by Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n
PJ Media<\/em><\/p>\n The Right-Wing Complaint of 2008<\/strong><\/p>\n In 2008, the following was the general right-wing argument against Obama\u2019s candidacy:<\/p>\n a) The self-professed \u201cuniter\u201d Obama had, in truth, little record of uniting disparate groups. From community organizing to politics, his preferred\u00a0modus operandi<\/em>\u00a0was rather to praise moderation, but politick more as a radical, and sometimes go after opponents as unreasonable or illiberal. Thus the most partisan voting senator in the Congress, who talked grandly of \u201cworking across the aisle,\u201d also urged supporters to \u201cget in their faces\u201d and \u201ctake a gun to a knife fight.\u201d Acorn, Project Vote, and SEIU were not ecumenical organizations.<\/p>\n b) Obama knew very little about foreign affairs, or perhaps even raw human nature as it plays out in power politics abroad. At times, he seemed naive about the singular role of the US in the world, especially his sense that problems with Iran, the Middle East, Venezuela, Russia, and others were somehow predicated on American arrogance and unilateralism (and neither predating nor postdating George Bush) \u2014 to be remedied by Obama\u2019s post-racial, post-national diplomacy.<\/p>\n c) In truth, Obama, for all his rhetorical skills and soft-spoken charisma,\u00a0had little experience<\/a>\u00a0[1] in the private sector outside of politics, academia, foundations, and subsidized organizing. Consequently, he did not seem to understand the nature of profit and loss, payrolls, how businesses worked and planned, or much of anything in the private sector.<\/p>\n d) Obama at times seemed to lack common sense, and perhaps even common knowledge. He appeared confused about everything from the number of US states to the idea that air pressure and \u201ctune-ups\u201d might substitute for new oil exploration. He seemed assured when reading a teleprompted script, and yet\u00a0lost much of his eloquence<\/a>\u00a0[2] when it came to repartee and question and answer.<\/p>\n e) Obama saw race as essential to his persona and his success, rarely incidental. Collate the writings and rantings of his triad of pastors and friends \u2014 Rev. Wright, Rev. Pfleger, and Rev. Meeks \u2014 and one sees a common theme of racism (sometimes overt), anti-Semitism, and class warfare. It was considered irrelevant to remind voters in 2008 that Michelle Obama had alleged that the US was a downright mean country, or that she had confessed to never heretofore\u00a0being very proud<\/a>\u00a0[3] of her country until it gave consideration to her husband as a presidential candidate \u2014 though both sentiments would seem rare for a potential first lady.<\/p>\n f) Obama, it was also felt, counted on a sense of entitlement. His admissions to Occidental, Columbia, and Harvard were alleged not to have been based on the usual competitive test scores or grades \u2014 and such charges were not refuted, but considered ancient history. As\u00a0Harvard Law Review<\/em>\u00a0editor, he seemed to assume, quite rightly, that he did not have to publish an article. As a University of Chicago Law School lecturer he also rightly assumed that Chicago \u2014 and later Harvard as well \u2014 would, if he had wished, granted him tenure, again, despite nonexistent publication. Sen. Clinton argued, without much refutation, that as a state legislator Obama had both authored very little legislation and voted present on any vote that might be considered problematic for a higher political office \u2014 a charge that later disappointed supporters would come to echo, along with\u00a0admissions of prior inexperience<\/a>\u00a0[4] on Obama\u2019s apart.<\/p>\n g) Obama, like many on the elite left, had an ambiguous attitude about affluence and its dividends. The more, as a community organizer, he had railed about bankers and unfairness, the more he had enjoyed a mini-mansion and dealt with the soon-to-be criminal\u00a0Tony Rezko<\/a>\u00a0[5]. The current Wall Street protests take their cue not just from presidential anger at \u201cmillionaires and billionaires,\u201d but also from the idea that affluent young people are exempt from their own rhetorical charges.<\/p>\n Yet in 2008, to suggest \u201cspread the wealth\u201d meant anything important was to be either racist or a rank partisan. But Obama in 2001 in a Chicago public radio interview could not have been clearer about the need for government to redistribute income and his unhappiness that the Constitution seemed to prohibit that.\u00a0Here is a telling excerpt<\/a>\u00a0[6] in all its half-baked Foucauldian vocabulary:<\/p>\n But, the Supreme Court never ventured into the issues of redistribution of wealth, and of more basic issues such as political and economic justice in the society. To that extent, as radical as I think people try to characterize the Warren Court, it wasn\u2019t that radical. It didn\u2019t break free from the essential constraints that were placed by the Founding Fathers in the Constitution, at least as its been interpreted and Warren Court interpreted in the same way, that generally the Constitution is a charter of negative liberties. \u2026 I think, the tragedies of the civil rights movement was because the civil rights movement became so court focused I think there was a tendency to lose track of the political and community organizing and activities on the ground that are able to put together the actual coalitions of powers through which you bring about redistributive change.<\/p>\n Again, to refer to all of the above in 2008 was considered not so much unfair as improper.<\/p>\n The Proving Ground<\/strong><\/p>\n Then came the election, and a perfect storm of events. The general unhappiness with Bush over deficits and Iraq, the recession that had started in December 2007, the absence of any incumbent vice president or president in the race for the first time since 1952, an unusually unenergetic McCain campaign, and a\u00a0nakedly partisan media<\/a>\u00a0[7] \u2014 all that by early September still had not given Obama the lead. But the mid-September 2008 financial crash did. And so what in the last fifty years was usually considered improbable \u2014 the election of a northern Democratic liberal \u2014 soon seemed foreordained.<\/p>\n The Reality of 2011<\/strong><\/p>\n We are now nearing the third year of the Obama administration. Were those worries of 2008 at all justified? Let us briefly review them in the same order:<\/p>\n a) Uniter? The country is divided, perhaps more so than in 2006 \u2014 except to the extent of gradually unifying around opposition to Obama, who now polls around 40% approval and is heading to Bush levels in three rather than seven years. \u201cGet in their faces<\/a>\u00a0[8]\u201dtransmogrified into \u201cpunish our enemies,\u201d a lawsuit against Arizona, \u201cstop the smears\u201d\/JournoList\/AttackWatch.com, and a shellacking in 2010 that led the president to abandon any pretense of \u201cbipartisanship\u201d in favor of revving up the base with them\/us rhetoric. Let me juxtapose these two quotes that sum up the current weird Obama atmosphere:<\/p>\n \u201cI am sick and tired of people who say that if you debate and you disagree with this administration, somehow you\u2019re not patriotic.\u201d \u2014\u00a0Hillary Clinton in 2003<\/a>\u00a0[9] objecting to the Bush administration.<\/p>\n \u201cThese are not patriots, people who love this country want to see jobs created. They don\u2019t love this country. \u2026 I don\u2019t think they love this country. They\u2019re not concerned about the economic well being of the country as a whole.\u201d \u2014\u00a0Rep. Linda Sanchez, in 2011<\/a>\u00a0[10], in response to congressional opposition to President Obama\u2019s job\u2019s bill.<\/p>\n Could now-Secretary Clinton address Rep. Sanchez\u2019s charges?<\/p>\n b) Abroad? Obama soon began treating allies and enemies alike as near neutrals: outreach to Iran, Russia, Venezuela, and Cuba, while petty slights and sometimes serious rebuke to Israel, the UK, and eastern Europe. Once the most vocal of Bush\u2019s critics, Obama ended up copycatting all of his predecessor\u2019s anti-terrorism protocols \u2013 but without a gesture of gratitude. As Predator-in-chief, Obama quintupled the number of targeted assassinations, on the apparent theory that dead suspected terrorists would cause fewer problems than incarcerated confessed terrorists. Reset and outreach faded and are now terms of yesteryear: China is as anti-American as ever, more so Pakistan. Iran allegedly now tries to kill inside Washington. Putin is still Putin. \u201cLeading from behind\u201d proved that a thug like Gaddafi could resist NATO\u2019s big three for eight months. The Arab Spring may become a winter of anti-Semitism, anti-Christianism, \u00a0and anti-Americanism. The Arab Spring also suggests so far two tragic truths: the Middle East changes only when the US removes a psychopath, and then spends lots of blood and treasure fostering a new government \u2014 something that has zero political support after Iraq; and two, Middle East dictators are sometimes more liberal than the masses to whom they deny freedoms. In general, we still have Afghanistan and Iraq, plus Libya and now a small force in Africa. Israel, Cyprus, Taiwan, North Korea, and the former Soviet republics are more volatile, not less.<\/p>\n c) Economy? Obama\u2019s EU-like economic plan is in shambles. Prior to Obama, Keynesians had argued that no one had given them a fair shot since the Depression. But borrowing nearly five trillion in less than three years, near zero interest rates, vastly expanding\u00a0food stamps<\/a>\u00a0[11] and unemployment benefits, absorbing private companies, and issuing vast new financial and environmental regulations turned an anticipated recovery into another near recession. In any case, Obama\u2019s economic architects of such policies \u2014 Goolsbee, Orszag, Romer, Summers \u2014 mysteriously did not last three years.<\/p>\n d) Common sense? 2008 campaign \u201cslips\u201d prefaced things like \u201ccorpse-man\u201d and speaking Austrian \u2014 perhaps understandable, but not in the media climate of zero media tolerance for \u201cnucular<\/a>\u00a0[12].\u201d Presidents I suppose in the future will have to be taught by handlers not to bow to emperors and kings. Going to our ally Germany to commemorate the fall of the Berlin Wall was apparently less important than jetting to Copenhagen to lobby for a Chicago Olympics.\u00a0The 2009 Cairo speech<\/a>\u00a0[13] was one of the most factually incorrect speeches in recent presidential history, as almost every assertion was demonstrably false. Well before Solyndra, the secretary of energy quipped that gas prices should reach European levels, that California farms would some day blow away, and that Americans, in essence, could not be trusted to buy the right light bulbs. From \u201cman-made disasters\u201d to \u201coverseas contingency operations\u201d to \u201cmy people\u201d and \u201ccowards\u201d to videos assuring that immigration laws will not be enforced, the Obama cabinet is about what one could have predicted back in 2008.<\/p>\n e) Racial healing? All these earlier bothersome tidbits like \u201ctypical white person\u201d reappeared with an entire litany of them\/us calumnies, none of them in isolation of any importance, but\u00a0in toto<\/em>\u00a0quite disturbing. Do we remember them all \u2014 from the beer summit and Eric Holder\u2019s \u201cmy people\u201d and \u201ccowards\u201d to \u201cwise Latina,\u201d \u201cpunish our enemies,\u201d \u201cmoats and alligators,\u201d the faux-southern black preacher cadences and condescending addresses to\u00a0\u201cbedroom slippers<\/a>\u00a0[14]\u201d African-American audiences, or the video appealing to constituents by racial categories? Few imagined in 2008 that the Congressional Black Caucus in 2011, in the new period of post-racialism, would be accusing opponents of wanting a return to lynching and Jim Crow laws.<\/p>\n f) Political savvy? Why federalize healthcare in the midst of a recession with 10% plus unemployment? Obama promised the public in November 2010\u00a0not to raise taxes in a recession<\/a>\u00a0[15], in 2011 to raise them a lot. Solyndra seems far worse than Enron, but Fast and Furious perhaps as bad as Iran Contra \u2014 except that Americans died in the former and not the latter. In 2010, potential Republican opponents and the Democratic base were worried that Obama would triangulate as Clinton had in 1995; in 2011, most observers are exasperated that he thinks more of what failed in 2010 is the remedy in 2011.<\/p>\n g) Hate or love of the elite? The hints of the 2008 attraction and distrust of wealth only magnified by 2011. In the midst of \u201cat some point\u201d we have made enough money, of not the time for profits on Wall Street, of \u201cmillionaires and billionaires,\u201d of \u201ccorporate jets,\u201d of going after everyone from guitar factories to Boeing \u2014 in the midst of all that, where do all the all elite vacation spots and golf resorts fit in \u2014 along with massive donations from Goldman Sachs and BP? How strange that the more one demonizes the good life that unimaginable riches provide, the more one seems comfortable with the good life that unlimited government subsidizes?<\/p>\n The skeptics of 2008 proved prescient; those who demonized them should be embarrassed. And we should remember that candidates, of both parties, will govern mostly as they campaign. Slips are not indiscretions, but often will prove in hindsight windows of the soul.<\/p>\n URLs in this post: <\/p>\n \u00a92011 Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Victor Davis Hanson PJ Media The Right-Wing Complaint of 2008 In 2008, the following was the general right-wing argument against Obama\u2019s candidacy:<\/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":[271],"tags":[366,12,98,66,308,1015,1055,1053,211,50,601,1044,371,1047,88,1042,129,1056,602],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-qJ","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1165,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/that-strange-summer-of-2008\/","url_meta":{"origin":1657,"position":0},"title":"That Strange Summer of 2008","author":"victorhanson","date":"October 24, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Our president revealed himself to be doctrinaire ideologue. by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online Historians will look back at the 2008 campaign in the light of the 2010 midterm elections. Almost everything the president has done in the last two years is simply a continuance of that now strangely\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "October 2010"","block_context":{"text":"October 2010","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2010\/october-2010\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":371,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-uncool-president\/","url_meta":{"origin":1657,"position":1},"title":"The Uncool President","author":"victorhanson","date":"November 5, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services In 2008, Barack \"No Drama\" Obama was the coolest presidential candidate America had ever seen \u2014 young, hip, Ivy League, mellifluous and black, with a melodic and exotic name. Rock stars vied to perform at his massive rallies, where Obama often began his\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":1657,"position":2},"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":712,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/from-hope-and-change-to-fear-ad-smear\/","url_meta":{"origin":1657,"position":3},"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":392,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-game-changes\/","url_meta":{"origin":1657,"position":4},"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":7805,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-madness-of-2008\/","url_meta":{"origin":1657,"position":5},"title":"The Madness of 2008","author":"victorhanson","date":"August 26, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"A nation became unhinged by trivialities like \u201chope and change.\u201d It has now awakened. \u00a0 by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review Online America is suddenly angry at the laxity, incompetence, and polarizing politics of the Obama administration, the bad optics of the president putting about in his bright golf\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Obama Administration"","block_context":{"text":"Obama Administration","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/obama-administration\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"On the campaign trail, October 2008 (Joe Raedle\/Getty Images)","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/pic_giant_082614_SM_Barack-Obama-2008-G.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1657"}],"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=1657"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1657\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1658,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1657\/revisions\/1658"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1657"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1657"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1657"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n
\n[1] had little experience:\u00a0http:\/\/pajamasmedia.com\/eddriscoll\/2010\/10\/31\/the-commander-in-chief-of-msnbc\/<\/a>
\n[2] lost much of his eloquence:\u00a0http:\/\/pajamasmedia.com\/eddriscoll\/2009\/03\/05\/advantage-dean-barnett\/<\/a>
\n[3] being very proud:\u00a0http:\/\/www.bostonherald.com\/news\/us_politics\/view.bg?articleid=1074519<\/a>
\n[4] admissions of prior inexperience:\u00a0http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=PGeu_4Ekx-o<\/a>
\n[5] Tony Rezko:\u00a0http:\/\/abcnews.go.com\/Blotter\/story?id=4111483&page=1<\/a>
\n[6] Here is a telling excerpt:\u00a0http:\/\/www.politicsdaily.com\/2008\/10\/27\/obama-2001-radio-interview-bombshell\/<\/a>
\n[7] nakedly partisan media:\u00a0http:\/\/www.freerepublic.com\/focus\/bloggers\/2573077\/posts<\/a>
\n[8] Get in their faces:\u00a0http:\/\/www.nationalreview.com\/articles\/225959\/coming-obama-thugocracy\/michael-barone<\/a>
\n[9] Hillary Clinton in 2003:\u00a0http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=NJxmpTMGhU0<\/a>
\n[10] Rep. Linda Sanchez, in 2011:http:\/\/www.realclearpolitics.com\/video\/2011\/10\/13\/dem_congresswoman_gop_not_patriots_they_dont_love_this_country.html<\/a>
\n[11] food stamps:\u00a0http:\/\/pajamasmedia.com\/blog\/food-stamps-a-microcosm-of-out-of-control-government\/<\/a>
\n[12] nucular:\u00a0http:\/\/www.slate.com\/articles\/news_and_politics\/explainer\/2002\/09\/why_does_bush_go_nucular.html<\/a>
\n[13] The 2009 Cairo speech:\u00a0http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2009\/06\/04\/us\/politics\/04obama.text.html?pagewanted=all<\/a>
\n[14] \u201cbedroom slippers:\u00a0http:\/\/fromtheleft.wordpress.com\/2011\/09\/25\/obama-take-off-your-bedroom-slippers-put-on-your-marching-shoes-stop-complainin-stop-grumblin-stop-cryin\/<\/a>
\n[15] not to raise taxes in a recession:\u00a0http:\/\/www.breitbart.tv\/flashback-obama-says-you-dont-raise-taxes-in-a-recession\/<\/a>
\n[16] The End of Sparta:\u00a0http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/exec\/obidos\/ASIN\/1608191648\/pajamasmedia-20<\/a><\/p>\n