Our ‘Face in the Crowd’

by Victor Davis Hanson // PJMedia

Photo via PJMedia
Photo via PJMedia

Elia Kazan’s classic A Face in the Crowd [2] is a good primer on Barack Obama’s rise and fall. Lonesome Rhodes arises out of nowhere in the 1957 film, romancing the nation as a phony populist [3] who serially spins yarns in the most folksy ways — confident that he should never be held to account. Kazan’s point (in the film Rhodes is a patsy for conservative business interests) is that the “folks” are fickle and prefer to be charmed rather than informed and told the truth. Rhodes’s new first name, Lonesome, resonates in the film in a way that Barack does now [4]. Finally, an open mic captures Rhodes’s true disdain for the people he champions, and his career crashes.

So what is collapsing the presidency of the once mellifluous Obama? It is not the IRS, AP, VA, or NSA scandals. Nor did the nation especially fault him for Benghazi or the complete collapse of U.S. foreign policy, from failed reset to a Middle East afire. In each case, he either blamed Bush or denied there was a smidgeon of wrongdoing on his part.

Certainly, the stampede at the border, as disastrous as it was, did not ipso facto sink Obama’s ratings. Ditto the embarrassing Bergdahl deal, in which we traded a likely deserter for five Islamist kingpins. Was it the ISIS ascendance that is leading to genocide and a nascent caliphate? Not in and of itself.

Continue reading “Our ‘Face in the Crowd’”

2014: Obama’s America

Scandals now come so fast that each new mess makes us forget the previous one.

by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online

Illiberal Immigration ‘Reform’

People who call for “comprehensive immigration reform” seldom mean it.

by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online

Our Roost, Obama’s Chickens

From the Middle East to Russia to our own southern border, Obama’s bills are coming due.

by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online

Don’t Mess with Messiahs

Whenever things go wrong, it’s the fault of those obstructionists in Congress.

by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online

The Federal Octopus

Federal agencies now exist not for the public good but for their employees’ benefit and Obama’s agenda.

by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online

The New Children’s Crusade

Almost everything we are told about illegal immigration is both a lie and amoral.

by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online

War Was Interested in Obama

by Victor Davis Hanson // PJMedia 

obama_trotsky_6-15-14-1
Photo by EdDriscoll.com via PJMedia

Leon Trotsky probably did not quite write the legendary aphorism that “you may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you.” But whoever did, you get the point that no nation can always pick and choose when it wishes to be left alone.

Barack Obama, however, never quite realized that truth, and so just declared [1] that “the world is less violent than it has ever been.” He must have meant less violent in the sense that the bad guys are winning and as they do, the violence wanes — sort of like Europe around March 1941, when all was relatively quiet under the new continental Reich.

Continue reading “War Was Interested in Obama”

The Bergdahl Release Is Just the Beginning

by Victor Davis Hanson // The Corner (National Review Online)

Photo of Bergdahl via Wikicommons
Photo of Bergdahl via Wikicommons

There has been a lot to think about during these years of Obama’s foreign policy. But the problem is not just the existential issues, from reset to Benghazi, but also the less heralded developments, such as young non-high-school graduate Edward Snowden’s trotting off with the most sensitive secrets of the NSA, the “stuff happens” outing of a CIA station chief in Afghanistan, and the failure to destroy the downed drone that ended up in Iran.

In the latter category falls the mysterious prisoner swap of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl for five top Taliban inmates, given that even at this early juncture there are lots of disturbing questions: Why not as the law demanded consult Congress on the releases from Guantanamo, or at least the congressional leadership? Why swap some of the most dangerous and important members of the Taliban hierarchy? What exactly were the circumstances of the original departure of Bergdahl (in 2009 two military officials told the AP that Bergdahl “had just walked off” with three other Afghans), and why were other soldiers requested not to disclose what they knew about the nature of his departure or the costly efforts to find Bergdahl? What exactly is the present U.S. position on trading captives for prisoners/hostages? Do we really believe that the released terrorists will be kept another year in the Middle East?

Continue reading “The Bergdahl Release Is Just the Beginning”

Lord Obama

US Dept. of Labor via Flickr
US Dept. of Labor via Flickr

by Victor Davis Hanson // PJMedia

If we were living in normal times, the following scandals and failures — without going into foreign policy — would have ruined a presidency to the point of reducing it to Nixon, Bush, or Truman poll ratings.

Think of the following: the Fast and Furious scandal, the VA mess, the tapping of the communications of the Associated Press reporters, the NSA monitoring, Benghazi in all of its manifestations, the serial lies about Obamacare, the failed stimuli, the chronic zero interest/print money policies, the serial high unemployment, the borrowing of $7 trillion to no stimulatory effect, the spiraling national debt, the customary violations of the Hatch Act by Obama cabinet officials, the alter ego/fake identity of EPA head Lisa Jackson, the sudden departure of Hilda Solis after receiving union freebies, the mendacity of Kathleen Sebelius, the strange atmospherics surrounding the Petraeus resignation, the customary presidential neglect of enforcing the laws from immigration statutes to his own health care rules, the presidential divisiveness (“punish our enemies,” “you didn’t build that,” Trayvon as the son that Obama never had, etc.), and on and on.

So why is there not much public reaction or media investigatory outrage?

Continue reading “Lord Obama”