The Good Parent

April 6, 2018

Michelle Obama has every right, and in fact maybe even a marital responsibility, to defend her husband. It’s a little harder to defend his record, especially when it comes to energy workers. Nonetheless, in comments earlier today she likened the Obama Administration to ”the good parent”. In her words, the Obama years were like “the responsible parent, the one who told you to eat your carrots and go to bed on time”.

What do we have now, former First Lady?

“And now we have the other parent. We thought it’d feel fun — maybe it feels fun for now because we can eat candy all day and stay up late and not follow the rules.”

This is insulting on two levels.

First level: The Obama Administration, at the behest of ideological billionaires, aggressively targeted the energy industry with regulations so burdensome that, in many parts of the nation, it closed down completely. We have documented regions across Ohio, Kentucky, and Pennsylvania (and next week we will launch something pretty big to explain this further) where unemployment skyrocketed. Just last week I was in West Virginia and documented some of the devastation caused by the policies of the “good” parent.

Second level: It’s telling the former First Lady chose to use “parent” in her metaphor. Not coach. Not CEO. Not Principal. Parent.

Here’s a news flash: government is not our parent. Government, President, Congress, etc. should not be telling us to eat our vegetables or to go to bed. Government does not know what is better for us. This is such a critical distinction that 240+ years ago we fought a Revolution over it.

There are towns across America where poverty is a new phenomenon. Ten years ago they were thriving, having survived recessions and bubbles unscathed. Those towns are now ruined, and they may never return.

The former First Lady and her husband will probably never visit these towns in person. But their depressed economies, their closed schools, their unemployment, opioid epidemic, real estate crash and poverty is a testament to the policies of the Obama Administration, or, in her words, “the good parent”.