by Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n
Tribune Media Services<\/p>\n
Once upon a time, loud dissent, filibustering in the Senate, and gridlock in the House were as democratic as apple pie.<\/p>\n
A Senator Obama once defended his attempts to block confirmation votes on judicial appointments by alleging, \u201cThe Founding Fathers established the filibuster as a means of protecting the minority from the tyranny of the majority.\u201d<\/p>\n
In 2005, progressives were relieved that a Democratic minority had just gridlocked Congress \u2014 ending recently reelected president George W. Bush\u2019s plan to reform Social Security. Gridlock, in other words, was a helpful constitutional tool when a minority party wanted to block a president\u2019s legislative initiatives. A then-cool Senator Obama suggested Bush and his congressional supporters \u201cback off\u201d and \u201clet go of their egos.\u201d<\/p>\n
How about loud opposition to a sitting president? Well, in 2003, Sen. Hillary Clinton unloaded on those she claimed had called for less dissent: \u201cI am sick and tired of people who call you unpatriotic if you debate this administration\u2019s policies.\u201d<\/p>\n
These examples could be multiplied. But they are enough to offer contrast with a suddenly much different attitude toward what was only recently seen as the wonderful complexity of American democracy.<\/p>\n
Take Obama, now the president \u2014 and apparently frustrated. He\u2019s angry that his progressive efforts are facing legislative opposition: \u201cWe knew this was going to take time because we\u2019ve got this big, messy, tough democracy.\u201d<\/p>\n
Obama expanded on \u201cmessy\u201d to La Raza activists, who wanted amnesty for illegal aliens, by lamenting that he could not somehow \u201cbypass Congress and change the laws on my own.\u201d He later added for emphasis: \u201cBelieve me, the idea of doing things on my own is very tempting.\u201d<\/p>\n
To quote former Senator Clinton, many people are now \u201csick and tired\u201d of the Obama administration\u2019s efforts to silence critics. First, during the 2008 campaign, there was \u201cFight the Smears,\u201d a website Team Obama started to monitor its critics. JournoList followed, with a liberals-only forum of influential media pundits venting their private anger over criticism of Obama. Now there is yet another version, AttackWatch.com, a creepy website \u2014 set up with melodramatic photos and \u201cfiles\u201d like an intelligence service\u2019s red and black dossiers \u2014 that implores readers to scout around and send in examples of criticism of Obama.<\/p>\n
In fact, lots of liberal politicians and commentators suddenly do not like our ancestral \u201cmessy\u201d democracy. North Carolina governor Beverly Perdue recently unloaded on the current gridlock over the president\u2019s jobs bill: \u201cI think we ought to suspend, perhaps, elections for Congress for two years. \u2026 I really hope that someone can agree with me on that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Former Obama budget director Peter Orszag is also angry about \u201cthe Civics 101 fairy tale about pure representative democracy.\u201d Suddenly, after the 2010 midterm elections, he now wants \u201ca new set of rules and institutions that would make legislative inertia less detrimental to our nation\u2019s long-term health.\u201d<\/p>\n
Columnist Fareed Zakaria not long ago lamented the rigidity of the US Constitution itself, and wants to change the \u201chighly undemocratic\u201d Electoral College and the method of electing senators.<\/p>\n
Is this sudden liberal discontent with \u201cmessy\u201d democracy just typical American politics evident in both parties \u2014 the \u201cout\u201d minority party praising obstructionism only to blast it when it becomes the \u201cin\u201d governing party?<\/p>\n
Of course.<\/p>\n
But there is a deeper problem with the entire premise of Obamaism, which was not sold to voters as just another Democratic alternative, but rather as a holistic hope-and-change movement. Obamaism was to do everything from cool the planet to lower the rising waters, as giddy editors and historians compared its architect to a god, and pronounced a near novice the smartest man ever to be elected president.<\/p>\n
If polls and the economy are any indication, that utopian dream is now mostly over. One way of explaining the unexpected Obama meltdown would be that a president with so little prior executive experience was bound not to be up to the job of administering the most powerful nation in history.<\/p>\n
Another explanation would be the wrong agenda itself: Progressives finally got their long-awaited messianic messenger \u2014 so unlike the inept Jimmy Carter and the triangulator Bill Clinton \u2014 but his left-wing message turned off the people as never before.<\/p>\n
But there is a third and apparently more useful excuse. The American system itself \u2014 suddenly, around 2010 \u2014 simply became too rigid and obstructionist to appreciate Obama\u2019s agenda, so now it must be changed.<\/p>\n
How odd that some progressive thinkers forgot the age-old fallacy that supposedly noble ends can justify questionable means. Or, to paraphrase the Bard, the problem is not in the stars, but within yourselves.<\/p>\n
\u00a92011 Tribune Media Services<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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Thornton \/\/\u00a0Defining Ideas\u00a0 Are we more \u201cpolarized\u201d and \u201cpartisan\u201d than we were in the past? Political commentators think so. In a recentAtlantic\u00a0profile, conservative pollster Frank Luntz attributed his cynicism about American politics to the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Bruce S. Thornton"","block_context":{"text":"Bruce S. 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For much of the Bush administration, out-of-power Democratic senators defended it as a\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "November 2008"","block_context":{"text":"November 2008","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2008\/november-2008\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2464,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/spare-us-the-sermons-mr-president\/","url_meta":{"origin":1957,"position":2},"title":"Spare Us the Sermons, Mr. President","author":"victorhanson","date":"August 8, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services During the recent debt crisis, President Obama talked about the need for bipartisan compromise and, as in the past, urged civility. Giving ground and engaging in polite discourse, of course, can be noble aims. But, like most one-eyed-jack politicians, Obama has rarely embraced\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Debt and Deficits"","block_context":{"text":"Debt and Deficits","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/politics\/debt-and-deficits\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":10142,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/how-the-obama-precedent-empowered-trump\/","url_meta":{"origin":1957,"position":3},"title":"How the Obama Precedent Empowered Trump","author":"victorhanson","date":"May 2, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"By Victor Davis Hanson American Greatness.com April 27th, 2017 Donald Trump was elected president by sizing up the Electoral College, and the voting public, and then campaigning accordingly. A number of the things that explain Trump\u2019s election also point to unique opportunities to overturn the Obama legacy. This, in turn,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Trump"","block_context":{"text":"Trump","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/trump\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1809,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/obama-too-little-too-late\/","url_meta":{"origin":1957,"position":4},"title":"Obama–Too Little, Too Late","author":"victorhanson","date":"March 1, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services The United States may very well owe a crushing $20 trillion by 2020. And thus President Obama last week named a bipartisan commission to find ways to address our national debt. Such a Periclean response might sound sincere and worthwhile. 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