FROM THE NORTH - AT 10:31 A.M. ET:  We've noted here before that some of the most perceptive assessments of Barack Obama have come from foreign journalists.  Here, Canadian scribe Rex Murphy proves that in a surgical strike on the Obama way of governing.  From Toronto's Globe and Mail: 

We know that he is the one of the most ambitious men to enter the White House...

...The scope of that ambition is there to see, even if his cool manner and casual demeanour disinclines most to register the evidence. He's a bit of a magician, a deft misdirectionist.

I'm glad someone noticed.

The financial emergency may be looked upon as the greatest sleight of hand in modern or any other politics. The crisis was real - not incidentally, still is, and hot as ever. But Mr. Obama has taken the angst and anxiety of the financial crisis, with the attendant "permission" it gave him for drastic action, and transferred that permission to the overhaul of medical care, education, the wholesale redefinition of energy policy and the imposition of a vast government presence in the operation of American business.

It is, ironically, the so-called "shock doctrine" in action, manipulating a crisis to enact an agenda. Ironically, because it's not dark Cheneyesque "neo-cons" doing the dazzling shuffle, but the great bright vessel of "social justice" and change.

Oh, say it, Rex, say it!

This is Ozymandian ambition, or the ambition of an Alexander who wept when there were no more worlds to conquer. With ambition on the Obama scale, there will be tears at the end too - either his, that nothing will remain to engage him, or from those who will bear the price of his audacious ambition should the whole great experiment tumble and fail.

COMMENT:  I wish we had more commentary like that here.  We do have some, Charles Krauthammer, Ed Lasky, and the Power Liners are great examples.  But not enough.

Oh, the term "Ozymandian" refers to a poem by Percy Shelley.  You can read it here and draw your own conclusions.

May 3, 2009