In his 1996 State of the Union address, President Clinton famously declared that “the era of big government is over.” Last night, in his first address to Congress (not technically a State of the Union, but close enough for government work), President Obama made it clear that the rumors of Big Government’s death have been greatly exaggerated.

What angered me the most about Obama’s speech was its fundamental dishonesty. He announced the largest, most activist government in American history, but cloaked it in the rhetoric of fiscal discipline. Let’s look at a few examples:

As soon as I took office, I asked this Congress to send me a recovery plan by President’s Day that would put people to work and put money in their pockets. Not because I believe in bigger government—I don’t.

Barak Obama doesn’t believe in bigger government? That’s like Henry VIII saying he doesn’t believe in divorce. How about this one:

I’m proud that we passed the recovery plan free of earmarks.

Even the Associated Press, one of the many mainstream media outlets that is totally and completely in the tank for Obama, doesn’t believe that one, as was previously explained here. Another one:

Yesterday, I held a fiscal summit where I pledged to cut the deficit in half by the end of my first term in office. My administration has also begun to go line by line through the federal budget in order to eliminate wasteful and ineffective programs. As you can imagine, this is a process that will take some time. But we’re starting with the biggest lines. We have already identified two trillion dollars in savings over the next decade.

This is a lie on so many different levels. First, and most obviously, the porkulus package that he just signed into law last week doubled this year’s deficit. Therefore, cutting it in half in the next 4 years only gets us back to where we were 2 weeks ago. Second, as best explained by Brian Riedl of the Heritage Foundation here, Obama plays with the proper baseline for the budget, turning a $500 billion budget increase into a decrease. Third, the two trillion in spending cuts that he referenced are not from line-by-line programs cuts, but rather from ending the war in Iraq and repealing the Bush tax cuts (i.e., raising taxes). Here’s Robert Gibbs explaining how that works:

REPORTER: We were told last night that [the $2 trillion savings pledge] basically refers to two things. One is the expiration of tax cuts on the wealthy that would happen next year; and two is a reduction of what we are currently spending in Iraq.

GIBBS: No, I don’t — I — I don’t think so at all. It’s an end of — it’s an end to the commitment and the spending of that money . . . I think that’s — I think that’s certainly a decent part of it. I don’t know, not having seen — at least not having in front of me the formal documents to know whether that’s a hundred percent.”

REPORTER: Okay. But let me ask, is it transparent to say that tax increases are part of savings? And is it transparent to say that we’re going to be saving that much from Iraq, when nobody expects that 10 years out we would be spending what we’re spending today in Iraq? Even the previous administration agreed to get out of Iraq by 2012…

GIBBS: Well, I mean, if we’re not spending the money and the money doesn’t go out the door and the money doesn’t increase the deficit, and the deficit decreases by some amount, ultimately getting you to the president’s goal of halving a 1.2 (trillion dollar) to $1.3 trillion deficit in his first four years in office.

REPORTER: But if nobody expects to spend 10 years from now what we’re spending today in Iraq, and we use that as our baseline, saying, ‘Oh, we’re saving because we’re not spending what we did 10 years ago,’ I mean, isn’t that sort of setting up a funny money comparison?

A tax increase is really a spending cut? Mr. Orwell, please call your office. Finally, there’s this fib:

In order to save our children from a future of debt, we will also end the tax breaks for the wealthiest 2% of Americans. But let me be perfectly clear, because I know you’ll hear the same old claims that rolling back these tax breaks means a massive tax increase on the American people: if you family earns less than $250,000 a year, you will not see your taxes increased a single dime. I repeat: not one single dime.

This is really the crux of it all. He’s selling this agenda using populism, class envy, and antipathy for the rich, but truth is, as explained in detail by the Wall Street Journal here, you could confiscate all of the income of the so-called rich—a 100% effective taxation rate—and still not have nearly enough revenue to pay for all of his spending. Guess who’s going to see their taxes go up then?

Is Santelli’s act a little over the top? Of course it is. But he’s dead right on the facts and political philosophy. And we’ll need more passion like that in the coming years.

MR. GREGORY:  Well, I have read the plan from top to bottom.

MS.  QUICK:  Yeah.

MR. GREGORY:  And the reality, Becky, is that Mr. Santelli’s criticism is shared by a lot of people who think that it, A, is fundamentally unfair to subsidize people who may have misrepresented their income, gotten in over their heads, they owe what they owe.  There’s also real questions about whether modifications work.  Fifty to 60 percent of modifications end up in a re-default.

MS.  QUICK:  Right.

MR. GREGORY:  That’s a fact.

MS.  QUICK:  It is.  And we, we spoke with Jim Lockhart this week.  He is the head of OFHEO, which oversees Fannie and Freddie.  He said that they’re hoping, they’re hoping that 40 percent of these people that they help out won’t fall into foreclosure anyway.  That’s just what they’re hoping at this point.  When Rick was talking, I mean, if you watch him on a daily basis, he does stuff like this all the time.  He yells about Wall Street getting a bailout.  He yells about 10-year Treasury prices on a regular basis.  But the reason this probably picked up steam is he touched on something, touched a nerve that lots and lots of people around the country are feeling.  They, they, they feel like the ants who are now being asked to take care of the grasshoppers.  Now, there were probably some ants that were out there working all summer, too, and you feel bad if they got stuck out in the rain, but there are people who are just angry about the idea that people lied on their mortgage applications and that they’re going to get bailed out.

MR. GREGORY:  You hear about subprime loans, Alt-A loans, which are known as liar’s loans.

The transcript doesn’t capture Gregory’s tone. He was genuinely disgusted by the fact that Gibbs had personally attacked Santelli by name. Thank you, David Gregory. In my estimation, that was the most Tim-Russert-like moment you’ve had since taking over MTP.

Yesterday, CNBC reporter Rick Santelli made headlines by calling for a “Chicago Tea Party.” Personally, I loved it. Here is the full video:

Today, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs responded in a manner that simultaneously scares and sickens me:

Let’s dissect this for a moment. Gibbs’ first response is: “I’m not entirely sure where Mr. Santelli lives, or in what house he lives.” In writing, the question is rhetorical, irrelevant, and nonsensical. I don’t know where Mr. Santelli lives either, but I have a few guesses. I’m willing to guess that Mr. Santelli lives in a home that: (1) he can afford; and, (2) he earned through some combination of hard worker and use of his God-given talents. I’m also willing to guess that, unlike President Obama, Mr. Santelli did not purchase his home through a sweet-heart deal with a Chicago slumlord who has since been indicted on corruption charges. I’m also willing to guess that, unlike the Democrat Chairman of the Senate Housing Committee, Mr. Santelli did not get a sweetheart mortgage from now-defunct Countrywide.

But Mr. Gibbs’ words aren’t the point. They don’t capture the bass tones of his contempt. The unstated, tonal implication is that anything Mr. Santelli says about housing is a non-starter because he is rich and greedy and therefore in not entitled to any opinion.

From there, Mr. Gibbs continues on to accuse Mr. Santelli of not having read the President’s plan. He condescendingly holds up a copy of the plan and says: “It’s available on the White House web site, and I would encourage him to download it, hit print, and begin to read it.” Again, the printed words don’t capture the mocking tone of contempt. On the video, pay close attention to the way he says “read it.” (Funny, but I don’t remember Mr. Gibbs saying “read it” this time last week when they rushed the porkulus bill to the floor so quickly that it was physically impossible for any member of Congress to have read it.) The implication here is that Mr. Santelli is not only rich, evil, and selfish, but also stupid and illiterate. If Mr. Santelli knew how to read, he would obviously agree with President Obama’s plan–as all right-thinking people do.

The sum total of this exchange is that Gibbs cannot even begin to defend the plan on its merits. His only defense is to take the offensive and launch ad hominem attacks on anyone who dares to question the Administration. This is scary, and it is right out of Saul Alinsky, the intellectual Godfather (and, yes, the mob allusion is intentional) to former-community-organizer Barack Obama. Alinsky’s best-known work was Rules for Radicals. Rule Number 14 was as follows:

Pick the target, freeze it, and polarize it. Cut off the support network and isolate the target from sympathy. Go after people and not institutions; people hurt faster than institutions. (This is cruel, but very effective. Direct, personalized criticism and ridicule works.)

Two thumbs way, way up for Rick Santelli–my new favorite journalist.

Oh, and one more thought: