Why the President’s proposal regarding student loans is even worse than it first looks

I have to admit that I’ve gotten to the point with President Obama that, whatever he’s for, I’m automatically against in the first instance, at least until I’ve had a chance to check it out.  Take, for example, his recent proposal for a “three-year freeze on discretionary, ‘non-security’ spending.”  My very first reaction was, “What’s the catch?”  That reaction was separate from the fact that it’s an obvious attempt to make a populist statement that will appeal to people’s non-thinking lizard brains, and it was separate from the fact that it’s a stupid and lazy way to deal with a massive budget problem.  Of course, I then found out that it is also almost completely meaningless.  Yes, it might save $250 billion over three years, but when one compares that to the trillions of dollars the Democrats have committed on our, the taxpayers’, behalf, who really cares?  This is meaningless theatrics.

In other words, a year’s worth of experience with Obama’s approach to politics demonstrates pretty clearly that virtually everything he does is a lie, a Trojan horse, or ineffectual.  The only area in which he gets a small pass is for sticking it out in Afghanistan.  Otherwise, he also fails in national security, where he’s been responsible for some heroic flails, such as his disastrous Iran policy, his being asleep at the switch both before and after the flaming panties bomber, and his decision to try KSM in federal court, but at least he’s held sort firm on Afghanistan, which is something.

For these reasons, I automatically assumed that there was something dreadfully wrong with Obama’s proposal to nationalize student loans.  This assumption was separate from the fact that I don’t want to nationalize anything, since I think the federal government already has too much power.  My suspicion was that there was something beyond the obvious to dislike about the proposal — and I was right.