It sounded like the Clinton years, with their presidentially proclaimed initiatives on midnight basketball and school uniforms. These are the marks of a shrunken presidency, flummoxed by high unemployment, economic stagnation, crushing debt - and a glaring absence of ideas.
Of course, this being Obama, there was a reach for grandeur. Hope and change are long gone. It's now equality and fairness.
That certainly is a large idea. Lenin and Mao went pretty far with it.
Where does Obama take it? Back to the Democratic obsession with the Bush tax cuts, the crusade for a tax hike of all of 4.6 points for 2 percent of households - 10 years of which wouldn't cover the cost of Obama's 2009 stimulus.
Cost be damned
Which is why Obama introduced a shiny new twist - the "Buffett Rule," a minimum 30 percent rate for millionaires. Sounds novel. But it's a tired replay of the alternative minimum tax, created in 1969 to bring to heel all of 155 underpaying fat cats. Following the fate of other such do-goodism, it metastasized into a $40 billion monster that today entraps millions of middle-class taxpayers.
There isn't even a pretense that the Buffett Rule will do anything for economic growth or job creation (other than provide lucrative work for the sharp tax lawyers who will be gaming the new system for the very same rich). Which should not surprise. Back in 2008, Obama was asked if he would still support raising the capital-gains tax rate (the intended effect of the Buffett Rule) if this would decrease government revenues. Obama said yes - in the name of fairness.
