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| All content taken from The O'Reilly Factor on Fox News Channel. Each weeknight by 6 PM EST a preview of that evening's show will be posted and then updated with additional information the following weekday by noon EST.
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Guests: Brit Hume
"The first inaugural address was delivered on April 30, 1789 by George Washington. He invoked God and Heaven and spoke of 'the eternal rules of order and right, which Heaven itself has ordained.' George Washington appealed for justice, and President Obama made a similar appeal. Rather than focusing on America's vexing problems like an exploding debt and a weak economy, Mr. Obama put forth that the nation's top priority must be imposing 'social justice.' Talking Points disagrees with President Obama's priority. Although social justice is a noble goal, it is simply impossible to do what the President wants to do, which is to ensure prosperity and fairness for every American. It can't be done no matter how much money you spend. Far more effective is building a strong society based upon a robust free market and effective social programs that provide opportunity rather than charity. As the President should know by now, the federal government can not provide for 320-million people. The danger is that President Obama's persistent attempts to redistribute prosperity will bankrupt the nation, causing pain to everyone and making it impossible for poorly educated or disadvantaged Americans to even make a living. The President's address was not an urgent call for Congress to reform entitlements, simplify the tax code, or even stimulate the economy. So it is quite clear he is willing to go down in history as a crusader for social justice, no matter what happens to the economic fabric of the country. He does not want to cut government spending, he does not want to reform entitlements that are threatening the American treasury. Unless there is a radical change in the President's thinking, few problems will be solved over the next four years."
For another view of the inaugural address, The Factor turned to Fox News analyst Brit Hume. "My sense about this President,'" Hume put forth, "is that he is concerned with social issues partly because these other issues, things like invigorating the economy and dealing with the burgeoning deficit and debt, don't particularly interest him. I'm not sure the economy ever really has. When he first took office he got through this stimulus package, which was a grab bag of spending, and then he basically abandoned the issue to take on something that appealed to him much more, a reform of the health care system." The Factor expressed bewilderment at President Obama's stated priorities: "He has to know that the track he's on may cause irreparable harm to the nation, but he doesn't seem to care. He's rolling the dice with the future of every single American!" |
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Guests: Bob Woodward and Jon Meacham
The Factor asked author Bob Woodward to surmise what President Obama wants to achieve in the next four years. "He calls it 'equality,'" Woodward said, "but the question is, how do you get there? I think he knows in his head that you get there by mobilizing the economy and getting the engine going. The greatest social injustice is being unable to get a job." Woodward lamented that President Obama missed a great opportunity at Monday's inauguration. "Suppose he had turned around to Speaker Boehner and said we're going to work together on these things? If you talk to Republicans, they feel Obama doesn't like them, and he's hurting his own cause." The Factor agreed that President Obama genuinely dislikes many Republicans and conservatives: "He feels they are the purveyors of 'white privilege.' The Republican agenda, in his mind, props up white privilege and he wants to tear that down."
Author Jon Meacham, who has written numerous books about U.S. presidents, tried to explain the nation's leftward shift from Ronald Reagan to Barack Obama. "Ronald Reagan's rise was an answer to the excesses of the New Deal and the Great Society," Meacham said. "I think what's happening now is that we know our future is mortgaged but we're apparently not ready to make hard choices. I think we're treading water in the United States and President Obama is in some ways a figure of a treading water era. What we haven't seen with President Obama yet is whether he's able to lead us to make hard choices." The Factor picked up on Meacham's watery metaphor: "When you're treading water you're going further out to sea, and we're so far off shore now that it'll be almost impossible to get back. Maybe the President is locked in an ideological jar and doesn't care about the circumstances, but if he's a man who is genuinely concerned about his country, he has to see the urgency of this." |
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Guests: Bernie Goldberg
Bernard Goldberg entered the No Spin Zone after a long day of watching the media cover President Obama's inauguration. He began by ridiculing Newsweek magazine, whose cover story hails "The Second Coming" of Obama. "The term 'the second coming' has religious connotations," Goldberg observed, "and this is the same magazine that ran a cover that had Barack Obama with a halo. For four years many in the mainstream media have tried to turn Barack Obama into a messiah, and here it is!" Goldberg explained why the fawning coverage of President Obama is dangerous. "The media have fallen in love, the adoration of Barack Obama is embarrassing. A free country needs a strong mainstream media, you can't have a free country forever without a fair press. That's why it's important to hold them accountable." |
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Guests: Mary Katharine Ham and Juan Williams
Finally, The Factor asked Mary Katharine Ham and Juan Williams to opine on President Obama's inauguration address. "The speech was all right," Ham said, "and parts of it were very pretty, but it was markedly more liberal than he sounded last time around. When he runs for office he's good at couching things in a centrist way but there is less need for that now. He is frequently guilty of aggressively dismissing his opponents and mischaracterizing what they believe." Williams praised President Obama for mentioning gays in his speech. "It did have holding power and especially for gay people. Today there was an intersection of history - you had the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, the second inauguration of our first black president, and here he is talking about 'our journey' as an American people. A lot of people believe he's on the right side of history." And with that parting thought, The Factor cut away to live coverage of President and Mrs. Obama's first dance of his second term. |
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