Looking For New Ideas At Obama's Convention?

President Obama has accused Mitt Romney of having no new ideas and I see right through the president's words. He's deploying a tactic that he should realize is just that and nothing more, no substance, no sincerity, and not very intelligent when used as long as he has done it.

Here's how it works and how it's been employed since 2008. First take a crisis that was created by both political parties, the banking collapse and great recession, and claim it's all the out-going party's fault. Then declare every economic and governmental principle of that party, that you don't like, to have been proven wrong. The proof you point to for this depends on your first assumption that one party's actions alone caused the crisis while the other sat on the sideline with halos over their heads. This would be tough without the help of an academic community infected with a liberal bias so strong it should offend any sincere seeker of knowledge, but fortunately for Obama he's got just that. You might even say they created him. It also helps to have a large part of the journalistic community ready and willing to carry your water, which he does. This all sets up the impression of a check-mate with one last bit of semantics. He declares any idea the other party had before the crisis to be old and part of the problem, and any new idea to be extreme.

It's a check-mate that completely aces out your opposition. It's a clever way of saying everything they do is wrong and they can never be right. Although “clever” is only descriptive if enough people are fooled by it. Enough people bought it at first, but it's the sort of thing you can't allow people a lot of time to think about, and four years is lot of time. Only a fool or someone not smart enough to realize their using it would continue to use it to this day.

As For What Romney Actually Said

What Romney did say was jam-packed with ideas. They just were ideas that Obama apparently wants us to reject. I'll not go into a segment by segment analysis to show this. Instead let me just present one. In this one little part is probably the core of what he said and it was intense in content.

“President Obama promised to begin to slow the rise of the oceans, and to heal the planet. My promise is to help you and your family.”

Some analysts, many I respect, said he was simply contrasting Obama's grand vision with his own pragmatism, in hopes that people in today's economy will find that appealing. But, there is so much more being said in this. It's a statement about the proper role of government and that of the president of the United States. Government as Clint Eastwood said, “they work for us”. We shouldn't elect them to lead our families, rather instead they should serve our families so that our families can achieve our goals.

Every president's promise should be “to help you and your family” for that is the only job government has, but for people like our current president and far too many before him, they saw their job as being the shapers of society and the saviors of the world. You can't give governments such high goals without seriously flirting with hubris, probably the most dangerous vice a government can fall to. History is replete with atrocities committed by nations believing themselves to be in the process of transforming society for the better or saving the world from an approaching cataclysm, and I should add, is completely devoid of any lasting good achieved by nations believing such things of themselves.  Social hubris is evil's game and evil has always won it.

With that one little segment, Romney showed his heartfelt commitment to restoring government to its proper role, helping individuals and their families, and at the same time suggesting that his opponent's world-view is dangerously inappropriate in a nation that cherishes individual liberty and dignity.

Now Let's See What New Ideas The Democrats Have

The line of the Obama campaign about how old the Republican ideas are is itself the most worn out idea referenced by it, so it will be interesting to see if Obama's team presents the nation with anything that isn't truly worn out this week. Here are things that should be demanding attention.

They've admitted Obamacare is flawed, so will we see details about how they intend to fix it?

How does Obama plan to work with a divided government if he gets another four years? Does he plan to keep getting nothing done except by executive orders, or does he actually plan to compromise with the Republicans? He's shown little to no history of being able to do that effectively (unlike his Republican challenger), so wouldn't it make sense for him to explain what new approaches to this he has in mind?

The absence of a budget would certainly seem to demand some new ideas to come out of their convention, like what will the first budget capable of getting at least most Democratic senators to vote for it look like?

Oh and while we're talking about this whole general concept of new ideas, if the Republicans need to be presenting new ideas in order to be taken seriously, doesn't that suggest that most of the ideas currently being implemented aren't working? Who's been implementing those?

The task before Obama at this convention is huge. He must show he's not part of the problem and that he understands that government's proper role is not to lead but to follow.

Oh, what's that you say? Am I saying in essence that unless President Obama becomes an individualist like myself he's wrong? Well what do you know. You caught me. See, I told you that tactic of Obama's has long since been over-used. You and I may believe that about government's proper role, but Obama doesn't, so of course he will have little if anything to say to us. Hopefully the independents and moderates will agree more with us than him. If he keeps up the same old tactics, our hopes will likely be fulfilled.

Will he abandon his old tactics? That's what will be most interesting for me to see. It will answer the question many have been asking. Is this guy really as intelligent as he's been perceived to be? If he sticks with this “they have no new ideas” or “their ideas are extreme” tactic we will know the answer is 'no'. Let's see, shall we?