by Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n
PJ Media<\/em><\/p>\n The Harder They Fall?<\/strong><\/p>\n Who appointed over 40 ambassadors on the sole basis of campaign contributions, or has as many lobbyists in government as did any President in memory? And who releases touchy news \u2014 whether increased unemployment or trying Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in civil courts \u2014 on Friday nights, or wants his Democratically-controlled Congress to debate unpopular legislation on Saturday nights?<\/p>\n You see where this is going. Prophets fall harder than normal politicians. When you claim that seas recede and planets cool before your presence, and that Latin mottos, new presidential candidate seals, neo-classical victory trophies, and faux-Greek temple sets are the appropriate backdrops for Your speeches, then you raise the bar a bit high. Obama is not necessarily any more partisan than a Nixon or Reagan or Bush, only just as partisan \u2014 but then he claimed something quite different.<\/p>\n Add in the hope\/change mantra, and a cadre of lackeys talking about tingling legs, his majesty Caesar, and apotheosis into a \u201cgod\u201d, and our young Icarus was simply soaring too near the sun for his own fragile wax-feather wings. The problem is not just that Obama is proving Clinton-like in his Chicago hardball partisanship (cf. the trash-talk of Rahm Emanuel, Mao-admirer Anita Dunn, or the Truther Van Jones), but that his entire persona was fabricated on a touchy-feely \u201cthere is no red state, no blue state America.\u201d<\/p>\n Despite Obama\u2019s vows to restore science to its rightful place in government (I think that was his dig at George Bush\u2019s opposition to human embryo, stem-cell research), we get superstition. Instead of the Bureau of Labor Statistics\u2019 non-partisan, depressing unemployment figures, we are instead to rely on a new unproven notion of jobs \u201csaved\u201d and \u201ccreated\u201d, and in nonexistent, made-up congressional districts, listed, no less, on a government official website, www.recovery.gov.<\/p>\n War against Reason?<\/strong><\/p>\n Remember the \u201creset\u201d button promises abroad? Do we have a safer, saner relationship with Putin? Is Iran closer to disarmament? North Korea quieter? Did George Mitchell transform the Middle East? Is the \u201cgood\u201d war still good, the \u201cbad\u201d one still bad? Do the Brits feel the special relationship is stronger? Maybe Sarkozy is more impressed now with America, or are the Poles and Czechs?<\/p>\n And do Chavez, Castro, Ortega, Morales, Zelaya, and others in Latin America feel more pressure to be democratic or less? Is one third of the planet in India and China more comfortable with the messiah Obama or with the hated Bush?<\/p>\n At Home<\/strong><\/p>\n And the future? Will the country look eagerly forward to cap-and-trade taxes? The new income tax rates? Will small businesses like the caps off FICA taxable income, and healthcare surcharges? Perhaps the people can get behind impending \u201ccomprehensive immigration reform\u201d (in the way we are now for \u201ccomprehensive healthcare\u201d), which will de-emphasize enforcement and emphasize amnesty?<\/p>\n As Obama\u2019s popularity falls, expect his own partisanship to increase, and the Chicago brass knuckles to be more evident. Obama knows that he can hope and change only until he hits 35-40% approval ratings, and is rendered shouting to half-empty audience halls and a triangulating congress.<\/p>\n Full Steam Ahead<\/strong><\/p>\n A final prognosis \u2014 or why Obama is in deep, deep trouble, since he won\u2019t quit in his dream to transmogrify American into something like Belgium at best and Brazil at worse.<\/p>\n Millions of independents and swing voters went for Obama for five reasons: (1) they believed the media hype that Bush was the \u201cworst\u201d (fill in the blanks); (2) the sudden financial panic of September 2008 and the anger at Wall Street banditry and bailouts; (3) Obama\u2019s youth, charm, and oratory; (4) the feel-good novelty of voting in our first African-American president; (5) Obama\u2019s centrist campaign message of paying down debt, working with allies, drilling, being tough against al Qaeda, and being bipartisan.<\/p>\n It\u2019s taken almost 11 months, but voters now know that propositions 1-5 are now refuted or irrelevant:<\/p>\n 1) Bush is history. Like Truman, in time he will begin to look better not worse. More importantly, Bush\u2019s sins that bothered voters \u2014 too much big government and big deficits \u2014 were simply trumped by Obama\u2019s gargantuan deficits and federalization of healthcare, banking, and the auto industry. \u201cBush did it\u201d doesn\u2019t work any more. \u201cObama did it even more\u201d is the new worry.<\/p>\n 2) The panic that we would lose all our 401(k\u2019s) and home equity has passed. What we are left with in its wake is a sinking feeling that badgering small business and the Chamber of Commerce, as if they are Goldman Sachs grandees, isn\u2019t working. Raising income, payroll, and surcharge taxes at a time state, local, and sales taxes are surging, is, well, a good way to turn a recession into a depression \u2014 or at least a stagflating, weak recovery. Sometime around next March, \u201cBush\u2019s did it\u201d will transmogrify into Obama\u2019s recession. Obama can\u2019t run against the economy, but must fix it \u2014 or take the blame. His best hope is that the Republicans don\u2019t run a demagogic figure such as he himself acted in 2007-8.<\/p>\n 3) Obama\u2019s smoothness is getting old. All of us can almost write the next Obama speech: a) \u201csome\u201d say\/do, but \u201cI\u201d say\/do\u2026 The bad straw man is set up, followed by the contrast of the annointed \u201cI\u201d and \u201cme\u201d\u00a0ad nauseum<\/em>. b) then comes the apology for the sins of the rest of us \u2014 mitigated somewhat by the election of, yes, Barack Obama, the first black President; c) third is the impossible: spending more on healthcare saves more; cap and trade massive taxes will result in economies; no more lobbyists means gads of them, Bush shredded the Constitution equates into I\u2019m copying his anti-terror protocols; d) an end with hope and change ruffles and flourishes. Bottom line: the oratory is old and trite, given the lack of commensurate accomplishments.<\/p>\n 4) On the matter of racial landmarks, some of the voters think, rightly or wrongly, that they did their thing, proving America is not racist by the fact of Obama\u2019s election. Now? A lot of independents, however, won\u2019t seem obligated to vote in 2010 or 2012, motivated by the same sense of liberal assuagement of guilt. This been there\/done that feeling will be accentuated should Obama\u2019s supporters continue to play the race card as his popularity dips as a result of a statist and neo-socialist agenda.<\/p>\n 5) We know now that the campaign was a centrist deception. Bill Ayers and Rev. Wright make logical the presence of the Truther Van Jones and Anita Dunn (cf. her encomium to Mao). His most partisan Senate record presages his near suicidal effort to ram through statist healthcare, tax hikes, and partisan appointments, in addition to polarizing rhetoric. His campaign promises to meet with Ahmadinejad were not only met, but again trumped by serial apologies, selling out the Poles and Czechs and outreach to Chavez and Castro. In other words, the so-called right-wing nuts who tried to scare the hell out of voters are proving to be Nostradamuses of sorts.<\/p>\n All sorts of things can happen. Printing and borrowing can give us a brief, though unsustainable recovery around 2010. A war could break out. We could get hit big-time again as in 9\/11.<\/p>\n That said, I think not merely the thrill is gone, but a righteous anger about an Obama trifecta \u2014 of serial apologies and bows abroad, massive borrowing and deficit spending, and government-take overs of private spheres of life \u2014 is swelling up in the electorate. I haven\u2019t seen in my lifetime anything quite like it. And this furor of being had has the potential not just to take Obama down, but also his ideology and supporters along with him for a generation.<\/p>\n \u00a92009 Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Victor Davis Hanson PJ Media The Harder They Fall? Who appointed over 40 ambassadors on the sole basis of campaign contributions, or has as many lobbyists in government as did any President in memory?<\/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":[647],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-yl","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":2512,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/why-i-read-the-new-york-times\/","url_meta":{"origin":2129,"position":0},"title":"Why I Read the New York Times","author":"victorhanson","date":"July 23, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton FronpageMagazine.com I\u00a0get a lot of ragging from my fellow conservatives for reading\u00a0The New York Times\u00a0every day. But as I tell them, you have to know how the other side thinks. Progressive ideology reflects a narrative founded on unexamined ideas long exposed as unworkable, incoherent, or just\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Bruce S. Thornton"","block_context":{"text":"Bruce S. Thornton","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/bruce-s-thornton\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":12498,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/will-2021-be-1984\/","url_meta":{"origin":2129,"position":1},"title":"Will 2021 Be 1984?","author":"victorhanson","date":"July 21, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ American Greatness Cultural revolutions are insidious and not just because they seek to change the way people think, write, speak, and act. 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The latter did not happen, but after an over 40-year Russian hiatus in the Middle East, Putin has recalibrated the region, and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Vladimir Putin"","block_context":{"text":"Vladimir Putin","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/vladimir-putin\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":12116,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/impeachment-fallouts\/","url_meta":{"origin":2129,"position":4},"title":"Impeachment Fallouts","author":"victorhanson","date":"January 7, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review Impeachment is shaping up as unpredictably explosive, but not in the way imagined. There are lots of things that we do know about the present impeachment of Donald Trump \u2014 and we know that there are even more areas that remain unknown. Quietly, the\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":11998,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/our-privileged-scolds\/","url_meta":{"origin":2129,"position":5},"title":"Our Privileged Scolds","author":"victorhanson","date":"September 25, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review One theme of the Democratic debates is collective furor \u2014 at whom or what is not always clear, other than at Americans who voted for Trump. Or perhaps at America itself for failing the expectations of our moral betters? 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