A few weeks back Barack Obama gave his speech accepting the Democratic Presidential nomination at the Democratic National Convention in Denver. After he outlined a vast array of goals and aspirations to improve America Obama articulated how Americans have repeatedly had their hopes dashed by the broken promises of politicians.

While the majority of Obama’s goals and ideals are inarguably beneficial to America, there are certain parts of his politics and his policies that beg for more explanation. In economics and foreign policy, Obama has laid out plans that have little chance in becoming anything more than another politician’s broken promises. Perhaps as the election draws closer Obama will explain his plans in greater detail and demonstrate that his plans are more believable than hopeful. However in his DNC speech Obama’s plans made little political or economic sense.
Obama’s proposed economic policies presented various problems for those who listened with a critical ear. After saying that John McCain’s policies were designed only to help the privileged few, Obama mentioned one of McCain’s chief economic advisors calling Americans “whiners” in terms of dealing with their economic hardships. This is quite bold coming from a Democratic nominee who said that the citizens of Pennsylvania were bitter and holding onto their guns and religion.

In an era of over spending, increasingly over-burdened state budgets and large amounts of government waste, Obama’s economic plan calls for cutting the taxes for 95 percent of America’s working families. He also plans to increase education spending and cut the capital gains taxes for small businesses. While these initiatives will do much to help increase America’s efficiency and innovation, it is unclear how the nation’s debt will fail to be increased by these policies. Obama says that he will be able to go through the federal budget, eliminating programs that are failing and bettering the programs that are effective in order to face our century with a “21st century bureaucracy”.
While this is a noble effort, Obama is ignoring the inherent problem in all bureaucracies: capture theory. How will Obama know which programs are working without massive amounts of wasteful investigation that is at best suspect in a time when the government has made a habit out of duping the public on both sides of the aisle?

The most obvious way to cut spending in our government and thereby the deficit would be to eliminate, or perhaps only limit, our nation’s participation in armed conflicts overseas. Obama pointed out in his speech that America has continued pouring large amounts of money into Iraq in spite of an Iraqi government surplus and that we should concentrate more resources in Afghanistan. Obama then went on to contradict his own position to say that he will stay in Iraq until we reach a “responsible” end to the war. Obama continued to say that you should not occupy one nation while trying to fight a terrorist organization that operates in over 80, insinuating that he will continue or perhaps expand our “war on terror”. He also claimed that America needed to be able to respond more strongly to international aggression such as Russia’s recent incursion in Georgia, but a stronger stance towards the largest foreign holder of nuclear weapons may be a little audacious even for Obama to hope to get away with.

Hopefully Obama’s promises are more than empty political words meant to garner votes, but until he lays out his plans in more detail, his politics and policies are not feasible. While hope and change are very important parts for whomever becomes America’s next President’s policies, succinct policy knowledge should be important to every informed voter who believes that there are some things that should be learned from the Bush administration.

Obama’s speech inspired many, but it should inspire more questions than anything else. Although Obama challenged McCain to a debate on national television, it is America that should be challenging Obama to prove that he is not creating a false image for us to believe in.

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