The Mysterious Mr. Obama

Yesterday, one minute apart, I received two email messages that sort of sum up the mixed libertarian views on Barack Obama. First, an old friend forwarded an AP story in which Obama promised to repeal any executive orders that "trample on liberty":

Barack Obama told House Democrats on Tuesday that as president he would order his attorney general to scour White House executive orders and expunge any that "trample on liberty," several lawmakers said. . . .

The Illinois senator "talked about how his attorney general is to review every executive order and immediately eliminate those that trample on liberty," said Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y.

Good stuff! Let's just hope he realizes that Bush isn't the first president to issue executive orders that "trample on liberty." It was President Bill Clinton's aide, Paul Begala, who drooled at the notion of using executive orders to do what Congress wouldn't go along with: "Stroke of the pen. Law of the land. Kinda cool." For a look at some pre-Bush executive orders that might warrant elimination, Obama's attorney general might consult "Executive Orders and National Emergencies: How Presidents Have Come to 'Run the Country' by Usurping Legislative Power," published by Cato in 1999. There he can find information about Clinton orders that nationalized land, sought to reverse Supreme Court rulings, rewrote the rules of federalism, and waged war in Yugoslavia.

One minute after receiving that story, I received another Obama analysis in my inbox. That one was an editorial from Investor's Business Daily titled "Barack Obama's Stealth Socialism." The editorial noted Obama's repeated use of the sneaky phrase "economic justice" and cited a laundry list of spending programs and regulations that Obama supports. It's a pretty scary list for a libertarian, from national health insurance and penalties for companies that do business internationally to huge new federal burdens on employers.

To the extent that some libertarians look favorably on Obama, I think it's mostly negative: Bush and the Republican Congress have been so bad that any alternative looks good. But occasionally Obama does indeed say something almost libertarian. And then he promises that he's the guy who can build a consensus to actually implement Hillary Clinton's policy agenda, and libertarians are reminded of why they rarely vote Democratic. In Obama's case, of course, the confusion is created by his lack of much public record. He was a senator for only two years before he began running for president full-time. Unlike candidates such as Clinton and John McCain, he doesn't have decades' worth of votes and statements to review. So we parse the substantive moments amid his soaring rhetoric and try to determine if he's "the most liberal member of the Senate," "more to the left than the announced socialist in the United States Senate, Bernie Sanders of Vermont," a "a pro-growth, free-market guy," or even a "left libertarian."