RUSH: ABC News has posted a story. “Obama: Occupy Wall Street ‘Not That Different’ From Tea Party Protests.” This is an interview that our old buddy Jacob Tapper did with Obama that runs tonight on Nightline. In the interview, Obama embraces the protests, defines their purpose, and concludes that the Organize Wall Street protests are not that different from the Tea Party protests. In the interview he confirms his commitment to remake America as he envisions that, not as Americans do, who make the country work. It’s his vision which we’re in the middle of seeing and experiencing, which is a dwindled private sector and a nation in decline.

Obama wants to manage a nation in decline. It is what we deserve. We have been an illegitimate superpower for way too long. We became a superpower by stealing resources from around the world with imperialism and a military, and it’s time we found out what the rest of the world has had to live like because of us. And nobody can convince me that that is not Obama’s attitude and mind-set.

Now, here’s a story from the FinancialTimes.com, by Gideon Rachman. “America Must Manage Its Decline — Recently I met a retired British diplomat who claimed with some pride that he was the man who had invented the phrase, ‘the management of decline,’ to describe the central task of British foreign policy after 1945. ‘I got criticised,’ he said, ‘but I think it was an accurate description of our task and I think we did it pretty well.’ No modern American diplomat — let alone politician — could ever risk making a similar statement. That is a shame. If America were able openly to acknowledge that its global power is in decline, it would be much easier to have a rational debate about what to do about it. Denial is not a strategy.

“President Barack Obama has said that his goal is to ensure that America remains number one. Even so, he has been excoriated by his opponents for ‘declinism.’ Charles Krauthammer, a conservative columnist, has accused the president of embracing American weakness: ‘Decline is not a condition,’ he declared. ‘Decline is a choice.’ The stern rejection of ‘declinism’ is not confined to the rabid right. Joseph Nye, a Harvard professor and doyen of US foreign policy analysts, regards talk of American decline as an intellectual fad — comparable to earlier paranoia about the US being overtaken by Japan. Thomas Friedman, a New York Times columnist, has just published a book that is subtitled, ‘What went wrong with America — and how it can come back.’ What is not permissible, in mainstream debate, is to suggest that there may be no ‘coming back’ — and that the decline of American power is neither a fad nor a choice but a fact.

“Admittedly, AmericaÂ’s relative decline is likely to be much less abrupt than the falling-off experienced by Britain after 1945. The US is still the worldÂ’s largest economy and is easily its pre-eminent military and diplomatic power. However, the moment at which China becomes the worldÂ’s largest economy is coming into view — the end of the decade seems a likely passing point. Of course, it is true that China has its own grave political and economic problems. Yet the fact that there are roughly four times as many Chinese as Americans means that — even allowing for a sharp slowdown in Chinese growth — at some point, China will become ‘number one.’

“Even after the US has ceded its economic dominance, AmericaÂ’s military, diplomatic, cultural and technological prowess will ensure that the US remains the worldÂ’s dominant political power — for a while. But although economic and political power are not the same thing, they are surely closely related. As China and other powers rise economically, they will inevitably constrain AmericaÂ’s ability to get its way in the world. That is why America needs to have a rational debate about what ‘relative decline’ means — and why the British experience, although very different, may still hold some valuable lessons.”

This thing goes on and on and on from the Financial Times, a Brit publication saying that we’ve gotta admit it, our day is over. We are fini, and we’re only gonna come to grips with this if we admit it. And we have got to manage our decline. What this guy doesn’t get is, we have a president who is doing that. And we’ve had this before. There was a president in the past whose name was Jimmy Carter, and his four years constituted another chapter in the wishful thinking of America’s decline, or for America’s decline, and then something went wrong. Ronald Reagan. Who didn’t believe in the whole concept of America’s decline. But this president does. This president thinks we deserve it. This president is engaged in securing it. I’m talking about Barack Hussein Obama, mmm, mmm, mmm. And that’s why the election is curious.

Get the way this guy ends his column, and again his name is Gideon Rachman. He says,
“These days the British have learnt almost to revel in failure. They buy volumes with titles like the ‘Book of Heroic Failures’ in large numbers. It is quite common for the supporters of a losing English soccer team to chant, ‘WeÂ’re [poop] and we know we are.’ This is not a habit I can see catching on in the US. When it comes to managing decline, self-abasement is optional.” This guy’s worried that something’s gonna happen and we are going to fail in managing our decline. But we have to admit it ’cause it’s happening. ChiComs are gonna take over America. They don’t want America to be the superpower anymore, the world hates us, they don’t like us, they don’t trust us, Obama knows this.

What this story does not describe — you know, there’s a myth here that the ChiCom economy is — I mean they’ve got a growth rate of 9%, and they’ve had to revise it downward. Is slowed down a little bit, reported in the mid-7%, I think, maybe low 8% growth. But they are still a communist country and what they’re trying to do is manage the influx of free market capitalism with communism in terms of managing and controlling the population. And they’ve already got people, entrepreneurs who have succeeded who want out. It’s not a haven. It’s a haven for manufacturing, but people don’t want to move and live there.

Of all the people I know who are scouting for someplace in the world to go if Obama succeeds, I never hear anybody say they want to go to China. Singapore, Australia. The only thing that bugs them about Singapore is the caning. They gotta shut up when they go over there, but I don’t hear anybody talking about wanting to actually live in China. Do business there, yeah. But not live there. The ChiComs do not have an immigration problem like we do. So to draw this moral equivalence here is a big, big mistake.

This nation has been underestimated by people since its founding. People around the world, socialists have longed for the day they could bring this nation down a peg or many, and they’ve come close a couple times. Carter, Woodrow Wilson and so forth. But there always has been the white knight riding into the rescue. That’s why we look at this election as so crucial.