And yet to adopt free-market remedies \u2014 lower taxes, massive spending cuts, less regulation \u2014 would require the president to abandon his base, reject 30 years of his own ideological activism, and endure hysterical criticism during the waiting period while those tough-medicine measures kicked in. An equally intolerable solution.<\/p>\n
So I guess we\u2019re left with the present stasis: Obama will sorta-kinda be forced now and then to concede a point or two to the Republicans, who still do not have the legislative clout to pass rather than merely block legislation. He will vote present a lot, and count on (a) the natural resiliency of the economy to kick back in, especially when business is assured that his own policies are now frozen and cannot be expanded, and (b) Republican budget-cutting to be unpopular, especially when demagogued in them\/us class-warfare terms.<\/p>\n
And when the Lala-land liberal base gets angry, Obama can privately and quite correctly remind them that he is the best they are going to get, inasmuch as the voters want less of them, not more, all while publicly making flashy liberal appointments and updated hope-and-change speeches on symbolic issues \u2014 appearing all the more radical in direct proportion to the insignificance of the appointment or policy.<\/p>\n
In other words, the president counts on the fact that his policies have not damaged the economy too much to prevent its partial recovery, and he hopes that he can play ad hoc politics as things get better, taking credit for the good while blaming the opposition for their heartlessness in trimming the budget.<\/p>\n
\n
\u00a92010 Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
by Victor Davis Hanson NRO’s The Corner Unemployment is at 9.8 percent, and the figure is even higher when the long-term unemployed and dispirited are added in. What does President Obama do now?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[470],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-hJ","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":509,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/are-we-doomed\/","url_meta":{"origin":1099,"position":0},"title":"Are We Doomed?","author":"victorhanson","date":"August 25, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online Sometimes societies find themselves in pernicious cycles in which the perceived medicine seems worse than the known disease. The Roman satirist Juvenal lamented the ill effects of free food and free entertainment for the masses (\u201cbread and circuses\u201d) in part because he knew\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Budget"","block_context":{"text":"Budget","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/politics\/budget\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":57,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wards-of-the-state\/","url_meta":{"origin":1099,"position":1},"title":"Wards of the State","author":"victorhanson","date":"January 31, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce Thornton Defining Ideas The biggest political problem the United States faces \u2014 runaway entitlement costs on track to bankrupt the treasury \u2014 is like the weather. Everybody talks about it, but no one does anything about it. Even talking about it can be politically dangerous, as the Republicans\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Bruce S. Thornton"","block_context":{"text":"Bruce S. Thornton","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/bruce-s-thornton\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":115,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/when-big-deficits-became-good\/","url_meta":{"origin":1099,"position":2},"title":"When Big Deficits Became Good","author":"victorhanson","date":"January 16, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services As a senator and presidential candidate, Barack Obama said that he detested budget deficits. In 2006, when the aggregate national debt was almost $8 trillion less than today, he blasted George W. Bush's chronic borrowing and refused to vote for upping the debt\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Debt and Deficits"","block_context":{"text":"Debt and Deficits","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/politics\/debt-and-deficits\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2442,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/what-if-the-president-liked-businesspeople\/","url_meta":{"origin":1099,"position":3},"title":"What If the President Liked Businesspeople?","author":"victorhanson","date":"August 16, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services The US stock market has nose-dived. Congress just approved the highest debt ceiling in American history, allowing the government to carry over $16 trillion in national debt, and prompting the credit-rating agency Standard & Poor\u2019s to downgrade America\u2019s multitrillion-dollar debt for the first\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Debt and Deficits"","block_context":{"text":"Debt and Deficits","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/politics\/debt-and-deficits\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":173,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-kingdom-of-fairness\/","url_meta":{"origin":1099,"position":4},"title":"The Kingdom of Fairness","author":"victorhanson","date":"December 12, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services We are still borrowing more than $1 trillion a year. Barack Obama has added more than $5 trillion to the national debt in just his first term alone. Such massive borrowing is unsustainable. Someone somehow at some time has to pay it back.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Debt and Deficits"","block_context":{"text":"Debt and Deficits","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/politics\/debt-and-deficits\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4184,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-political-arcade\/","url_meta":{"origin":1099,"position":5},"title":"The Political Arcade","author":"victorhanson","date":"December 12, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Presidents frustrate the sale of political rhetoric. by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services Bill Clinton frustrated Republican critics. He passed welfare reform, waged a preemptive war against Slobodan Milosevic without either the approval of the Congress or the United Nations, and reined in federal spending. 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