Mark Steyn's take, from
The Corner:
The Barack Obama Lack-Of-Variety Show [Mark Steyn]
For what it's worth, I don't think the night worked for him. The last time anyone did this — Ross Perot — it was so weird a world unto itself (strange-looking guy with pie charts) that, beached between Cybill and Murphy Brown (or whatever it was back then), it had a kind of integrity and distinctiveness. This time round, The O Show followed by the Phillies followed by Jon Stewart cumulatively undermined the candidate.
For a start, the show itself was slick only in a drearily generic way. The waving wheat and music made it seem like a standard campaign commercial, only longer — "It's Morning, Noon And Night In America," which is a big enough problem thanks to the media's Obama cultists without the candidate himself piling on. As for the King Barack Meets [Insert Name Of Downtrodden Subject Here] stuff, aside from the fact that I don't recognize the hellhole this country apparently is, there's something faintly ridiculous in doing it in the middle of the Phillies winning the World Series. Maybe on Super Bowl Sunday, instead of Janet Jackson's wardrobe malfunctioning, Obama could come out and interview people about how our entire rotten society is malfunctioning. And then The Daily Show kibbitzing stepped all over the infomercial even more.
This is an amazing race. The incumbent president has approval ratings somewhere between Robert Mugabe and the ebola virus. The economy is supposedly on the brink of global Armageddon. McCain has only $80 million to spend, while Obama's burning through $600 mil as fast as he can, and he doesn't really need to spend a dime given the wall-to-wall media adoration. And tonight Chris Matthews' doctors announced that his leg tingle has metastasized leaving his entire body like a vibrating cellphone whose ringtone is locked on "I'm In Love, I'm In Love, I'm In Love, I'm In Love, I'm In Love With A Wonderful Guy."
And yet an old cranky broke loser is within two or three points of the King of the World. Strange.
http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=YjMzOWEzMGExNjAzMjQzMDA0MTVjYmM4ZTQyODc1ZGI=
RUSH: Tonight, Barack Obama with his preinaugural address, a 30-minute television buy on some networks. I thought, ladies and gentlemen, I would precede this with a prebuttal to Obama, my own version of an inaugural address, if you will, or a campaign ad. It would go like this.
My fellow Americans, I come to you tonight a few days before an election only six days from now. These are monumental times. We face the worst economy since the Great Depression. People are losing their homes, their jobs, their businesses. Students cannot afford their college loans. Single mothers cannot afford day care; our schools are underfunded; families are growing broke paying for health care. And nobody seems to care, ladies and gentlemen. Nobody seems to represent the middle class. The question is whether we want another eight years of failed policies. I have traveled this nation. From the big cities to our small towns, I have talked to the assembly line worker in Detroit. I have talked to the farmer in Missouri, and working people of this country have had to bear the brunt of eight years of neglect, of policies that have favored the well off and the wealthy. It is time to change the course of the nation, to work together to bring an end to the division that exists in our nation. That's what this election is about: hope, change, the future.
And so it is, my fellow Americans, that I urge you to reject Barack Obama and his cynical campaign for president. I urge you to reject the policies and the wording of the charismatic demagogue. Barack Obama condemns the United States Constitution, our highest law, because it does not empower him to redistribute the income of the middle class and give it to people who do not work. Obama condemns our judicial system not because it's too liberal and too activist, but because it will not impose his left-wing policies by judicial fiat. Obama believes that the tax code should be used not to fund the legitimate purposes of government, but to massively expand the size and power of the federal government. It's time for change. It is time for the kind of change that has made this country great and the change we seek, the change that matters is change that expands our liberty, expands opportunities, expands wealth creation, and expands our horizons. It is time to celebrate capitalism, not demonize it. It's time to celebrate success, not punish it. It is time to ignite our economy, not smother it.
Barack Obama speaks the language of the socialist. Barack Obama peddles class warfare. He peddles human envy. This is not what American leaders do. This is not what would-be American presidents should do. This is the tactic of the authoritarian, to create animosity, to create anger, to create fear, all for the purpose of undermining the strength and the unity of our society. Barack Obama comes from a long line of ideologues who puts the interests of big government above the interests of the individual and the interests of the family. He seeks to replace the American entrepreneurial spirit with government regulations and mandates. James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Ronald Reagan, all embraced the principle that America was a different place because of its respect for the individual. They did not talk about the government redistributing wealth. They did not talk about the government punishing success. They did not talk about the government reregulating the economy. They did not say that paying more taxes was patriotic.
They believed, as our leaders have always believed, that government had limits, so that the American dream would have no limits. They believe that each human being is unique, that he or she has the ability to do great things if left alone to pursue their own interests. They believed that ordinary people could accomplish extraordinary things. They rejected outright the authoritarianism that Barack Obama represents. They each swore to uphold the Constitution because they loved it, not because they saw it as a way to take power and subvert it. Throughout our history, our leaders have understood that private property rights are key to the survival of the individual. If you take his property, you take his livelihood. If you take his property, you attack his spirit. From the day our nation was born, the preservation of private property has been considered a priority of law. Barack Obama wants to use the law to destroy private property. This is what he means, when he attacks businesses large and small, when he insists that there must be limits on what you can earn and keep and pass on to your family when you pass away. He wants the government to control your private property, your income, your assets.
In other words, my fellow Americans, Barack Obama believes that when you go to work each day, when you save some of your money, when you write your will, the federal government can and must be involved in all of those decisions. What would Jefferson, Madison, Lincoln, and Reagan say about that? Jefferson and Madison would call it the abuses of monarchy. Lincoln would call it the abuses of despotism. Ronald Reagan would call it the tyranny of socialism. Our nation is built on the premise that the federal government has specific limited powers. It has important powers, yes, but they are restricted to certain activities. And the purpose of those powers is not to expand the authority of politicians and bureaucrats in Washington, but to organize society around the concept of individual liberty. The individual is not to be a slave to government, he is not to be an employee of the politician or the bureaucrat. He is to be respected and protected from government. That is why we have a Bill of Rights. It is why we have separation of powers. It is why we have states' rights.
For several decades, the left has attempted to destroy these protections. The left does not want to be hemmed in by the Constitution. They have sought ways to avert the legal limits the Founders placed on them and their ambitions, and, sadly, they have made much progress in this regard and they have placed all hope that Barack Obama will finally deliver them the victory over the American people they have craved. And make no mistake, my fellow Americans, a Barack Obama victory is a victory over the American people. And that is, in the end, what this election is really about. Will the American people remain free, or will they once and for all become servants of government? Will the politicians and bureaucrats in Washington be empowered to confiscate the hopes, the dreams, the finances, the property of the people as they see fit, any time they see fit, or will the people still be in charge of their own government and their own destiny? That is what this election is all about.
When Barack Obama says that he will make sure you do not lose your home, that you will go to college, that you will receive free health care, that you will have child care, that you will be free from want, free from desire, free from need, he repeats the lies of past authoritarians who have made the same claims and the same promises and who have delivered nothing but poverty, misery, and hopelessness. Obama represents an ideology for which there are no limits on power. He wants to lead a different kind of government, one in which there are no limits to how much it can confiscate from the people, he wants to lead a movement in which the individual is crushed under the weight of the many. And Obama, like others in the past, speaks of democracy as he pursues anti-democratic goals. As his mentor Saul Alinsky taught, you must use the language of the middle class in order to destroy it.
So I come to you, my fellow Americans, with a simple message. If you believe in the principles and the institutions that have made this nation great, that have given more liberty and prosperity to more people than any other system on the face of the either, that have created the most tolerant and giving and successful society in human history, then I urge you to reject the candidate who rejects these and our principles. If you want to leave your children and grandchildren and generations yet to come a country that is as free and hopeful and magnificent as the country you live in today and that your parents and grandparents left you, you will reject the candidate who rejects individual liberty, private property rights, and the Constitution. Do not allow a charismatic demagogue to change our great nation in ways that will diminish it. You have your destiny and America's destiny in your own hands, you, not the media, not the pollsters, not the pundits, you will decide this election. You will decide if you want to live in America or someplace that you won't recognize in a few years. You will decide if the principles that have served this nation so well will remain our governing principles.
This election, only six days away, is the most important election in our lifetime. Everything is at stake. We know this because Obama has said so. He has thrown down the gauntlet. He is running against our history. He is running against the system. He is running against our liberty, and so it is that I ask you on November 4th, next Tuesday, vote for liberty, your own and the nations. Vote for opportunity, your own and your children's. Vote for America. Vote for McCain-Palin. You will hear Obama tonight say that we have been talking about the same problems for decades and nothing has ever been done to solve them. This may be the most accurate statement Barack Obama has made, or will make, in the campaign. We have been talking about the same problems for decades. The problem is that for most of these decades, the people who have been fixing them have made them worse. It's not that we have done nothing to solve these problems.
We have done everything the left promised would solve these problems, and not one of the problems is solved, unless Republicans achieve a majority and govern as such, and then we get welfare reform. And then we get balanced budgets, and then we get tax cuts, and then we get prosperity, and we get good national security, and we get safety. But at those times where Democrats are strong enough in Congress to blunt a Republican president, or run the whole show themselves, they look back over 50 years and they see the same problems, and we have addressed those problems and we have fixed those problems per se, and yet the beneficiaries of the solutions are still as angry and unhappy and miserable as they were 50 years ago when the liberal Democrats began the fix. It makes no sense to let them keep fixing things when all they do is break them.
END TRANSCRIPT
Listen here:
A Prebuttal to Obama's Infomercial 
