By Ben Cohen
Obama is routinely painted as an ultra left liberal by the GOP. John McCain blasted Obama for being so far left it was hard to even talk to him. As Andrew Sullivan points out, however, Obama is more of a small-c conservative. Witness his tough talk on personal financial responsibility:
We've lived through an era of easy money, in which we were allowed and even encouraged to spend without limits; to borrow instead of save. Now, I know that in an age of declining wages and skyrocketing costs, for many folks this was not a choice but a necessity. People have been forced to turn to credit cards and home equity loans to keep up, just like our government has borrowed from China and other creditors to help pay its bills. But we now know how dangerous that can be. Once we get past the present emergency, which requires immediate new investments, we have to break that cycle of debt. Our long-term future requires that we do what's necessary to scale down our deficits, grow wages and encourage personal savings again."
I'm not sure why this is a particularly conservative point of view - to never spend more than you have, and to save for the future. But it is sorely missing from the values taught to children (and adults for that matter) today. If it is conservative to be fiscally responsible, then I am certainly a conservative. John McCain may claim to be a conservative, but he is by no means fiscally responsible. By that logic, is he then a liberal?
