What Would Clint Eastwood Do?

Regarding the nation's purpose, Clint Eastwood and Barack Obama couldn't be further apart.

• By DANIEL HENNINGER

The Barack Obama budget document just released is not a budget. It is a work of literature. It is Barack Obama's published apologia for a second presidential term, in which—as the budget and its tax proposals make clear—he will reset the historic balance in America between the public sector and the private sector. This reset will require large wealth transfers—from individuals and companies to the government, and from the government back to the people.
The Obama budget is described everywhere as a "political document," but it is more than that. Mr. Obama hasn't assembled these ideas just to get elected. This budget is a statement of belief. It is a road map of where he wants the country to go.
This being so, it behooves us to revisit the most controversial political event of the past two weeks—Clint Eastwood's Super Bowl commercial for the Chrysler car company.

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Reuters/Chrysler This ad was widely viewed as an argument for a second Obama term. It is undoubtedly true that the pro-Obama admen who created the commercial embedded a pro-Obama spin. Asked about this afterward, Clint Eastwood said simply: "I certainly am not politically affiliated with Mr. Obama."


No sensible person would try to disagree. When The Man With No Name looks at you dead on, as he did Super Bowl Sunday, and says it's halftime in America and the country will come roaring back, you know the man speaking those words wasn't talking about his embrace of the vision in Barack Obama's 2013 budget.
In terms of the nation's animating ethos, these two American icons could not be further apart. Clint Eastwood was talking about an America heading back up—"roaring" forward in the unpredictable, astonishing way it has since at least the days of the Wild West. The Obama budget is about an America whose path will be guided by the government far into the future. He is announcing that in his second term, the days of the private Wild West in America will come to a close.
There is no better way to discover this intent than in the president's tax proposals. Taxes are a nation's Rorschach test. In taxes you discover how a nation wants to be known to others. The burden of taxation may say that a nation more than anything wants to produce (say, Malaysia), or taxes may say that what a nation most wants is to be thought of as fair (Belgium).
What Mr. Obama wants, with the symbolic billionaire Warren Buffett propped at his side, is a wealth tax that redefines the U.S.

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Regarding the nation's purpose, Clint Eastwood and Barack Obama couldn't be further apart.

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Mr. Obama wants to enact the Buffett Rule to ensure that every "millionaire" pays at least a 30% federal tax on some definition of income. He would raise taxes on married couples making $250,000. The tax on capital gains would rise to 30% from 15%, and he would return the estate tax to 45%.
No more certain sign exists that a nation has chosen to step off its historic upward path than the creation of wealth taxes. A nation imposes a wealth tax when it wakes up one day to conclude that it has become embarrassed, rather than proud of, its wealth, which is to say, its national success.
We are not talking here about the vast wealth that closed, crony economies direct toward a small plutocracy and no one else, though this rigged scam seems to be Barack Obama's understanding of the modern American economy. The reality is that since its inception the U.S. has been an open, free economy that let wealth, including vast wealth, flow to dreamers, geeks and college dropouts whose unpredictable success multiplied into greater wealth for others.
Henry Ford's automated car-assembly line spawned a galaxy of parts factories filled with workers. Apple's little machines brought forth a universe of devices and applications.
The timing of such productive explosions is mysterious. The Obama wealth tax will smother and stifle this mysterious force.
France has the world's most famous wealth tax. They call it "the solidarity tax," which is the Gallic equivalent of the Obama "fair share."
Today France is famous for the flight of its productive citizens to other countries. Spain abolished its wealth tax, but then-Prime Minister José Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, a Socialist, re-imposed it last September. What these countries, and much of Europe, have in common are high rates of youth unemployment.
Youth unemployment is the disturbing symptom of an economy no longer dynamic or "young" in the sense of creating new wealth to replace old wealth. The United States lately has also developed relatively high youth unemployment, which suggests the problem here isn't fairness, but fatigue.
The Obama budget says one reason for its wealth taxes is to provide sufficient revenue to protect "the investments we need to grow the economy and create jobs." He does the investing, and the economy grows.
The Obama budget is about national attitude. Before this presidency, the national attitude was indeed caught in the snarling, disgusted, refuse-to-lose tone of Clint Eastwood's voice in that commercial. The new national attitude on offer is caught in the Obama voice: resentful, moody, looking for someone else to blame and then punish.
An American wealth tax will make us wimpy and whiny. That won't be halftime. It will be the final whistle.