by Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n
PJ Media<\/em><\/p>\n I\u00a0offer a ten-step healing program for our president in the spirit of our therapeutic age.<\/p>\n I am trying to be disinterested here, with no particular interest in what follows of either seeing his recovery in the polls, or even watching them sink further. My aim is only to point out how and why he is turning off thousands by the day.<\/p>\n 1) Impose a moratorium on all the racial talk. After the beer summit, the \u201cstupidly,\u201d the \u201cstereotyping,\u201d the \u201ccowards,\u201d the Van Jones rants, the \u201cwise Latina,\u201d the suing Arizona, the exempting the Black Panthers, the al Qaeda as racists (e.g., nine years after 9\/11 we at last have a reason to really hate these terrorists), etc., we get the message that race permeates the presidential world view \u2014 and that all issues, from those of terrorism to policing to immigration to the environment, are seen largely through racial us\/them lenses. This obsession has turned off an increasing multi-racial nation, and is reaching the point of caricature. Take a deep breath, Mr. President, and promise to go through one day without self-referencing yourself as black, without speaking to an identity-politics group, and without reviewing the American past in terms of race. Just one day\u2026<\/p>\n 2) I\u2019d quit the golf for a while \u2014 and for two reasons. The Left made the argument that golf is an aristocratic waste of time, our version of upper-class fox-hunting, as a perquisite to the narrative of a carefree Bush \u2014 alligator shirt, shades, bright slacks, colorful cap, swanky loafers \u2014 on the links while the country was mired in crises. OK, we got that message. And so now, fairly or not, a polo-shirted Obama putting around amid the spill, two wars, and depression-like economics seems, well, narcissistic and self-indulgent. And whereas Bush quit teeing off, Obama won\u2019t, and has already trumped in 18 months his predecessor\u2019s aggregate links outings. Will we hear a \u201cBush did it\u201d on golf too \u2014 as if the evil W cleverly created a paradigm in which presidents are now forced to play golf when they should not? Try bowling instead.<\/p>\n 3) Don\u2019t make any more appointments. Simply quit while you\u2019re behind. These offices are better left unfilled. After Van Jones, Anita Dunn, Steven Chu, Hilda Solis, Eric Holder, Charles Bowden, and Donald Berwick, we got the message already: illegal immigration is OK; farming is not; we are all racial cowards and should feel bad; Muslims in contrast should be made to feel good; redistribution is good \u2014 Mao was even better; and George Bush was in on 9\/11. In short, Obama is incapable of not appointing someone who is both hard left and unhinged in his expression of such ideology. It would be safer simply not to plant these figurative liberal land mines, since they will all inevitably go off at one time or another. Empty seats are better than empty suits.<\/p>\n 4) With all due respect and in complete candor, I would not send Michelle Obama out any more. After the \u201cdownright mean country\u201d, \u201cnever been proud of my country before\u201d, and \u201craise the bar\u201d tropes of the campaign, we thought she would, as did past First Ladies, speak about literacy, or her own interest in curbing childhood obesity. But now she\u2019s been unfettered twice on the political circuit: once to speak on behalf of Sonya Sotomayor when she immediately went into a \u2018poor me\u2019 riff on how hard it is to go to Princeton on a full-ride (\u201cAnd for me, the voices came from people who at first told me, \u2018Don\u2019t bother applying to Princeton, not a school like that,\u2019 because they said I\u2019d never get in. Then when I got in, they told me not to go because I wouldn\u2019t be able to compete against students who would be more prepared. And then when I decided to attend, they told me that I shouldn\u2019t go to a school so far away from home because I would have a hard time making friends; I would feel out of place and I wouldn\u2019t make it through. Voices of people sowing seeds of doubt in my head.\u201d). And now she revs up the NAACP on the eve of its slander against the Tea Party. Fairly or not, the image of the First Lady is of someone who vents deep-seeded anger, partly over her own unease that she has not quite earned her laurels, partly as a way to enhance career advancement. In short, if one were worried about the president\u2019s tendencies to blame others, sending Michelle out is homeopathic quackery.<\/p>\n 5) Just do not mention America in the abstract anymore. After 18 months, we know that the president simply cannot reference our founding without a \u201cbut\u201d. He seems to have forgotten that 600,000 killed each other or died 150 years ago over slavery. The Argonne, Okinawa, and Inchon are not in his lexicon. Nor is the greatest economy and defender of freedom in civilization\u2019s history. Edison, Bell, the Wright Brothers \u2014 they might as well be Martians. If it is a question \u2014 and it sadly always is \u2014 between evoking America as dropper of atomic bombs, genocidal hegemon, enslaver, racist, anti-Muslim, etc., and not evoking America at all, then please stay quiet. Our grandmothers tried to teach us \u201cIf you can\u2019t say something occasionally nice, then don\u2019t say anything at all.\u201d He should heed that. A simple truth that we all learned in Kindergarten escaped Barack Obama: America\u2019s sins are simply those of all humankind; but only in America is the sprit of self-critique and collective betterment such that we daily strive to address and solve our innately human shortcomings rather than accept them or give into them. Instead, Obama seems to have been taught that if America alone is not perfect, then it is essentially not very good. Millions of us wince now when the president starts in on the U.S. in the abstract, since we know anything positive will always be qualified by \u201cnevertheless\u201d, \u201chowever,\u201d \u201cyet,\u201d and \u201cbut\u201d.<\/p>\n 6) Either stop living up the good life or stop demonizing others who do. OK \u2014 if you believe Vegas is bad, doctors are greedy limb-loppers, insurance people are con artists, and the Tea-Partiers unwholesome \u2018tea-baggers\u2019, then please no more jetting around on your private jumbo jet in times of economic crisis. Don\u2019t serve aristocratic meals and bring in celebs for private shows. In short, the President is figuratively trying his best to talk of two nations and still live in John Edwards\u2019s house, of lecturing down in the fashion of Al Gore from his nice energy-guzzling nest, or being a John Kerry man of the people from 11 estates. The high life and blue-collar rhetoric don\u2019t mix. In these tough times, if Obama wants to sound like Harry Truman, then now and then live like Harry Truman rather than some zillionaire Silicon Valley geek. If he wants to sermonize like Jimmy Carter, then at least get the props right of the cardigan sweater and dialed down thermostat.<\/p>\n 7) Please, no more \u2018Bush did it.\u2019 Stop the daily two-minutes of hate against our new Emmanuel Goldstein. Bush is 19 months gone; no one forced President Obama to borrow $3 trillion, to nationalize healthcare, or to scare business with the neo-socialist talk of income-, FICA-, health- tax increases, and government takeovers that helped send unemployment from 7% to 10%. Bush reacted to 9\/11 by going into Afghanistan and passing the Patriot Act without daily blaming Clinton for his appeasing of radical Islam. Nothing so diminishes a president as the trait of scapegoating a predecessor, nothing so erodes his stature as the teen-age habit of blaming someone else for one\u2019s self-inflicted problems. Enough already. We\u2019ve gotten to the point now that the audience cringes when Obama cites what he has done, as it mutters to itself, \u201chere comes the \u201cBush did it.\u201d\u201d And, of course, it always comes just as we feared.<\/p>\n 8). No need either for more of the Muslim thing. We learned on day 1, 19 months ago, that the President would reference his Muslim heritage (e.g., \u201cI have Muslim members of my family. I have lived in Muslim countries.\u201d) to\u00a0Al Arabyia<\/em>\u00a0in a way that was taboo during the campaign. And after the Cairo mythmaking, the rantings of John Brennan, the new euphemisms, the America is the problem (e.g., \u201cAll too often the United States starts by dictating \u2014 in the past on some of these issues \u2014 and we don\u2019t always know all the factors that are involved.\u201d), the NASA lunacy, we understood that the problem is our purported not being nice to Islam rather than radical Islamists trying to kill us out of existential hatred. I would cut the Muslim therapeutics out; there is simply no need to cite your middle name as the real reason Israelis are not fond of you. None at all.<\/p>\n 9) Don\u2019t mention deficits, debt, spending \u2014 anything to do with money. $3 trillion in new debt cannot be explained or blamed away. Better simply not to mention it, and talk of cutting $10 million here and there. Every time the president speaks of the debt he does so in the context that Bush\u2019s $500 billion last deficit forced him to borrow $1.7 trillion, or that \u201cstimulus\u201d is somehow not borrowing, or that deficits seem to be good since they will gorge the beast and force higher taxes, an intrinsic redistributive good in its own right.<\/p>\n 10) Take a breather on the green agenda. Al Gore imploded, both from revelations about his personal life and the labyrinth of his financial machinations. Climategate discredited academic finger-pointing. Promises about \u201cskyrocketing\u201d power bills don\u2019t go well with a recession. The old \u201cmillions of new green jobs\u201d wonkery is a bad joke from a college bull session. Nuclear, natural gas, clean coal, and drilling in ANWR have more resonance than subsidized wind and solar jobs at a million or so in federal subsidies each.<\/p>\n Will Obama adopt any of my 10-step suggestions? No, of course not. Why? Because he is pushing an agenda that 55-70% of the American people do not want, and so it is necessary to evoke the kitchen sink to get it across: Bush did it, the oil cadre did it, racialist America, Islamaphobia, \u201cthem\u201d, a cool hip president, raise the bar \u2014 all that is a desperate (albeit doomed) way of venting, threatening, pleading, and pushing a blueprint that on its merits goes nowhere.<\/p>\n \u00a92010 Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Victor Davis Hanson PJ Media I\u00a0offer a ten-step healing program for our president in the spirit of our therapeutic age.<\/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":[586],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-oc","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":9186,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ten-commandments-for-our-next-president\/","url_meta":{"origin":1500,"position":0},"title":"Ten Commandments for Our Next President","author":"victorhanson","date":"March 22, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"A good rule of thumb is to look at what Obama has done, and then do the opposite. By Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review Online 1. Do not deflect blame onto others. Take personal responsibility when foreign policies implode \u2014 and at least a few will. Read Churchill\u2019s speech\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Campaign 2016"","block_context":{"text":"Campaign 2016","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/campaign-2016\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":12575,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ten-2020-issues-policies-personalities-and-chance\/","url_meta":{"origin":1500,"position":1},"title":"Ten 2020 Issues, Policies, Personalities \u2014 and Chance","author":"victorhanson","date":"August 21, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review The nation has never seen an election like this. A mysterious virus from China has terrified the country, killed perhaps 180,000 Americans, and is now weaponized as a political asset to neuter the president. Half the country is still in de facto quarantine. Governments\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2174,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/afghanistan-and-the-trojan-war\/","url_meta":{"origin":1500,"position":2},"title":"Afghanistan and the Trojan War","author":"victorhanson","date":"November 4, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"by Herbert Jordan Private Papers For perspective on the war in Afghanistan, President Obama ought to take a look through the lens of the oldest geopolitical conflict in the history of Western civilization, in which Greek warriors crossed the Aegean Sea to Asia Minor, besieged the citadel of Troy, and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "November 2009"","block_context":{"text":"November 2009","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2009\/november-2009\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3119,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-first-person-presidency\/","url_meta":{"origin":1500,"position":3},"title":"The First-Person Presidency","author":"victorhanson","date":"May 11, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online Here are a few excerpts from President Obama\u2019s speech on Sunday night about the killing of Osama bin Laden. \u201cTonight, I can report . . . And so shortly after taking office, I directed Leon Panetta . . . I was briefed on\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Foreign Policy"","block_context":{"text":"Foreign Policy","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/obama-administration\/foreign-policy\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":11279,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ten-commandments-of-the-supreme-court\/","url_meta":{"origin":1500,"position":4},"title":"Ten Commandments of the Supreme Court","author":"victorhanson","date":"July 17, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review What is sacrosanct? Whatever advances progressive causes. 1)\u00a0Right to Left.\u00a0The majority of post-war Republican Supreme Court nominees, who were initially perceived as conservative, turned liberal on the bench (Harry Blackmun, William Brennan, David Souter, John Paul Stevens, Earl Warren), or went from right-wing to\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Supreme Court"","block_context":{"text":"Supreme Court","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/supreme-court\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":12055,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ten-reasons-why-impeachment-is-illegitimate\/","url_meta":{"origin":1500,"position":5},"title":"Ten Reasons Why Impeachment Is Illegitimate","author":"victorhanson","date":"November 13, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review There are at least ten reasons why the Democratic impeachment \u201cinquiry\u201d is a euphemism for an ongoing coup attempt. 1) Impeachment 24\/7.\u00a0The impeachment \u201cinquiry,\u201d supposedly prompted by the president\u2019s Ukrainian call, is simply the most recent in a long series of \u201ccoups\u201d that sought\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1500"}],"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=1500"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1500\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1501,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1500\/revisions\/1501"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1500"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1500"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1500"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}