Leave it to a utopian socialist barely tethered to reality to suggest that a campaign to "Win the Future" should begin with an emphasis on technologies proven as failures long ago. Obama is so stuck on the green leftovers on his plate from a steady diet of 60's environmentalism and climate change alarm that he is unable to visualize a truly brave new world. Only a blinkered utopian would consider the erector-set primitive Soviet Sputnik project as a symbol of the future.
The Russians may have beaten us to the punch with the first satellite launch, but their space program was as turgid and unimaginative as the rest of the centrally managed Soviet economy. With the puppy-dog crush Obama displays every time he imagines the glory of all things Communist, one could hardly have expected him to celebrate the truly significant achievements of the American Apollo program.
Ask any 10 knowledgeable earthlings about the crowning achievement of space exploration and 9 of them will tell you it was the Apollo 11 moon landing. And how about the other dreams for our future suggested by B.O. in his SOTU address? Posing as a hip techno-cat, Obama suggested that winning the future entails increased reliance upon electric cars, high speed light rail, solar and windmill technologies.
While the thought of increasing the number of electric cars in use in the United States to 1 million by 2015 may titillate the Sierra Clubbers and the denizens of 90210, most adults recognize that the prospects for vanity products like the Chevy Volt are not much more practical than the electric vehicle displayed at the 1867 World Exposition in Paris by Austrian inventor, Franz Kavogl.
High speed rail? Another mid-19th century concept with a minor upgrade and a pitiful prognosis. Robert J. Samuelson examined what he described as "A Rail Boondoggle" in 2009:
The Obama administration's enthusiasm for high-speed rail is a dispiriting example of government's inability to learn from past mistakes. Since 1991, the federal government has poured almost $35 billion in subsidies into Amtrak with few public benefits....In a country where 140 million people go to work every day, Amtrak has 78,000 daily passengers. A typical trip is (federally) subsidized by about $50.
Don't get me started on windmills. The windmill was invented in the first century A.D. by Heron of Alexandria and windmills were used in Persia as early as the 9th century. Providing marginal economic benefit, the windmill is probably most noticeable for ruining Dutch landscape paintings as it's almost impossible to find a Dutch canvas without an ungainly windmill blighting the horizon. The technology has but minimally improved since Heron first used his windmill to play an organ. Today the windmill is the house organ for the environmentalist movement, as the best thinking displayed by the greenies remains firmly rooted in the dark ages.
The colluding mainstream media continues to tout B.O. as brilliant, but this hollow "Win the Future" mantra reveals that a walk through Obama's stream of conscious thought would scarcely get your feet wet. We can't possibly win the future by relying on the president's woefully inadequate chosen technologies of the past. American conservatives recognize Obama's SOTU misdirection as just another example of liberal sleight-of-podium. Barack Obama's genuine aim in this speech was to keep us from examining the present. B.O.'s amateurish first two years were clearly losers, and his inept administration will undoubtedly come a cropper both domestically and in foreign affairs. It will be up to the revitalized American Congress to Win the Present.
Ralph Alter is a regular contributor to American Thinker.
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