Even though Obama has been president for only 11 days, he is well on his way to his first major policy failure in the form of the colossal, inscrutable, larded spending bill, A.K.A. the stimulus package. Obama is asleep at the wheel, and may be held responsible for this atrocity, but Bush and the GOP are really to blame.

As has been widely reported, the stimulus bill contains hardly any stimulus. Even though the concept of Keynesian stimulus is fully discredited and has been proven ineffective time and again, both GOP and Dem alike jump on stimulus as a way to show they care and are trying to help. Still, even by the most generous definition, less than 10% of the bill is an economic stimulus. Only Speaker Pelosi has the nerve to claim that her $300+ million dollar birth control (read alternative lifestyle education) campaign is designed to quickly create jobs. The floodgates of wasteful spending are wide open, and the real purpose of the stimulus bill is to fulfill every far left wish that has been on hold for the past 25 years.

Average voters are getting wise to this sham bill, and since the GOP voted as a block against it in the House, the Dems will wholly own this disaster. Indeed, Democrat Sen. Nelson is trying to revive his bipartisan “gang of 14″ team in an effort to spread the blame at least somewhat to the GOP side. He is well aware that the Senate can pass the bill without any GOP votes, since at least a small handful of GOP Senators will vote for cloture and then take cover by voting against the final bill. Sen. Nelson is motivated by the rational fear of a backlash once voters see the unprecedented slop the Dem super majority has fed its special interests.

Obama should be exercising his authority over his party to control their worst, most self destructive instincts, but he is not. Obama has had precious little to say about the bill, only saying he wants quick action, and that the economy is a disaster. His apparent strategy is to let the extremely unpopular Congress take the fall for the waste while taking credit for quick action. This Clintonesque triangulation fits nicely with the fact that Obama has yet to make a tough decision in his political career. His M.O. is to stay above the fray and placate his followers with kind, but noncommittal words.

As an example of Obama’s capitulation of responsibility, consider one of the most egregious clauses in the stimulus bill: the expanded requirement to buy US materials when spending the stimulus money, or the first shot in a global trade war. After the liquidity crunch, the major cause of the Great Depression was the Smoot-Hawley protectionist act, which stifled global trade and shut down a major part of the US economy. Democrats want to bring back Smoot-Hawley and possibly create a new worldwide depression. Nearly all economists and world leaders agree that moving backwards on trade would be disastrous. The UK’s Gordon Brown publicly opposes protectionism and calls for this part of the bill to be removed. President Obama, on the other hand, has indicated he would review the matter to see if he might take any position at all. This is weak leadership from a politician used to easy calls, and it sends the message that anything goes with the Democrat Congress. As this blog stated last week, Obama will have to make a tough call someday, and the time is now.

Still, how did the pork-fed classes come to think that a $1 trillion dollar spending bill that even Dems can’t claim is a stimulus package was a good idea? Former President Bush is to blame. Bush hardly ever saw a pork laden bill he wouldn’t sign. Bush demanded stimulus even when the economy was expanding. Bush pushed through his own $1 trillion dollar boondoggle in the form of socialized prescription medicine. The Dems need to out-do the GOP on wasteful spending, if only as a mater of pride. The GOP sent legalized corruption to new heights during its disappointing reign, so they hardly have the moral authority to challenge the Dems now. This blog blames Bush’s appalling lack of spending restraint for the new status quo of excessive special interest pandering and pork barrel waste.

Considering the dire state of the world, the inevitable failure of the stimulus bill to help anyone is cold comfort. Possibly a few swing state Senate seats will swing to the GOP in 2010, and the Senate will return to a more balanced state, but the damage will be done. Bush’s bad example and Obama’s reluctance to lead on difficult issues will be a bitter legacy if the recession lingers much longer.

Among the most dubious claims by the Obama campaign in 2008 was that a McCain administration would be Bush part II. While both McCain and Bush were Republicans, they were very different political animals – indeed McCain wears the stripes of a “Blue Dog” Democrat. This campaign strategy is all the more interesting now that Obama is morphing into the great devil Bush. Obama’s ‘Change’ pledge may be nothing more than rhetoric, as Obama is perhaps Bush II.

With so many lives in a tailspin right now, many people are looking to President Elect Obama and the Democrat Congress for help. Contrary to what Bill Clinton said in 1995, the era of big government is just beginning. FDR called his government programs relief. LBJ’s programs were the great society. Bush touted compassionate conservatism, and Obama is promising hope. These programs hold a common morally bankrupt premise that the government is capable of compassion.

Ronald Regan was famous for keeping a checkbook in his presidential desk. Whenever he read a particularly sad story, he would write a personal check to the afflicted party. Liberals derided Reagan’s charity because one person could not possibly cure all the ills of the US. They argued that he was just buying some solace from the guilt of not expanding government social programs. Of course Reagan’s personal compassion was minuscule next to the Obama plan, but it was more real.

In addition to there being no evidence that social programs like The New Deal or The Great Society ever helped their economies, people should also remember that FDR and LBJ never paid for any of their compassion. Like all government programs, they only shifted funds from one group to another. Stimulus programs can not create jobs, they only destroy wealth to concentrate it in the hands of favored industries. The net effect is, by necessity, less prosperity, since the government takes resources from prosperous sectors and transfers them to pet projects that usually could not survive without subsidies.

The benefit to politicians is not just the self satisfaction of appearing to help people. By concentrating wealth through government programs, they buy loyalty. Nobody can identify the jobs destroyed, but it is easy to ballyhoo the new ones created. Obama has pledged to create 3.5 million new eco-jobs, yet nobody questions the over 4 million free market jobs his program will likely destroy. Those 4 million lost jobs might or might not support Obama and his eco agenda, but the 3.5 million new eco-jobs most certainly do know whom to thank. Thus is the wasteful cycle of pork and legalized graft more commonly known as beltway politics.

If you have a job, you have many people to thank. You can thank yourself foremost; you are the one who gets up every morning and goes to work. You can also thank the owners of your company who pay you and provide a place for you to work. You can thank the USA for being a country of laws and freedom that has created more prosperity for the world than any other. Very few people, however, will ever wake up and thank the sitting president for their jobs.

If most people don’t thank their president for their jobs, why should the media credit a president with creating jobs? Presidents don’t place help wanted ads in the local paper, businesses do. When Obama says “yes we can,” he is hitching a free ride on the enterprise of others.

That is the moral problem with collectivist job creation programs. Despite the fact that no public works program has ever pulled an economy out of a recession, or even helped, politicians always try to stimulate a faltering economy. They take credit for job creation they had nothing to do with, and they claim compassion by spending other people’s money. Worst of all, their system of patronage hardens the government’s hold over every facet of people’s lives.

As usual, Reagan had it right. He downplayed his personal role in the greatest job creation cycle ever. Rather, he took credit for getting the government out of the way so the American system of free markets could work its magic. Do not let the avalanche of praise for the $850 billion stimulus bill deceive you into thanking Washington, because the real engine of prosperity is the private sector.