a felon. Mitt Romney doesn’t pay taxes. Mitt Romney takes money from El Salvadoran terrorists. Mitt Romney caused a woman to die of cancer. Given the sheer level of exaggeration and outright falsity of some of what we’ve seen so far, I can only imagine what's next: Mitt Romney bought the ammo for James Holmes! Mitt Romney caused the drought of 2012! Mitt Romney buried Jimmy Hoffa under his California home! And it’s only August. Can’t wait to see what September and October bring.
