VDH's Private Papers::The Portrait

April 19, 2008
The Portrait
The long campaign season slowly paints true character.
by Victor Davis Hanson
Private Papers

The following article appeared in several entries of NRO’s The Corner

What Went Wrong?

What happened to the Obama and Clinton we watched all last summer? After watching Hillary and Barack now trade snide remarks, one wonders what went wrong? Last summer Obama was the transracial, transpolitical new candidate of hope and change who would campaign in a radically novel fashion, and Hillary was the Wellesley/Yale leftish feminist candidate of elites, who had always tried to tug her husband ever more leftward.

But now? Obama is suffering not from too much love and tolerance, but a disturbing tendency to stereotype almost everyone from his own grandmother to Middle America, as well as past associations with a peddler of hate like Wright. And Hillary? It turns out that she grew up shooting, and is now the bulwark of white middle-class values, defending Middle America from snide elitist caricatures about god and guns. As for the issues, I have no idea where they actually differ, who is the more liberal or conservative, or what they might do if elected.

This election seems like 1952 — an unpopular sitting President, no incumbent President or VP in the race , a war-hero, an elitist 'thinking-man's' candidate, and a contested Democratic convention with lasting bitterness.

The fault, dear Brutus, is not in Kansas, but in ourselves

You couldn't make all this up...

Let me get this straight: Populist and racial healer Barack Obama, in impromptu remarks to zillionaires in Marin County, "explains" to them the rural sociology of Middle America. In anthropological fashion, he warns of their peculiar customs, so, that armed with such brilliant Obamian insight, his campaign workers can approach and win over the natives, who cling to guns, go to church, hate ("antipathy") those who seem different, and scapegoat the other ("anti-immigrant" and "anti-trade"). And all of this is published on the pro-Obama Huffington Post—perhaps because its radically egalitarian editor, Arianna Huffington, is off on David Geffen's 454-foot mega-yacht, cruising the shores of Tahiti.

At some point is there any sane Democratic strategist left, who sees that populist rhetoric and "two Americas" lingo do not go well with the several Kerry mansions, the Edwards' 30,000 sq. ft. domicile, the carbon-consuming Gore spread, the $109 million Clinton tax returns, those burdensome Michelle Obama Ivy-League student loans to be repaid, and Marin County sociology lessons?

No End in Sight

Obama's problems are many, and they probably won't go away since they are predicated on two inescapable facts: 1) the Obamas really are out-of-touch with the experiences of most of America; that they are right when they imply that they are poorer than most candidates such as the Clintons, McCains, Edwards, Kerrys, Gores, Cheneys, Bushes, etc. does not mean that they are not fabulously better off than 95% of the rest of America; 2) they could care less about redressing their lack of exposure, and so see nothing wrong in anything they've said or done — or will say or do in the future. All this doesn't matter in the primaries perhaps, given the implosion of the Clinton campaign, but by fall it will sink in.

Rev. Wright, as we've seen recently with his latest comments about the Founding Fathers as pedophiles et. al., won't go away, loves the publicity that follows each additional inanity, and won't be cut loose by Obama. There will be a periodic outburst every three or four weeks, and the remedy — the "discussion" on race — has already been used up. Like the Clintonian tear, you only get one shot with that mitigation. Moreover, some nut in the public arena usually says something racist about every six months or so, and when the next Imus or Richards sounds off, the ensuing discussion will now include Obamian contextualization.

As we saw in her speech today, Michelle won't stop — and seems again clueless that an Ivy-League educated, $300,000 plus salaried lawyer in a $1.6 million house, cannot be a perpetual victim by virtue of her race.

Notice her latest sarcasm: "Now when is the last time you've seen a president of the United States who just paid off his loan debt? But, then again, maybe I'm out of touch."

This too won't stop, and expect more of this defiance all summer and autumn long to add to the existing corpus of a "mean" U.S. that does not merit "pride" and is full of clueless unaware citizens. Most Americans have little sympathy with anyone who feels it is hardship to pay back thousands of dollars invested in a Harvard Law degree. Their likely rejoinder to today's sarcasm: 'Well then, if you feel pinched by paying back your loans, don't give Rev. Wright $20,000."

3) Obama himself — cf. 'typical white person', the Pennsylvania mess, and things like Wright and his church being "not particularly controversial" — likewise at 3-4 week intervals will say something that will be taken either as condescending or racialist. And in the aggregate these "conflations" shown on evening news "loops" and "snippets" by August or so will cement the growing impression of uneasiness among the American people. Race has nothing to do with it; a certain smugness everything.

The American people will forgive slips, even condescension IF they are followed by genuine apology and not repeated ad infinitum. But in this case, there will be a growing weariness, followed by anger, at the notion that a Presidential candidate thinks he can say whatever he wishes, associate with whomever he wants, and feel it's the electorate's, not his own, ensuing problem. So the rub for the Obama campaign is not simply that he has no experience outside the Ivy League and Chicago, or even that he made a Faustian bargain with the Trinity church to jump-start his career, but rather his hubris this spring — which as we speak is bringing on a summer nemesis.