Many Americans like me, I’m sure, were puzzled recently over a statement made by that tower of eloquence, Barrack Obama. A seven-year old asked a pretty basic question of Barack –“Why do you want to be President?” As Obama stumbled through an answer that was seeking a sentence he proclaimed “America is not what it once was, uh, what it could be..” He then implicated his daughters in saying he doesn’t want them to grow up in a country like, well I guess like it is today.

            So it might be useful to figure out what era Obama was talking about that he would choose for his daughters, and by the way, the rest of us. Let’s look at Obama’s proposals and see what they would bring and what period of our history would best compare. Obama wants to retreat from Iraq without winning or assuring stability, and he has made it very clear that his response to high energy prices is a windfall tax on oil companies amongst other spending proposals. These are major and very well documented pieces of his movement for “change”.

            As I look back on history, the period of time which had the same characteristics Obama’s proposals would bring on was the Jimmy Carter seventies. Jimmy Carter endorsed and signed a windfall profits tax on the oil companies. Gas prices did not go down and our energy crisis prevailed until the Reagan deregulation. Among the features of the Carter policy were long lines at gas stations and even a little rationing. Carter oversaw the period after the Vietnam withdrawal and debacle, and the projected weakness in our slashed military budget resulted in communist expansion around the world, as well as allowing the Iran regime change and the introduction of Islamo-Fascism terrorism worldwide.

            We have challenges in our country today, but we are not “what we once were” in 1979. But, I too, know that is what we “could be” if Obama is elected, and I pray common sense will not let that come to pass.