Most children balk at eating anything green, whether peas, green beans, spinach or any other kind of green vegetable. It’s difficult for them to understand that eating something that appears unappetizing on the surface (but , may in fact be very tasty) is important for nutrition’s sake. They simply lack the maturity to understand the concept of doing something potentially distasteful merely for the health benefits.

President Barack Obama is a big fan of peas. Or, maybe he isn’t (more likely, he likes them when talking to one group and dislikes them when convenient politically). At the moment he wants us to eat them. Lots and lots and lots of them:

“It’s not going to get easier, it’s going to get harder. So we might as well do it now; pull off the Band-Aid, eat our peas.”

In this instance, it’s clear that the term “eat(ing) our peas” is White House code for “raising taxes to make our base happy”.

In case the significance of 2013 is lost on you, it’s the beginning of what the president expects will be his second term. One wonders if anyone will have the courage to ask him about his John Kerry-esque stance on raising taxes during an economic down turn.

Barack Obama, August 2009:

“Normally, you don’t raise taxes in a recession, which is why we haven’t and why we’ve instead cut taxes. So I guess what I’d say to Scott is – his economics are right. You don’t raise taxes in a recession. We haven’t raised taxes in a recession.”

Barack Obama, July 2011:

“Nobody is talking about raising taxes right now…we’re talking about 2013.”

Obama, like most liberals, believes increasing taxes is the same thing as increasing revenue, which is easy to believe if you accept that economics is a zero-sum game. If you believe that, you’re more likely to believe that banning guns eliminates gun crime and perhaps you even believe that the Earth is flat. Don’t laugh, all three statements are equally logical.

Real leadership isn’t telling people to eat their vegetables. Real leadership is about setting a course based on your core principles and influencing people to follow you. That takes more than reading from a teleprompter or voting “present” in the Illinois Senate.

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