by Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n
PJ Media<\/em><\/p>\n Rip Van Obama<\/strong><\/p>\n President Obama went into a deep slumber in December. When he woke up this January, he found himself back even in the polls, with neither a press conference nor another overhyped presidential televised address to be heard. Sleep, quiet, and solitude \u2014 all that appears wiser than campaigning, visibility, and speaking, both for Obama and Americans. In short, the president has really hit on something: an Obama going into a Rip Van Winkle somnolent state might just mean waking up again as president.<\/p>\n If conservatives once alleged that Obama got elected as\u00a0Being There<\/em>\u2019s<\/a>\u00a0[1] Chauncey Gardiner \u2014 the empty vessel that all put their hopes and dreams in \u2014 they might complain even louder that he now plans on getting reelected as him as well, as if 2009-2011 were now a dream and we are back to fall 2007 when a political unknown proclaimed himself a new Lincoln declaring his candidacy from Springfield.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, Fratricide<\/strong><\/p>\n While the Republicans were tearing each other up in Iowa, to the delight of the liberal media, Barack Obama said not much at all from Hawaii. He did not have to, given that no Republican was offering a simple anti-Obama plan to drill for gas and oil as never before, repeal Obamacare, balance the budget, reform the tax code, and redo Social Security and Medicare. Instead his would-be opponents argued over who voted for what fifteen years ago.<\/p>\n We heard from the press and other Republicans in Iowa that Cain was a supposed womanizer, Romney a liar, Gingrich a blowhard and hypocrite, Perry clueless and tongue-tied, Paul a nut, Santorum a whiny complainer, Bachman a loser, and not much of anything\u00a0about Huntsman<\/a>\u00a0[2]. Who cares that the debt is hitting $16 trillion, the Iranians are enjoying our reset diplomacy, Iraq is heating up after our departure, and we are talking to the Taliban via the Muslim Brotherhood? Who mentions that our rendezvous with Obamacare is daily coming closer? Or that the Simpson-Bowles commission, the super-committee, and all talk of the debt is now but a distant, bad memory? Does it matter that Obama decided not to follow federal immigration law and will sue states that do? What are recess appointments\u00a0when the Congress is not in recess<\/a>\u00a0[3]? While Obama sleeps, all sorts of strange things do not.<\/p>\n As this circular firing squad went on in Iowa (strangest of all was the New Newt Gingrich\u2019s 30-day new persona of senior statesman grandly proclaiming unity and civility \u2014 only to descend into the Old Newt proclaiming\u00a0Romney a \u201cliar\u201d<\/a>\u00a0[4]), each couple of days Barack Obama\u2019s poll ratings inched back up. The more he kept out of the news and kept quiet, the more his negative and positive ratings went back in sync, until they are today about even, a radical shift in just about a month \u2014 and as a result of doing absolutely nothing. Do Americans sort of like Barack Obama the more that they do not see or hear much of him \u2014 at least while they hear too much of the Republicans ripping each other apart? After all, in 2008 with no record or much knowledge of his past, Obama The Idea was adored; in 2011 with a record and a fledgling history, Obama The Flesh and Blood was not. Why then not go into deep sleep, do nothing, let his surrogates loose, and let voters\u2019 imaginations run wild with past fantasies and dreams \u2014 especially in comparison to the screeching of fratricidal Republicans that for now precludes any reexamination of a mostly disastrous presidential record since January 2009?<\/p>\n 2012<\/strong><\/p>\n So we are seeing a glimpse of his reelection strategy. Obama by now knows that he cannot speak more than a few days without instinctively waging class warfare (fat cat, corporate jet owner, millionaires and billionaires, limb-lopping doctors, etc.) while offering some weird anti-capitalist rant (at some point we make enough money, now is not the time for profit, etc.). His habit is to polarize people by slurring them as \u201clazy\u201d or \u201cour enemies\u201d or \u201cstupidly\u201d acting. Again, for most Americans, to listen to Barack Obama for a week is to grow uneasy with him.<\/p>\n But he can increasingly remain mute, while, on late Friday afternoons and amid raucous Republican infighting, dumping appointments and executive orders as a quiet leftist. Quite off the radar screen, Obama plans to let some detainees go from Guantanamo. He made recess appointments when Congress was not really in recess \u2014 of course, after,\u00a0as a senator<\/a>\u00a0[5], once blasting George Bush for making real recess appointments. But who remembers anymore that the EPA is preparing to shut down power plants or Obama tabled a critical pipeline, as gas prices climb? Sometimes, as in the case of the Defense of Marriage Act, or the creditors of Chrysler, or immigration law, Obama simply decided that he, not the ratified law, was the ultimate adjudicator of right and wrong.<\/p>\n The new rope-a-dope Obama will avoid the sort of loud, messy lose\/lose fight he had over the stimulus and Obamacare, and instead stay \u201cpresidential.\u201d At some point even the American economy should start to rebound a little. And to the degree that Obama must speak to the public, it will be all hope and change banality \u2014 \u201cworking for you,\u201d \u201crestoring jobs,\u201d \u201crebuilding the economy\u201d \u2014 as well as his psychodramas about protecting the middle class from the Wall Street criminal class (perhaps like Jon Corzine, who gave $70,000 to Obama\u2019s campaign and\u00a0who cannot find<\/a>\u00a0[6] over $1 billion of someone else\u2019s lost money). Only the cranky and spiteful obstruct his labors by reminding Americans that the government now spends $1 trillion more per year than we did in 2008, the national debt is $4 trillion higher, we are borrowing almost $4 billion a day, and the average yearly unemployment rate of 2008 of 5.8% has skyrocketed under Obama to 9.6% in 2010. For Obama it is far better not to defend his record \u2014 as if it were not his record at all. Instead, loud illiberal boors have made all sorts of wild charges about supposed new debt and mythical high unemployment. What record? Do they mean Bush\u2019s record from 2001 to November 2012? Conservatives rail at his vacations to Hawaii and Martha\u2019s Vineyard, and his 90 outings to the golf links. But Obama finally concluded that the more he is out of the public eye and mute, the more voters like the idea of Obama without having to suffer the reality of Obama.<\/p>\n Racists Everywhere<\/strong><\/p>\n To point out the president\u2019s abject hypocrisies \u2014 he once blasted annual deficit spending, increasing the national debt, recess appointments, Friday afternoon news dumping, signing statements, revolving door lobbyists, earmarks, Guantanamo, tribunals, renditions, predators, and the Patriot Act and then simply adopted them all when he found them either useful for his own purposes or supported by a majority of the electorate \u2014 is to be mean and, of course, racist. In December, Eric Holder blamed congressional concern over his subordinates\u2019 selling of guns to cartel murderers as proof of racist antagonism against both himself and President Obama. This week, an Andrew Rosenthal in the\u00a0New York Times<\/em>\u00a0alleged that the subtext of the recent Republican criticism\u00a0was racial bias<\/a>\u00a0[7], given his own creative deconstruction of supposedly coded rhetoric.<\/p>\n Obama in the past lambasted the police and alleged serial racial stereotyping; he called for Latinos to punish shared enemies, and he made a video appealing to voters on the basis of race. Holder called the nation cowards, and referred to blacks as \u201cmy people\u201d (imagine John Ashcroft using that tribal term). Justice Sotomayor saw herself as a \u201cwise Latina.\u201d Van Jones had a long history of racist diatribes \u2014 though not in league with the president\u2019s own minister. I could go on, but you get the picture: race-based invective from the Obama administration is a cry of the heart in unguarded moments that reflects centuries of oppression; tough talk against the Obama administration is a code for ongoing racist hatred. The formula I guess is supposed to be a winning one: stir up race by false calls of racism and then blast others as racists for noting the new surreal emphasis on race.<\/p>\n Sleeping to Victory<\/strong><\/p>\n To sum up: we see here contours of the 2012 reelection. Obama\u2019s handlers accept that there is no record to run on after inauguration, and earlier hope and change vacuities no longer earn mass audiences. They grant that in his unguarded moments Obama reverts off the teleprompter to his Chicago DNA of waging puerile class warfare. They even agree that his twenty-something speechwriters cannot be trusted not to slip into the teleprompter something stupid like the ahistorical Cairo Speech orfaux-Teddy Roosevelt diatribe<\/a>\u00a0[8].<\/p>\n But they do know the president is the president, at least sorta. He photographs well and can be generalizer-in-chief effectively. If he is tired and outsources his policies to others, he still can make recess appointments and do lots of things without congressional scrutiny that will keep the base happy. He is the first African-American president that makes the country proud and can be alleged to make all sorts of closet racists furious. He talks well when teleprompted on the banal and mundane, and now he is dead even in the polls. He can run for reelection in the manner he is now governing \u2014 tired, sleepy, mostly quiet, an occasional Skype message to the faithful to remain faithful.<\/p>\n What got Obama to the presidency was being a man without a past or present, Chauncey Gardiner of\u00a0Being There<\/em>\u00a0\u2014 without a college record, a medical record, a scholarly record, or much of a legislative record, the \u201csmartest\u201d president in history without having to say or do anything smart, who \u201cbusted hump\u201d his entire life without any proof that he ever did any such thing, who proclaimed himself a greater president than all but three, but left nothing great in his wake, now or in the past. Obama had forgotten that winning non-persona for a time, and so after 2009 fooled himself into thinking out loud that at times he would play a real Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, FDR, Kennedy, or Reagan.<\/p>\n But now Obama accepts what he was and always will be \u2014 Chauncey Gardiner.<\/p>\n And just being there is apparently the way to being president a bit longer.<\/p>\n URLs in this post: \u00a92012 Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Victor Davis Hanson PJ Media Rip Van Obama President Obama went into a deep slumber in December. When he woke up this January, he found himself back even in the polls, with neither a press conference nor another overhyped presidential televised address to be heard.<\/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":[362,271],"tags":[12,342,308,1026,1036,243,446,88,40,93,244],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-j5","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":392,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-game-changes\/","url_meta":{"origin":1183,"position":0},"title":"The Game Changes","author":"victorhanson","date":"October 19, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services Usually after a presidential debate, both sides spin the results. But after the first face-off between President Obama and challenger Mitt Romney, Obama\u2019s exasperated handlers made no such effort. How could they when most opinion polls revealed that two-thirds of viewers thought Obama\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Election 2012"","block_context":{"text":"Election 2012","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/obama-administration\/election-2012\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":10602,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/allegations-of-foreign-election-tampering-have-always-rung-hollow\/","url_meta":{"origin":1183,"position":1},"title":"Allegations of Foreign Election Tampering Have Always Rung Hollow","author":"victorhanson","date":"September 21, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Blaming foreign influence on an election loss has become a habitual practice for unsuccessful presidential candidates, but such allegations have never rung true. On her current book tour, Hillary Clinton is still blaming the Russians (among others) for her unexpected defeat in last year\u2019s\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "George W. Bush"","block_context":{"text":"George W. Bush","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/george-w-bush\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":712,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/from-hope-and-change-to-fear-ad-smear\/","url_meta":{"origin":1183,"position":2},"title":"From Hope and Change to Fear ad Smear","author":"victorhanson","date":"June 11, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services Barack Obama lately has been accusing presumptive rival Mitt Romney of not waging his campaign in the nice (but losing) manner of John McCain in 2008. But a more marked difference can be seen in Obama himself, whose style and record bear no\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Election 2012"","block_context":{"text":"Election 2012","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/obama-administration\/election-2012\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":378,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/what-the-debates-taught-us\/","url_meta":{"origin":1183,"position":3},"title":"What the Debates Taught Us","author":"victorhanson","date":"October 31, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services The president of the United States in the last debate chose to go on the attack against his challenger, Mitt Romney \u2014 and once again largely failed to convince the American people that he was the more presidential alternative. But how did the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Election 2012"","block_context":{"text":"Election 2012","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/obama-administration\/election-2012\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2386,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/whats-off-the-table-in-2012\/","url_meta":{"origin":1183,"position":4},"title":"What’s Off the Table in 2012?","author":"victorhanson","date":"September 5, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services What should we\u00a0not\u00a0expect during next summer\u2019s presidential campaign, given what was put off limits in 2008 and later? There is much talk about what some are perceiving as the fringe religiosity of Republican candidates such as Michele Bachman and Rick Perry. But the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Campaign 2012"","block_context":{"text":"Campaign 2012","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/obama-administration\/campaign-2012\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":9475,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-next-president-unbound\/","url_meta":{"origin":1183,"position":5},"title":"The Next President Unbound","author":"victorhanson","date":"October 2, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"There is reason to worry about both candidates abusing power as president, because Obama and the press normalized executive overreach. By Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review Online Donald Trump\u2019s supporters see a potential Hillary Clinton victory in November as the end of any conservative chance to restore small government,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Trump"","block_context":{"text":"Trump","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/trump\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1183"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1183"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1183\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1185,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1183\/revisions\/1185"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1183"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1183"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1183"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n
\n[1]\u00a0Being There<\/em>:http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/gp\/product\/0802136346\/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=privatepapers-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0802136346<\/a>
\n[2] about Huntsman:\u00a0http:\/\/pjmedia.com\/eddriscoll\/2011\/08\/21\/the-november-issue\/<\/a>
\n[3] when the Congress is not in recess:\u00a0http:\/\/pjmedia.com\/tatler\/the-white-house-is-wrong-the-senate-conducted-business-during-its-recess\/<\/a>
\n[4] Romney a \u201cliar\u201d:\u00a0http:\/\/hotair.com\/archives\/2012\/01\/03\/gingrich-romneys-a-liar-isnt-he\/<\/a>
\n[5] as a senator:\u00a0http:\/\/www.powerlineblog.com\/archives\/2012\/01\/that-was-then-this-is-now.php<\/a>
\n[6] who cannot find:\u00a0http:\/\/www.nationalreview.com\/corner\/285292\/i-simply-do-not-know-where-money-kevin-d-williamson<\/a>
\n[7] was racial bias:\u00a0http:\/\/m.newsbusters.org\/blogs\/clay-waters\/2012\/01\/04\/nyt-editorial-page-editor-calls-boehner-racist-asking-obama-delay-speec<\/a>
\n[8] faux-Teddy Roosevelt diatribe:http:\/\/townhall.com\/columnists\/jonahgoldberg\/2011\/12\/09\/obama_man_on_a_mission<\/a><\/p>\n