Sometimes comes a column so incisive and so well-crafted that it changes the entire course of national debate. We may be witnessing such a phenomenon in the case of Charles Krauthammer’s “The Fierce Urgency of Pork” in today’s Washington Post.

Of course I encourage you to read it all.  But here are a few emphasis-added excerpts from this devastating indictment of the stimulus bill–and the tactics Pres. Obama is using to promote it.

• “A failure to act, and act now, will turn crisis into a catastrophe.” — President Obama, Feb. 4. Catastrophe, mind you. So much for the president who in his inaugural address two weeks earlier declared “we have chosen hope over fear.” Until, that is, you need fear to pass a bill.
• [M]ore damaging to Obama’s image than all the hypocrisies in the appointment process is his signature bill: the stimulus package. He inexplicably delegated the writing to Nancy Pelosi and the barons of the House. The product, which inevitably carries Obama’s name, was not just bad, not just flawed, but a legislative abomination.
• [T]he $88.6 million for new construction for Milwaukee Public Schools, which, reports the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, have shrinking enrollment, 15 vacant schools and, quite logically, no plans for new construction.
• [L]ittle more than the back-scratching, special-interest, lobby-driven parochialism that Obama came to Washington to abolish. He said.
• The Age of Obama begins with perhaps the greatest frenzy of old-politics influence peddling ever seen in Washington.
• After Obama’s miraculous 2008 presidential campaign, it was clear that at some point the magical mystery tour would have to end. The nation would rub its eyes and begin to emerge from its reverie. The hallucinatory Obama would give way to the mere mortal. The great ethical transformations promised would be seen as a fairy tale that all presidents tell — and that this president told better than anyone.  I thought the awakening would take six months. It took two and a half weeks.

When we look back on this era, will Krauthammer’s column be seen as the turning point? I think it’s possible.  Today could be the day the corrupt pork plan died.  Let’s see what emerges from its ruins.

Update: Krauthammer’s column hasn’t sunk in with the president yet.  At a noon event announcing an economics advisory board led by Paul Volcker, Pres. Obama again warned of a “catastrophe” if a stimulus plan isn’t promptly adopted.