Inaugural auguring: Clues from 2009 speech

President Obama’s second inaugural address is now history, and unlike various posthaste pundits, I will reserve to history the right to judge it.

Nonetheless, the occasion of the inauguration does remind us that it is wise to be wary of speeches in general, and their grand pronouncements in specific, for oftentimes rhetoric does not reflect reality.

Take, for instance, the president’s highly praised 2009 inaugural address.

“On this day,” President Obama said after his first election, “we come to proclaim an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn-out dogmas that for far too long have strangled our politics.”

In other words, he declared his intention to lead as a statesman rather than a politician. He was making crystal clear that he understood just how dysfunctional Washington had become, and told the nation he would lead the charge to fix it.

“The stale political arguments that have consumed us for so long, no longer apply,” he said, and American waited for something new.

But what we got instead was more of the same old stale political arguments. For the next four years, the president didn’t have time or inclination to meet with Republican lawmakers, and when he did, it seemed his main purpose was to scold them.

And though the president acknowledged in his speech that many Americans perceive the government as more of a problem than a solution, he didn’t govern as if that were true.

He said, “The question ... is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works” — something all of us could agree with. But four years later, there is almost universal agreement that government — the federal government in particular — does not work. The Congress cannot pass a debt ceiling worthy of the name. It instead passes debt “elevators” which only go in one direction — up! Heck, the Senate can’t even pass a budget, let alone live within it.

So much for the president’s insistence in 2009 that “those of us who manage the public’s dollars will be held to account, to spend wisely, reform bad habits, and do our business in the light of day.”

Was it “the light of day” when Congress passed the 2,000-plus page health-care bill without reading it? Was it wise spending when the government paid out billions of dollars to buy used vehicles in order to turn them into scrap metal? Were any bad habits reformed in Congress, in the State Department, in the Pentagon?

The answers to all these questions are a resounding NO, which is why we must conclude that the president has not just given us government that does not work — he has given it to us more abundantly.

Back in January 2009, in the midst of the worst economic crisis of the past 70 years, President Obama said, “The state of our economy calls for action: bold and swift. And we will act not only to create new jobs but to lay a new foundation for growth.”

And yet, the only bold and swift action that ensued was enlarging government while the private sector lagged. Health care became the No. 1 priority, and despite widespread resistance, it was passed (through the issuance of petty grievances and false promises) — ensuring even more government bureaucracy and intrusion in the future.

Apparently when President Obama rebuked the nation for “our collective failure to make hard choices and prepare the nation for a new age,” he wasn’t talking about finding ways to put people back to work or how to stanch the bleeding of our already anemic economy by government leaches who always want just a little more from the private sector.

Perhaps the disconnect between the president’s words and his actions comes about because most Americans think of government as a necessary evil to be endured whereas President Obama views it as a means to an end — namely redistribution of wealth.

This ambition should have come as no surprise to anyone who listened to the president’s first inaugural address. He defined the success of government as “whether it helps families find jobs at a decent wage, care they can afford, a retirement that is dignified.” In other words, he saw government as a protector of livelihoods, rather than a protector of liberties.

Such a view — envisioning the role of government as the beneficent dispenser of entitlements — no doubt accounts for a large part of President Obama’s popularity, but it also accounts for the majority of his failures.

Of course, the president now has four more years to reverse course — and heed the warnings of our Founders against aggrandized government. Perhaps he will do exactly that. If not, the writing is on the wall. And as in the Book of Daniel, where an extravagant king was “weighed on the scales and found wanting,” so too will the hand of providence pass judgment on Barack Obama — just as it does on all of us.