Remember the priceless moment in the movie Casablanca when Captain Renault (Claude Rains) blows his whistle and closes down Rick’s café?
“I am shocked,” he huffs. “Shocked, to learn that there is gambling going on here!” At which a croupier bustles up to him and presses a wad of banknotes into his hand: “Your winnings, Sir.”
I was reminded of that scene during the opening of President Bush’s State of the Union message last night.
The man who didn’t veto a single spending bill in six years lectured the nation with a straight face on the need to impose spending discipline in Washington.
The man whose own party crammed the biggest number of earmarks into spending bills in the nation’s history wagged his finger at Congress and declared, “The time has come to end this practice.”
The man responsible for the biggest expansion of federal entitlements since the Great Society vowed, “We must take on the challenge of entitlements.”
Well, Mr. Bush is not the first president to have used his State of the Union message to execute a 180–degree policy turn. Little over ten years ago, for example, President Clinton trimmed his sails to the prevailing political winds by announcing, “The era of big government is over.”
Mr. Bush, for his part, insists that it’s possible for the country to balance the budget without raising taxes and for the government to keep its commitments on Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid without burdening future generations.
I’ll reserve judgment until I see the details, but I won’t be “shocked, shocked!,” if the numbers don’t add up.
