by Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n
PJ Media<\/em><\/p>\n Here\u2019s the conclusion to the saga of Obama. I left off [1] with Chapter Four and why the Obama locomotive went off the rails after only a year.<\/strong><\/p>\n Chapter Five \u2014 The Verdict Is Still Out<\/strong><\/p>\n So here we are after a year with the president below 50% in the polls, the progressive dream for a bit stalled, and the media uncertain whether to press ahead with their Ministry of Truth homage, or to bail before Obama shreds their last vestiges of disinterested credibility and takes them down with him. Or is that an overstatement?<\/p>\n I confess I am not entirely confident that this third great attempt in the last three decades to become Europe can be so easily stopped (and yet in just 12 months we saw the greatest decline in popularity of any first-year president in poll-recorded history).<\/p>\n So why the doubt?<\/strong><\/p>\n The enormous borrowing for a time may spark an inflation-driven expansion timed to coincide with the November election. GDP growth will accelerate while worries about mega-deficits, stagflation, and persistent unemployment will, for a while, be put off to 2011. Much of the TARP money will be released in late summer, and it will create a temporary uplifting effect, analogous to the final binge of a soon to be maxed-out credit card.<\/p>\n We also have not quite yet seen the bitter pushback: expect a renewed \u201cBush did it\u201d offensive, the promiscuous playing of the racial card to stifle dissent, and stimulus money lavished on everyone from train aficionados to solar panel producers. Do not underestimate either the role of the SEIU or Acorn-like groups during registration and balloting in key close run congressional races.<\/p>\n Americans have never given up on a president so early. To do so would mean to a majority of voters not merely that they were wrong, but terribly wrong. To admit that is difficult; to admit that so early is terribly difficult.<\/p>\n While much criticism is made of the president\u2019s scripted eloquence, his reliance on the teleprompter, his unease with repartee, his awkwardness in question and answer, nonetheless he is skilled with the teleprompter, and much of his message to many of the people can be teleprompted.<\/p>\n After all, that is in part how a two-year senator got elected in the first place. And as a rhetorician, Obama is skilled in weaving alternate realities. For you reader, his recent exegesis of his broken promises to put the healthcare debate on C-SPAN (it was sort of aired, didn\u2019t you know that, dummies) was preposterous. But admit as well that such a bold alibi came right out of the mouth of Saruman in his Orthanc \u2014 mellifluous, assured, seamlessly shameless. It would make even Tartuffe proud. Obama\u2019s art is more than just teleprompted eloquence.<\/p>\n And Obama offers his best rhetorical performances when tottering at the abyss, as we saw with his Rev. Wright sophistry.<\/p>\n Chapter Six\u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n It won\u2019t be enough for conservatives to say they are not Obama, and not ready to become a socialist Belgium. They need far more \u2014 a systematic agenda that outlines exactly how Americans are to become fiscally solvent, what and how much should be cut, a vow to end the congressional culture of corruption and become Spartan in our congressional habits, a confident energy policy that encourages nuclear, natural gas, and oil drilling to tide us over to new sources of energies, and a new resolve to enforce our borders, and end the na\u00efve posturing of treating our war against Islamic jihadism as some sort of interesting legal debate that bounces around the philosophy department lounge.<\/p>\n This election the stakes are not just the particular career of yet another politician, but the very way our United States will fare for a generation. Rarely has the Left so ambitiously and brazenly set out a statist agenda, to radically transform America by establishing such gargantuan deficits that a variety of tax increases to prevent bankruptcy will mean that the nation\u2019s entrepreneurial class will pay between 60 and 65% of their incomes in taxes \u2014\u201cspreading the wealth\u201d in pursuit of \u201credistributive change.\u201d Since the economy experienced GDP growth over 5% in the last quarter, these record deficits are more than stimulus. They are unabashedly ideological in nature. My only puzzlement is whether Obama is primarily interested in the growing of government per se, so that new millions of loyal constituents can either administer or receive entitlements \u2014 or his primary interest is in piling up red-ink to such a degree that record new state income, federal income, payroll, capital gains, and property taxes will radically redistribute income: the entrepreneur will accept that he can keep scarcely 40% of his gross income, and can\u2019t pass on his life\u2019s work without 45-55% in inheritance taxes to a government to redistribute to more \u201cdeserving\u201d others, and in despair accept his fate that he is just a cog in the wheel like everyone else. (E.g., So why do the extra work, when the government will take it while alive and after death?)<\/p>\n With such stakes, it is a great time to be alive in the arena. And each according to his station should be excited that he can, must rise to the occasion to ward off this latest challenge to the old notion of a republic of free and independent citizens \u2014 who aren\u2019t quite yet willing to surrender what the great generations of the past suffered so much to pass on to us.<\/p>\n \u00a92010 Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Victor Davis Hanson PJ Media Here\u2019s the conclusion to the saga of Obama. I left off [1] with Chapter Four and why the Obama locomotive went off the rails after only a year.<\/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":[609],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-tX","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1855,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/our-obama-saga-part-one-chapters-one-to-four\/","url_meta":{"origin":1857,"position":0},"title":"Our Obama Saga. Part One–Chapters One to Four","author":"victorhanson","date":"February 4, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson PJ Media Chapter One \u2014 The Liberal Hope and Dream I think our Obama\u2019s collective story will some day be written something like this. The leftwing anointed vision of America got stalled with the failures of the Great Society, and the high tax, big government discontent\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "February 2010"","block_context":{"text":"February 2010","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2010\/february-2010\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6176,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-press-and-dr-faustus\/","url_meta":{"origin":1857,"position":1},"title":"The Press and Dr. Faustus","author":"victorhanson","date":"July 5, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Too late, American journalists realize their mistake. by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online In the old Dr. Faustus story, a young scholar bargains away his soul to the devil for promises of obtaining almost anything he wants. The American media has done much the same thing with the Obama\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Mainstream Media"","block_context":{"text":"Mainstream Media","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/american-culture\/mainstream-media\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1251,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/rethinking-george-bush\/","url_meta":{"origin":1857,"position":2},"title":"Rethinking George Bush?","author":"victorhanson","date":"September 20, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services Former President George W. Bush left office with the lowest approval ratings since Richard Nixon. In reaction, for nearly two years President Barack Obama won easy applause by prefacing almost every speech on his economic policies with a \"Bush did it\" put-down. But\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "September 2010"","block_context":{"text":"September 2010","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2010\/september-2010\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6040,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/obama-is-just-obama\/","url_meta":{"origin":1857,"position":3},"title":"Obama Is Just Obama","author":"victorhanson","date":"June 10, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson PJ Media Suddenly, half the country is upset with Obama for the recent flurry of scandals. Even some in the media are perplexed. Why the sudden angst, given that Obama is simply being Obama? We, not he, changed the rules. Once Barack Obama was elected to\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Retrospective"","block_context":{"text":"Retrospective","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/opinion\/retrospective\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6614,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/obama-as-chaos\/","url_meta":{"origin":1857,"position":4},"title":"Obama as Chaos","author":"victorhanson","date":"October 14, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/\u00a0PJ Media\u00a0 Amid all the charges and countercharges in Washington over the government shutdown, there is at least one common theme: Barack Obama\u2019s various charges always lead to a dead end. They are chaos, and chaos is hard to understand, much less refute. By that I\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Commentary"","block_context":{"text":"Commentary","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/obama-administration\/commentary-obama-administration\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":378,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/what-the-debates-taught-us\/","url_meta":{"origin":1857,"position":5},"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":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1857"}],"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=1857"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1857\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1859,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1857\/revisions\/1859"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1857"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1857"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1857"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}