by Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n
NRO’s\u00a0The Corner<\/em><\/p>\n Moveable Feast: From Marbella to Martha\u2019s Vineyard<\/strong><\/p>\n Is not there some old Harry Truman Democrat still around to advise the new Democratic aristocracy to live it down a bit in these tough times?<\/p>\n After presidential calls for sacrifice in our rough days of recession \u2014 and coming on the heels of the Gatsby-like Clinton wedding, the H.M.S. Kerry, the Gore getaway in Montecito, and \u201cJohn\u2019s Room\u201d \u2014 the enormous movable feast of Michelle Obama\u2019s from Marbella to Martha\u2019s Vineyard does not go well with \u201ctwo nations,\u201d \u201craise the bar,\u201d downright mean country,\u201d and all the other progressive complaints. What was that about one selfish America living one way and another less fortunate America living quite another? More mundanely, who says a life in government doesn\u2019t pay?<\/p>\n Aristocrats: Raising the Bar on the Costa del Sol<\/strong><\/p>\n The problem with Michelle Obama\u2019s Marabella-to-Martha\u2019s-Vineyard August is not that the first family doesn\u2019t deserve time off but that Michelle, in the past, has gone on the record that the country\u2019s elite (of which she claimed not to be a part) had created one nation for themselves and quite a different for most others \u2014 at least that\u2019s how I interpreted never having been proud of her country until the rise of hope and change.<\/p>\n So the Versailles-like aura around her trips suggests that her prior angst arose not because millions were not able to share the lifestyles of the elite but that she herself had not yet quite partaken in the sort of life she felt she deserved \u2014 which she is now apparently enjoying to the fullest. The fact that her Costa del Sol trip coincides with hard times back in the states, comes on the heels of the Kerry yacht and the Clinton wedding, and clashes with her husband\u2019s anti-wealthy rhetoric (e.g., \u201cat some point you\u2019ve made enough money\u201d) makes it all the more weird, both for her adminstration\u2019s equality-of-result politics and for the larger liberal narrative of talking truth to power.<\/p>\n Of course, all this puts a terrible burden on a sycophantic media with a long tradition of trashing the slightest hint of aristocratic enjoyment on the part of first ladies (e.g., Nancy Reagan\u2019s china). So, just as golf, around winter 2009, ceased to be an aristocratic distraction from the nation\u2019s pressing problems, so too luxury on the Mediterranean must be a sort of federal employee\u2019s deserved state vacation.<\/p>\n Technocrats: A Downright Mean Job<\/strong><\/p>\n Recently, the\u00a0New York Times<\/em>\u00a0had a puff piece on the \u201cexhausting\u201d nature of White House work, pegged to the recent wave of administration departures. The list of grievances: the grueling 12-hour days, the burden of dealing with an inherited recession, two wars, etc. Of course, in the weeks after 9\/11, administration employees had to develop an entire protocol to prevent serial terrorist assaults in the wake of the most successful attack on the continental United States in the nation\u2019s history. I don\u2019t recall profiles of Bush people who were \u201cexhausted\u201d dealing with the partisanship and pressures.<\/p>\n Bush aides left over policy disagreements and anger over wrong-headed policies; Obama aides leave due to burnout in service to the Great Cause. (Though I do remember President Bush looking a bit haggard in the dark days of Iraq and Katrina, as an Alfred Knopf novel and an award-winning docudrama imagining his assassination were winning applause.)<\/p>\n Does this serial complaining come from the top, or is it simply characteristic of the urban technocratic class? One protagonist of the\u00a0Times<\/em>\u00a0piece complains about the incessant Blackberrying of the 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. grind, and the sheer exhaustion that required days of restorative long sleep \u2014 but landing a job as CEO of a multi-million-dollar publishing company must be some consolation.<\/p>\n The\u00a0Times<\/em>\u00a0wants to draw a sympathetic portrait of the heroic Obama cadre that suffers so much on our behalf. These are six-figure jobs that wear out one\u2019s hands on the Blackberry, true, but serve as valuable stepping-stones to even higher-paying corporate jobs. And this is still a recession. This raise-the-bar griping will not go down well with the coal worker in Montana, the welder on a 30-story scaffold, or the oil worker offshore (e.g., it is not as if a Blackberry is going to blow up in one\u2019s hands, or an acoustical tile is going to fall and crush one in the West Wing). It is all too reminiscent of the various explanations we\u2019ve heard for why Michelle\u2019s Costa del Sol sojourn was an understandable and much-needed refresher before the more arduous odyssey ahead on Martha\u2019s Vineyard.<\/p>\n \u00a92010 Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Why we know socialism works for the few, not the many. by Victor Davis Hanson NRO’s\u00a0The Corner Moveable Feast: From Marbella to Martha\u2019s Vineyard Is not there some old Harry Truman Democrat still around to advise the new Democratic aristocracy to live it down a bit in these tough times?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","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":[565],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-mh","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":2399,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/a-vineyard-too-far\/","url_meta":{"origin":1381,"position":0},"title":"A Vineyard Too Far","author":"victorhanson","date":"August 31, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online By Sunday afternoon, the Gallup tracking poll showed a 17-point spread in the president\u2019s approval rating \u2014 38 percent approval to 55 percent disapproval. 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