A PENNY WAITING FOR ...

There was he, B. O., Barack Obama, grinning only slightly less broadly than he was waving, above a podium placard that read, “Change We Can Believe In.”

The poor placement of the preposition disturbed me less than his foolish grin, itself better than the implication that change is some sort of sure-fire catholicon. Am I averse to change? Why, certainly not. When I ring up the dermatologist’s office and discover the waiting time to an appointment is three months, it seems to me the AMA should change its quota system and allow more of that specialty to trickle though the system; when I’m driven off the roadway by a mammoth truck with an “oversize load” sign as license, I figure the laws that allow my brush with death should be changed; whenever the local high school library looks and sounds like a zoo, I feel that behavior tolerances should be modified there; and when I see a high school grad functionally illiterate or unable to make change for a $5 bill, I’m assured that what passes for education at places in this country needs drastic alteration.

I’ve lived enough years, however, and not many are required, that the fraction of things that change for the worse is too high, and that if government engineers one, the odds on improvement are about 12-5 against. Therefore, anyone that blabbers about the virtue of change for its own sake earns my instant mistrust. Too often it’s “Out of the frying pan, and you know what else.” Furthermore, I feel that those that say, “There are things I don’t like, and B. O. wants change, so I guess I’ll vote for him,” are too irresponsible to have that right. All in all, I feel I have things rather well and have no intention of risking the sacrifice of a good life for a politician’s idle claims.

Change is B. O.’s trademark, though, for his own stated views shift so frequently and drastically, he’s a regular chameleon.

When it comes to exactly what he longs to change and the means by which these revolutionary improvements are to be effected, B.O. is generally enigmatic, if not downright evasive. We must await his election to be informed of the panaceas in store for us. In one category of tactics, however, he has been explicit; like a political Robin Hood, he will tax the living daylights out of most of us. Flushing money down problem holes is standard liberal practice, after all, and in his evanescent Senate career, he has shown himself to be near the top of that heap.

In Yves Chauvire’s opinion, this fellow raises more alarms than were heard on September 11, 2001.