by Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n
PJ Media<\/em><\/p>\n Posse on the Horizon<\/strong><\/p>\n The usual rush to the exits from a sinking administration is now ongoing. The only difference in this cycle is that \u2014 whereas in the case of the Bush departed who, we were lectured, were rightfully bitter that their genius was not appreciated (e.g., Paul O\u2019Neil, Richard Clarke, Scott McClellan, etc) by the Bush Neanderthals, and were men of conscience who were \u201cblowing the whistle\u201d \u2014 we are now told by the\u00a0New York Times<\/em>\u00a0that the Obama parachutists are burned out and \u201cexhausted,\u201d from \u201cblackberrying\u201d all day long!<\/p>\n You see, we should not imagine that these technocratic careerists want to leave the bank before the posse arrives in November, or are moving on to lucrative seven-figure jobs after the requisite administration bumper-sticker billet, but rather after being on the cross suffering for our sins for 18 months, well, can suffer no more for the unworthy. We\u00a0hoi polloi<\/em>\u00a0didn\u2019t turn around the economy, and we couldn\u2019t win the war, and we made them keep Guantanamo open, and we wore them out over healthcare, and we forced more of those once damn Predators and formerly unconstitutional renditions down their throats.<\/p>\n Defeat?<\/strong><\/p>\n Al Gore just shrieked that his green war is over. He says he lost and is withdrawing from the front. His retreat from his epic Stalingrad-like stand-off had nothing to do with the green equivalent of the ice and cold, the Red Army, or his shaky Eastern European allies, but was simply a crisis of will among the faithful:\u00a0no one was brave enough<\/a>\u00a0[1] to follow Commander Gore into battle anymore.<\/p>\n So Gore did not bring up the recent\u00a0green-gate email revelations<\/a>\u00a0[2], the weirdly cold weather the last two years in a variety of places (my grape crop is 2-3 weeks late here in once scorching California), the lack of green leadership shown by his splurging on multiple estates all the way to Montecito, or his own public devolution from Nobel Laureate to \u201csex poodle.\u201d (Green gurus can\u2019t fly on private jets; sorry, they just can\u2019t \u2014 at least if they want still to remain green gurus.)<\/p>\n The Thrill Is Gone<\/strong><\/p>\n Obama himself is not the Obama of 2008 when all America\u2019s problems were declared coterminous with twangy George Bush, and executive governance was defined as sitting at a Senate hearing table in front of blaring cameras and pontificating before squirming witnesses. (Obama, Biden, and Hillary sitting in judgment of Petraeus [who in just three years would now offer them a life-raft for the moment] was one of the more bizarre moments of the last twenty years.)<\/p>\n The tingling legs are gone. The\u00a0Newsweek<\/em>\u00a0editor\u00a0who declared<\/a>\u00a0[3] Obama a god\u00a0is gone<\/a>\u00a0[4]. Heck, there is not even a\u00a0Newsweek<\/em>\u00a0anymore, wrecked on the shoals after sailing blindly to the\u00a0siren song of hope and change<\/a>\u00a0[5]. Even the left is saying if you sing \u201cClose Guantanamo\u201d for years, then, close Guantanamo.<\/p>\n I don\u2019t think we will hear any more Obama assurances of on-hand first responders, ready to attend to the fainted at his hope-and-change rallies. There is no more Victory Column, faux Greek capitals, or cooling planet moments any more. The fair left town and all that is left is the clean-up and the remorse for acting so stupidly last Saturday night on the Midway.<\/p>\n Now we will see the real Obama. Does he have the character to persevere with soon to be 40% something approval ratings, an angry base, a fleeing media, and an organized, energized opposition? Or is it to be two more years of golfing, Bush did it, Martha\u2019s Vineyard, blame the limb-lopping surgeons, beer summits, killing time in preparation for a $50-million-a-year, Mandela-like, globe-trotting post-presidency.<\/p>\n Then There\u2019s John\u2019s Room<\/strong><\/p>\n There was a time when blow-dried John Edwards gripped the nation with psychodrama interviews with the network anchors about his heroic ordeals and triumphs. And now? Only John\u2019s room remains. Strike that \u2014 he does not even get to play in John\u2019s room anymore. John Edwards did the impossible: he turned the National Enquirer into a premier American newspaper, whose reporters had more integrity (albeit a weird sort of prurient profit-driven integrity) than did all those Columbia Journalism School graduates at the\u00a0Los Angeles Times<\/em>\u00a0or\u00a0Washington Post<\/em>).<\/p>\n The Problem With Spandex<\/strong><\/p>\n I used to think in 2004 that John Kerry was trying to lose the election. Why windsurf or bike in spandex when you\u2019re trying to prove Bush an out-of-touch elitist, insensitive to a \u201cjobless recovery\u201d of 5.7 percent unemployment (those were the days)? But what now are we to make of buying a $7 million yacht, and weaseling out on high-tax state Massachusetts\u2019s $500,000 bite (he used to call those who did that \u201cBenedict Arnolds\u201d). That\u2019s a new one: a populist Democrat skipping the yacht tax in times of recession even amid liberal calls for even more taxes and the president\u2019s warning for all of us to \u201chave skin in the game.\u201d (Michelle showed a lot of skin with a one-strap designer blouse in Marbella the last week, perched over the Costa del Sol, recharging her batteries for Martha\u2019s Vineyard, after all of us downright mean people raised the bar on her.)<\/p>\n