Amused Cynic

…and the end of American exceptionalism.  The WSJ’s Daniel Henninger lays it out, calmly, soberly, chillingly.  America as we know it could be over next Tuesday.  Or not.  Pass his column on to your friends who aren’t paying enough attention.  This election is not just about getting yourself an “imaginary hip black friend,” as so many johnny-come-lately political neophytes and dilettantes  seem to think.

Push past the historic candidacy, however, and one sees something even larger at stake in this vote. One sees what Joe (The Plumber) Wurzelbacher saw. The real “change” being put to a vote for the American people in 2008 is not simply a break from the economic policies of “the past eight years” but with the American economic philosophy of the past 200 years. This election is about a long-term change in America’s idea of itself.

I don’t agree with the argument that an Obama-Pelosi-Reid government is a one-off, that good old nonideological American pragmatism will temper their ambitions. Not true. With this election, the U.S. is at a philosophical tipping point.

The goal of Sen. Obama and the modern, “progressive” Democratic Party is to move the U.S. in the direction of Western Europe, the so-called German model and its “social market economy.” Under this notion, business is highly regulated, as it would be in the next Congress under Democratic House committee chairmen Markey, Frank and Waxman. Business is allowed to create “wealth” so long as its utility is not primarily to create new jobs or economic growth but to support a deep welfare system.

An Obama presidency would lead America towards a European “social market economy.”

The political planets are aligned to make this achievable. In the aftermath of the financial crisis, prominent Democrats, European leaders in France and Germany and more U.S. newspaper articles than one can count have said that the crisis proves the need to permanently tame the American “free-market” model. P.O.W. Alan Greenspan is broadcasting confessions. The question is: Are the American people of a mind to throw in the towel on the system that got them here?

This would be a historic shift, one post-Vietnam Democrats have been trying to achieve since their failed fight with Ronald Reagan’s “Cowboy Capitalism.”

Of course Cowboy Capitalism built the country. More than any previous nation in history, the United States made its way forward on a 200-year wave of upwardly mobile, profit-seeking merchants, tradesmen, craftsmen and workers. They blew out of New England and New York, rolled across the wildernesses of the Central States, pushed across a tough Western frontier and banged into San Francisco and Los Angeles, leaving in their path city after city of vast wealth.

The U.S. emerged a superpower, and the tool of that ascent was simple — the pursuit of economic growth. Now China, India and Brazil, embracing high-growth Cowboy Capitalism, are doing what we did, only their cities are bigger.

More sober thought from today’s WSJ:  Obama and the politics of crowds….

On the face of it, there is nothing overwhelmingly stirring about Sen. Obama. There is a cerebral quality to him, and an air of detachment. He has eloquence, but within bounds. After nearly two years on the trail, the audience can pretty much anticipate and recite his lines. The political genius of the man is that he is a blank slate. The devotees can project onto him what they wish. The coalition that has propelled his quest — African-Americans and affluent white liberals — has no economic coherence. But for the moment, there is the illusion of a common undertaking — Canetti’s feeling of equality within the crowd. The day after, the crowd will of course discover its own fissures. The affluent will have to pay for the programs promised the poor. The redistribution agenda that runs through Mr. Obama’s vision is anathema to the Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and the hedge-fund managers now smitten with him. Their ethos is one of competition and the justice of the rewards that come with risk and effort. All this is shelved, as the devotees sustain the candidacy of a man whose public career has been a steady advocacy of reining in the market and organizing those who believe in entitlement and redistribution.

A creature of universities and churches and nonprofit institutions, the Illinois senator, with the blessing and acquiescence of his upscale supporters, has glided past these hard distinctions. On the face of it, it must be surmised that his affluent devotees are ready to foot the bill for the new order, or are convinced that after victory the old ways will endure, and that Mr. Obama will govern from the center. Ambiguity has been a powerful weapon of this gifted candidate: He has been different things to different people, and he was under no obligation to tell this coalition of a thousand discontents, and a thousand visions, the details of his political programs: redistribution for the poor, postracial absolution and “modernity” for the upper end of the scale.

The good news:  The McCain surge may be working.  I can tell you that here in Pennsylvania, the fear among the Democratic insiders is palpable (that The One may lose here).  The fear among many Republicans ( even the squishy ones and the social liberals)–about the true meaning of Obamaism, is equally noticeable.  This thing ain’t over yet, thank God.  Watch for Schumer/Pelosi/Reid/Barney Frank to try to spook the markets again, though.

IRAQ isn’t the only place where the surge seems to be working. John McCain’s gains over the last five days are remaking the political landscape as Election Day approaches.

The double-digit leads Barack Obama held last week have evaporated, as all three of the top tracking polls (the most current and reliable measurements out there) show McCain hot on Obama’s heels.

Zogby had Obama ahead by 12 points last week – now it’s down to four. His margin in the Rasmussen poll has dropped from eight points to three in the last few days. Gallup shows only a two-point difference.

In each news cycle, Obama is on the defensive – staving off accusations of closet socialism and trying to wriggle out of his once overt advocacy of income redistribution. “Spreading the wealth around” has become the anti-Obama slogan – and might become the epitaph for his candidacy, just as “brainwashed” was for George Romney and “Where’s the beef?” was for Gary Hart.

And, as we head to Halloween, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s image is returning to haunt Obama. Yes, McCain refused to use the issue in his own campaign – but independent groups like goptrust.com are using funds from tens of thousands of individual donors to run ads featuring Wright and his relationship with Obama. Just yesterday, a tape surfaced in which Obama described Rev. Wright as “the best the black church has to offer.”

The double dose of Obama’s support for spreading the wealth around and his affiliation with the toxic Rev. Wright are eroding his once-formidable lead.

If the stock market doesn’t send us all into shock again, the election could be very close – with the undecided vote looming large. The key question is: About whom are they undecided?

At the height of the financial crisis, voters couldn’t decide if McCain was really a maverick or just a Bush clone. But the spotlight has shifted: It’s no longer McCain who is caught in its glare, but Obama.

As the Democrat moved convincingly ahead last week, voters began to seriously consider what kind of president he’d be. Bush and McCain seemed increasingly irrelevant as people pondered whether they really want to trust Obama with this kind of power.

Addendum:  It is worth reminding people that the Republican party of Pennsylvania nominated Lynn Swann as its gubernatorial candidate last time around….and it is (now-governor and former DNC chairman)  Ed Rendell who now carelessly tosses around the notion that if Obama loses, it will be because of his race.  The hypocrisy and false cries of “racism” in this campaign will hurt the fight against real racism in the future, whatever happens on Tuesday, unfortunately.

UPDATE:  From The Anchoress, Obama meets Joe the Plumber, in fiction….

RELATED:

I rarely watch Blogger TV shows, but this one, featuring Dr. Helen (aka Mrs. Instapundit) discussing “going John Galt” with PJTV’s Roger Simon and Bill Whittle—in the event of an Obama/Pelosi/Reid/Frank takeover of the U.S. government and economy—is well worth watching.  Who is John Galt, you ask?  Watch.  Starving the government may be our only way to fight back after Tuesday,  and I’d rather go fishing or play my guitar than work, anyway.

Obi’s Sister notes the tendency of escapees from dictatorships to vote Republican, and wonders why Democrats don’t have to take citizenship tests.

Isn’t it amazing that the majority of immigrants, especially those that survived of corrupt regimes, are voting Republican?

The majority among the Russian community in the United States are going to vote for Republican John McCain at the U.S. presidential election- according to the Russian Interfax New Agency.

It is no accident that America has a large Russian population. After decades of oppression, when The Wall fell and the Communist Bloc slowly crumbled, many Russians saw their opportunity for escape. Did they go to France or Sweden or some South American tin-pot Dictatorship? No, they came to America.

Ahhh, those utopias bring back such happy memories. In fact, the campaign rhetoric coming out of the Democratic camp probably induces the same level of nausea they felt on finding out the new neighbor is KGB. Remember the old movie, The Red Danube, where “comrades” would rather commit suicide than be returned to their”motherland”, Soviet Russia? After living and breathing freedom, the worker’s paradise had lost its appeal.

It reminds me of Gerard Vanderleun’s Conversations with Paul (read the whole thing!)

“Because in Russia, freedom can go away. Here never. If I vote for best”.

I dearly hope Paul is right.