So far it has cost nearly one billion dollars to get Barack Obama elected and inaugurated. That has to be a record breaker. Think how much money that is per vote for him. Whew! And with the stimulus package he is proposing, he won’t be in office a week before he is nearly a two billion dollar president. When people said this was going to be historic, I don’t think they meant it would be the most costly in history, but it surely is.
If it takes this much money for someone to become president, we need to ask not only whether it is worth it, but why? Surely there is a diminishing returns problem here. Anything Obama does, good or bad, will have cost us more than anything any other president ever has done.
Of course, it isn’t all about the money. How the money was spent counts. Some of it was spent on gay-hating activities, some of it on becoming the most visible public figure ever, some of it on Greco-Roman design signaling the rise of empire and the decline of democracy–the Nuremburg rallies of our day. It costs a lot to produce a show. Ask anyone in Hollywood. Ask Leni Riefenstahl, whose budget was probably way less but impressive nevertheless.
Two billion dollars before he did a damn thing. And in a depression too. Wow.
1 Comment
March 4, 2009 at 7:59 am
Welcome back, Sir. They say that when the marmot comes out of hibernation and sees his own shadow, spring is near.
And as to the billion dollar president: isn’t it a trillion? Or two trillions? The first of these signed by Bush as this year’s emergency budget ?
Do you know how many wars the US have waged without paying a cent? Simply by expanding their currency and sending it out to a grateful world?
Not too long ago I read (it was Cohen, the former editor of the IHT) saying it like that “….a currency backed up by a debt so immense that sooner or later it will have to be inflated away.”