Today, a remarkable 72% of Americans rate big government as the nation’s greatest threat.

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How momentous and delicious a moment in history for libertarians and conservatives willing to indulge in schadenfreude – that German term for the joy derived from the misfortune of others.  Namely, to witness the mad holiday scramble among the Obama Administration and their liberal accomplices as ObamaCare collides like a slow-motion Hindenburg into cold, hard reality. 

Those who inflicted that enormous, indecipherable, complex law upon an unwilling population now claim, without a trace of humor or irony, that the law’s enormity, indecipherability and complexity account for its cascading failure.  As if this was some sort of unforeseeable or even inevitable consequence of attempting to suddenly commandeer one-sixth of the world’s largest economy. 

American Spectator editor Bob Tyrell this week labeled ObamaCare “the most colossal public policy botch in American history,” and it’s increasingly difficult to disagree. 

This week provided substantiation for that assertion, by way of a new poll from Gallup. 

Since 1965, Gallup has asked Americans to identify “the biggest threat to the country” among three options:  big government, big business and big labor.  In that nearly 50-year span, presidents and other federal officials have provided innumerable reasons to distrust the government, from the way in which the Vietnam War was conducted to Watergate to Jimmy Carter’s domestic and foreign debacles to recessions. 

Despite that often-depressing five-decade record, it took the Obama Administration, and more specifically ObamaCare, to generate today’s new record level of fear toward our own federal government. 

Today, a remarkable 72% of Americans rate big government as the nation’s greatest threat.  In contrast, despite five years of an administration that has demonized and scapegoated private enterprise, just 21% list big business as the greatest threat, with only 5% listing big labor.  When Obama began his presidency in 2009, 55% identified big government, 32% said big business and 10% said big labor.  Just one decade ago, only 47% of respondents listed big government as our gravest threat, with 38% listing big business, and in Gallup’s initial 1965 survey, 35% listed big government, 29% said big labor and 17% said big business. 

So in the five years since the halcyon promises of “Hope and Change,” Barack Obama has failed to close the Guantanamo Bay enemy combatant prison, to pacify America’s overseas enemies, to bring our allies closer, to make good on his trillion-dollar “stimulus” promise to reduce unemployment to 5% by now and to “bring justice” to those responsible for the Benghazi attack, the IRS abuses, Operation Fast and Furious or the Justice Department eavesdropping of news reporters. 

On the other hand, Obama has accomplished something even beyond the capability of Ronald Reagan, America’s most accomplished post-war president.  Namely, to convince a record number of Americans that, in Reagan’s words, “government isn’t the solution to our problem, government is the problem.”  If Obama could’ve chosen an area in which he proved more successful than Reagan, that probably wouldn’t be it. 

While White House Press Secretary Jay Carney attempted to dismiss that fact as reflective of generalized dissatisfaction with Washington gridlock, that doesn’t withstand even passing scrutiny.  Obama’s own personal and job approval ratings continue to plumb record depths.    Moreover, Presidents Reagan, George H. W. Bush, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush all dealt with hostile houses of Congress controlled by a rival party, yet aversion toward big government never reached this astronomical level. 

The most immediate and obvious causal factor is simply ObamaCare and its foundation of false promises and wholesale incompetence.  Before ObamaCare, approximately 85% of Americans had insurance, and were either satisfied or very satisfied with their coverage and healthcare.  Yet Obama thought he knew better.  Now, even 53% of uninsured Americans, the people whom ObamaCare was supposed to benefit, object to the law according to a new CBS/New York Times survey.  And according to The Wall Street Journal, $303 million in ObamaCare exchange grants to the state of Oregon resulted in just 44 enrollees, for $6.9 million per person. 

ObamaCare has thus come at a catastrophic cost for many Americans, and unprecedented political cost to Obama himself.  It has, however, also provided a concrete lesson regarding the danger of government overreach. 

And judging by this week’s new Gallup poll, it’s a lesson that Americans are already taking to heart.  May it not be soon forgotten.