February 26, 2009 10:20AM # Biden’s Shock Doctrine By [David Boaz](https://www.cato.org/people/david-boaz) --- SHARE Vice President Biden is the latest member of the Obama administration to [declare](http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/02/25/AR2009022501542.html?hpid=topnews) the administration’s intent to use shock and awe to ram through their statist agenda in a crisis atmosphere: > “Opportunity presents itself in the middle of a crisis,” Biden said on ABC’s “Good Morning America.” HT: Johan Norberg, the author of a [devastating critique](https://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=9384) of Naomi Klein’s *The Shock Doctrine*. The Bush administration used crisis tactics, too, of course, ramming through the Patriot Act, the nationalization of airport security personnel, the creation of the Homeland Security Department, and the war in Iraq after the shock of 9/11 and a bevy of bailouts during the economic crisis. As [Steve Horwitz wrote](http://austrianeconomists.typepad.com/weblog/2009/01/stimulus-or-carpe-diem-the-new-deal-wasnt-a-stimulus-package-either.html): > Just as the Patriot Act was a bunch of laws waiting for a political “crisis,” so is much of the stimulus package a bunch of programs waiting for an economic “crisis.” Plenty of earlier administrations used the same tactics, from FDR’s first hundred days of frenetic legislation to LBJ’s forced march to the Great Society after the Kennedy assassination. The difference is, the Obama administration is the first one to publicly and proudly proclaim that they intend to use the crisis atmosphere to force through an agenda that wouldn’t otherwise be possible. ##### Related Tags [General](https://www.cato.org/general), [Government and Politics](https://www.cato.org/government-politics) [![Creative Commons License](/build/cato_2020/images/creative-commons.svg)](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/) This work is licensed under a [Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/).