We all remember President Clinton addressing Congress after the 1994 election.  He said that "the era of big government is over".

President Clinton's remarks were 20 years premature.  The era of big government has hit the wall under President Obama and it is really over now.

Can you seriously imagine any future Democrat running for president calling for a big government solution to anything?  I don't think so, and that's because President Obama has given the US public a first class seat to watch the excesses of that big government.

We are watching liberalism wrecking itself.

I both agree and disagree with Peggy Noonan's column on Friday:

"The scandal also prompts this thought: Barack Obama is killing the reputation of government. He is killing the thing he loves through insufficient oversight. He doesn't do the plodding, unshowy, unromantic work of making government work. In the old political formulation, he's a show horse, not a workhorse.  

The president's inattention to management—his laxity, his failure to understand that government isn't magic, that it must be forced into working, clubbed each day into achieving adequacy, and watched like a hawk—is undercutting what he stands for, the progressive project that says the federal government is the primary answer to the nation's ills.  

He is allowing the federal government to become what any large institution will become unless you stop it: a slobocracy.  

The president and his staff don't seem to know that by the time things start bubbling up from the agencies and reach the Oval Office the scandal has already happened, even if it's not in the press yet, and the answer isn't to prepare proactive spin but to clean up the mess, end the scandal, fire people—a lot of people—establish accountability, change bad practices, and make the agency work again."

I agree that President Obama is a terrible manager, a reflection of the fact that he came into the most difficult job in the planet without any kind of executive experience.  Furthermore, he did not surround himself with a staff that tells him what he does not want to hear.   As we know from Management 101, a strong executive keeps people around him to disagree sharply with him.    

I disagree with Miss Noonan that this is all about leadership and management.  As we learned in the Katrina case, big government is incapable of doing big things.  Unfortunately, it is bloated and staffed with people who get a check every two weeks no matter how well or badly they do their jobs.  In other words, no one gets fired for incompetence and that's a prescription for a lousy organization.

Yes, the era of big government is over. 

I don't expect President Obama to say it but he has put big government in a casket and the burial is coming very soon.

P. S. You can hear CANTO TALK here & follow me on Twitter @ scantojr