Obama Gambles Boldly ... But Will Likely Lose

And then, Obama affirmed that he will support big tax increases on the richest 2 percent of American families. Disregarding the fact that these households already pay upward of half of the income taxes, while earning only a quarter of the national income, he singled out the entrepreneurs, professionals, innovators and businesspeople of America for taxation. But he won't raise taxes until he's had a few years to stimulate the economy. He makes one feel like one of the huge hogs in the Chicago stockyards, being fattened up to slaughter the next year.

Can all this work? Can Obama get banks to lend even as he terrorizes them? Can he get the engines of our economy back to work even as he announces that he will take away more of their earnings? Can he persuade the American people to accept bureaucrats deciding their health care choices? And can his economic stimulus survive a huge increase in the payroll tax on the most productive citizens?

Probably not. Obama will likely not succeed. This speech will be viewed as his high water mark, the time before we came to realize how flawed is his understanding of economics and how supreme is his commitment to expanded spending. It will be seen as a sort of age of innocence before we realized what he had in mind. But it was a great speech ... while it lasted.