I think the OP and some of the other posters in this thread consider the thread title to be a rhetorical question and have no interest in actually discussing the topic. They certainly aren't going to take comfort from any words coming directly from the Obama camp.
As far as Obama's overall outlook on the government and it's appropriate scope, I think the philosophy he laid out in his 2nd book is sincere. To paraphrase, he argues that there are functions that the government is inherently well suited for, and others where government simply isn't the best tool for the job. While he has some pre-conceptions as to which areas are suited to the government (esp. education, infrastructure, and long-term basic scientific research), he doesn't feel that any individual program is sacrosanct to the point where it should be immune from performance metrics. He believes that programs that aren't accomplishing their stated purpose should be targeted for reform, replacement, or removal. He believes that greater transparency from government will make it harder to hide bad earmarks from the media and the voters.
Do I actually expect Obama to demonstrate fiscal discipline if he's elected? Too soon to tell. I consider the test to be what he does if/when the economy picks up. I can tolerate targetted deficit spending during a downturn, especially if it's contributing to education/infrastructure or other high yield investments. If the economy is healthy and growing, however, government really needs to figure out how to run a balanced budget, and ideally pay down some debt with surplus so a the % of the annual budget that simply goes to debt interest payments can start to decrease. That sort of discipline will depend on Obama as well as the people he surrounds himself with and congress.
What I can't stomach is the implication that the theory behind supply-side economics, given 20 years of post Reagan Republican presidents and their tax cuts, has any empirical evidence showing "trickle-down" out-performs government dollars invested in education/infrastructure/research. As best I can tell, the recipients of Bush's tax breaks simply ship their production overseas and speculate in Ponzi real-estate debt, while allowing America's youth to fall behind the curve (set by countries who do invest in science and education), becoming a 3rd tier workforce, and strangling long-ranging basic research because not enough private investors can stomach funding a project that doesn't yield marketable results within the next 4 fiscal quarters.
John McCain's support of the Bush Tax Cuts damns him in my eyes not only for the lack of fiscal responsibility, but because he's still clinging to an economic theory that sounded nice when a handsome Californian actor was selling it, but which has utterly failed our country in practice over 20 years of Republican rule. I suppose I could start a thread saying "how many of our country's problems will the Bush/McCain tax cuts solve?", but it would be a reverse of the OP's approach, in that to me, that's a rhetorical question.
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