I heard the soaring rhetoric again yesterday as President-elect Obama road the rails to Washington: revolution, liberty, freedom, the hope & promise of America, and the path we shall all walk together to renew the promise that is America.
Undoubtedly, we shall all hear it again on tuesday as Barack H. Obama is sworn in as the 44th President of the the United States of America.
But revolutions are not consummated, nor wars won, nor prosperity earned, nor peace secured by bankrupt nations.
And unless President-elect Obama’s actions adhere to the logical conclusions of his rhetoric bankruptcy is exactly where he will lead us.
The fiscal problems he has inherited are massive indeed, but leadership is about taking principled actions that transcend convenience.
If Mr. Obama’s presidency is to be historic for reasons other than the color of his skin I firmly believe he must take bold action and put this country on a path to fiscal solvency.
So far, despite earlier rhetoric of government spending run amok and entitlement programs we can’t afford, President-elect Obama has proposed more deficit spending not less.
We, as a nation, can only run from financial reality for so long: eventually we will have to pay what we owe and live within our means.
President-elect Obama will either go down in history as the man who faced this reality and used his masterful powers of persuasion to save a nation from fiscal ruin or the man who should have but didn’t.
God speed Barack Obama.
