Errors fail as virtues

Washington is the sort of place only Victor Hugo and a character of his crafting, the bumbling policeman Javert, could understand fully. Referring to Javert’s finer points, Hugo observed, “[T]hey are virtues which have one vice – error.” Referring to Javert’s errors, Hugo observed, “The greatest follies are often composed, like the greatest ropes, of a multitude of strands.” Javert lives as never he has before.

Deficit swimming about him as he compounds it, President Barack Obama has disclosed through his economic team that not only are increased taxes distinctly possible, the middle class – that treasure trove of constituents upon whose backs he rode to power – should not expect to be spared. That group did expect to be spared, but now hears echoes of Bush the First. Recall Obama’s campaign declaration to the folks of the beloved middle: “You will not see any of your taxes increase one single dime.” What? You believed this?

Here are some among the multitude of strands. Shortly after taking office, Obama pushed through a stimulus bill costing $787 billion. He advanced a mortgage relief plan costing $75 billion. He proposed a budget that would increase the deficit to more than $9 trillion over 10 years, according to the Congressional Budget Office. He strong-armed a climate change bill that will drive up utility costs for consumers. Now he is trying to muscle through a health care plan that will cost an additional $900 billion to $1 trillion.

All of this creates a monetary problem, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner explains between lines. “If we want an economy that’s going to grow in the future, people have to understand we have to bring those deficits down. And it’s going to be difficult for us to do.” This is especially true if Obama and the gang remain determined to spend money as soon as it zips off federal printing presses.

Still, Obama declares victory. The economy, he contends, sat on the brink of volcanic eruption when he emerged from inaugural balls to quell the pending flow of molten lava. “[W]e’ve pulled back from the possibility of a depression,” Obama says. “That’s not the danger.” So pay up. Protection ain’t cheap.

Neither is saving the country by spending it into the stone age, a fact that did not escape a onetime Obama foe whose personal history dates back almost that far. “[I]f you pump trillions of dollars into the economy, you will see some recovery,” Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., said. “But the long-term consequences are going to be, unfortunately, devastating unless we do something about it.”

McCain treads close to presuming what Obama already does, that the economic clouds have passed. Similar presumptions prevailed in the 1930s, until increased taxes under Franklin Delano Roosevelt rekindled the gloom, driving unemployment to an average rate of 17 percent over that decade. We can only hope to avoid a recurrence of revised history.

In the meantime, soaring deficits, increased taxes and broken promises loom. Geithner, repeating his boss, sees health care reform as “the path” to stalling deficits’ rise. In fact, it is a path in the opposite direction, principally because Obama’s plan does almost nothing to lower costs, the facet of health care most desperately in need of reform.

The strands of the president’s great American makeover are unraveling. As this happens, perhaps a country awakened to an unfolding crisis can avert the folly of Javert. “Take the cable thread by thread, take all the petty determining motives separately, and you can break them one after the other, and you say, ‘That is all there is of it.’ ” Javert ignored this. If America does the same, she might find the misery has just begun.