by Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n
National Review Online<\/em><\/p>\n The liberal writ was that a strutting \u201cbring \u2019em on\u201d George W. Bush for eight years did what he pleased on the international scene. His \u201cunilateral\u201d America supposedly did not consult with either allies or international organizations, as he rammed through democracy in Iraq and Afghanistan. President Bush\u2019s \u201cmy way or the highway\u201d personal credo resulted in an America alone.<\/p>\n Obama, of course, was hailed as the multifaceted antidote to all that. The new nontraditional America would reach out to the world. We would now listen rather than lecture. This was a welcome reflection of Barack Obama\u2019s own cool and tolerant approach to politics, learned as a seasoned community organizer in Chicago.<\/p>\n But things have not quite worked out as planned. Barack Obama to all appearances is certainly more relaxed than Bush. And he resonates abroad as a nontraditional American. Indeed, Obama is now the paradigm of America\u2019s ongoing metamorphosis into something more like the rest of the planet.<\/p>\n Yet in his own way Obama projects a far more prissy, self-indulgent America than we had under Bush. And that self-centeredness seems a logical extension of the new commander-in-chief himself.<\/p>\n How can that be, given Obama\u2019s well-known apologies \u2014 for everything from slavery and our treatment of Native Americans to being imperious toward Europeans and Muslims? In obsequious fashion, we have sought to assure the Russians that we won\u2019t deploy anti-ballistic missile defenses in Poland and the Czech Republic. Obama has reminded the Chinese that they enjoy sovereignty over Taiwan. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Bashar al-Assad, the Castro brothers, Hugo Ch\u00e1vez, and assorted other old enemies of the United States are suddenly considered either neutrals or friends.<\/p>\n It seems counterintuitive, then, to suggest that Obama\u2019s America is increasingly self-absorbed.<\/p>\n Global Penitent<\/strong><\/p>\n But consider first the nature of his apologies. America deigns to apologize to Muslims without much mention of a murderous Islamic radicalism that almost daily fuels a terrorist attack on some portion of the world\u2019s civilian population.<\/p>\n Left unsaid by the global penitent is that Russia flattened Grozny and butchered hundreds of thousands of Chechens in serial wars. No need to talk of the absorption of Tibet by China or of the 70 million Chinese who were killed or starved to death under Mao. Will the adjudicator Obama not say who was at fault in Rwanda, who needs to apologize \u2014 and how?<\/p>\n Obama is conflicted over Hiroshima, but not so much over the millions of Chinese, Koreans, Australians, British, and Americans who were slaughtered by the legions of the Co-Prosperity Sphere \u2014 and were desperate to find a way to stop Japanese militarism.<\/p>\n The point is this: When Obama takes it upon himself to adjudicate, in quite ahistorical fashion, who is culpable and who not, the resulting verdicts are consistent only in terms of the president\u2019s own Chicago-style race\/class\/gender politics.<\/p>\n Detention in Guantanamo is Bush\u2019s transgression against the Constitution, but the incineration of terrorists and their families by judge\/jury\/executioner Predator drones in Waziristan is Eric Holder\u2019s approved cosmic justice.<\/p>\n The New York trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the architect of mass murder, proves to the world that war can become a refined legal matter in the prissy new age of Obama. But there is no need to go into the morality of blowing apart the head of a negotiating Somali pirate with sniper fire, since the killing had a presidential seal of approval.<\/p>\n What is lost in all this \u201cBush did it\u201d moral posturing is any sense of American humility, of tragic acceptance that in bad\/worse alternatives there is no good choice.<\/p>\n Instead, Obama\u2019s America arrogantly sermonizes to the world that it alone, in its singular wisdom and morality, has redefined war as a courtroom drama \u2014 but not quite when it is a matter of what America wants.<\/p>\n Just wait: If a few unhinged jury members, ACLU lawyers, and showboating judges collude to acquit KSM as only 99 percent guilty, then Obama will, for 2010 political purposes alone, connive to find a way to keep the acquitted killer in prison.<\/p>\n Obama lectures the world on new American values, and then does pretty much what he pleases \u2014 whether it is not quite \u201cshutting Guantanamo down\u201d in a year, or not quite ushering in a new global age of his radical cap-and-trade environmentalism.<\/p>\n The more Obama confesses to America\u2019s shortcomings, the more his bored hosts abroad sense that such loud self-righteousness is psychodrama \u2014 Obama\u2019s angst about his own country. The world has a lot on its plate \u2014 hunger, war, plague, poverty, histories of mass murdering \u2014 without adding yet another private sermon by Obama about how his own miraculous presidency is moral redemption for an array of past American sins.<\/p>\n Give Me Your Cash<\/strong><\/p>\n Consider next the matter of debt. Obama inherited the Bush budget deficits \u2014 and then drove them through the roof. Indeed, he is on schedule not only to run up consecutive trillion-dollar-plus annual shortfalls, but also in his tenure nearly to match the aggregate debt piled up by all previous administrations combined.<\/p>\n A large portion of the new Obama borrowing has to be covered abroad, mostly through Chinese and Japanese purchase of U.S. government bonds.<\/p>\n The Obama administration expects to borrow yearly hundreds of billions of dollars from the Chinese to expand American healthcare. In some sense, therefore, 400 to 500 million Chinese \u2014 most of them without much access to even rudimentary medicine, doctors, and hospitals \u2014 will be working overtime to loan Americans enough money to ensure universal access to hip replacements, gastric bypasses, and flu shots.<\/p>\n Cut through the soaring rhetoric: We are left with an America that assumes the world\u2019s less well-off will directly subsidize our own better-off.<\/p>\n No wonder that Obama has cooled his rhetoric on Chinese smoky coal plants, Tibet, mercantile trade policies, and human rights. All such idealism falls before America\u2019s voracious appetite for borrowed cash.<\/p>\n For Obama to fulfill his grand visions of expansionary American entitlements in health, education, and welfare, he must jettison the idealistic international rhetoric, and instead concentrate on the money. We want dollars that we haven\u2019t earned. And, like a grasping heir, we will do or say almost anything to get them.<\/p>\n I Need Your Oil<\/strong><\/p>\n Our energy policy reveals the same prissy sense of self. For all the campaign rhetoric about using all America\u2019s energy resources, the administration seems focused on subsidizing relatively small amounts of wind and solar power.<\/p>\n Green talk is preferable to encouraging American industry to exploit our sizable gas, oil, shale, tar sands, and nuclear resources. Apparently, we want to boast to the world about our new solar farms, while quietly continuing to import Hugo Ch\u00e1vez\u2019s messy goo.<\/p>\n Since American consumption of gasoline and traditional generation of electricity remains steady even in the new age of wind and solar power, Obama\u2019s message is, again, hardly subtle: The rest of the world is supposed to keep drilling in the ecologically fragile Persian Gulf, tap the tundra of Siberia, and pump out of the Latin American jungle \u2014 while we pay for it with borrowed Japanese and Chinese money.<\/p>\n That way we are assured that the California coast, the Alaskan frontier, and much of the American West stay off limits from exploitation \u2014 in accordance with our ever more refined environmental and aesthetic sensibilities.<\/p>\n Our Exceptional President<\/strong><\/p>\n Again, much of this disconnect between utopian rhetoric and national selfishness reflects Obama\u2019s own conflicted persona.<\/p>\n When the common man Obama travels abroad, foreigners witness the strange spectacle of soothing \u201cWe are the world\u201d sloganeering, coupled with an imperial entourage of jumbo jets, caravans of SUVs, and an array of flacks who allot precious seconds of face time with Him.<\/p>\n During the campaign there was Obama the Humble, offering creepy messianic rhetoric about subsiding seas and cooling temperatures, in a mise-en-sc\u00e8ne of faux-Greek temple convention sets, Latin mottos and the Obama \u201cseal,\u201d schoolchildren singing Obama songs, and the staged Victory Column backdrops. All that led right into ten months of an even more megalomaniac climate in which dissent \u2014 whether from Fox News, the Tea Party protests, or the Chamber of Commerce \u2014 was seen as blasphemous.<\/p>\n We have now hit bottom with government requests to report \u201cfishy\u201d critics. The NEA schemes to advance the agenda of the new Caesar. And official communiqu\u00e9s announce fictitious jobs in fictitious congressional districts \u201csaved\u201d by more quite real government borrowing.<\/p>\n The net result of all this is that America is becoming as self-righteous, self-centered, and prissy as its president is himself.<\/p>\n \u00a92009 Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Why Obama’s America seems so self-centered? by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online The liberal writ was that a strutting \u201cbring \u2019em on\u201d George W. Bush for eight years did what he pleased on the international scene.<\/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-yE","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1846,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/mr-president-words-matter\/","url_meta":{"origin":2148,"position":0},"title":"Mr. President, Words Matter","author":"victorhanson","date":"February 7, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Obama, the rhetorician, learns people take a man at his word. by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online What is Barack Obama\u2019s real problem? Too many people here and abroad took him at his word, and he now seems quite angry at that. For two years Obama serially damned the\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":149,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-orientalism-of-barack-obama\/","url_meta":{"origin":2148,"position":1},"title":"The Orientalism of Barack Obama","author":"victorhanson","date":"December 28, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Terry Scambray New Oxford Review Of course the documentary movie,\u00a02016: Obama's America, was timed by the conservative, Dinesh D'Souza, to discredit the president. Nonetheless, there can't be much doubt that the president's vision of America is driven by his attitude toward the perceived sins of European colonialism and his\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":6037,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/you-dont-say\/","url_meta":{"origin":2148,"position":2},"title":"You Don’t Say . . .","author":"victorhanson","date":"June 10, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson NRO's\u00a0The Corner Barack Obama in his weekly radio address accused opponents of comprehensive immigration reform of rank partisan politics: \u201cThey\u2019ll try to stoke fear and create division. They\u2019ll try to play politics with an issue.\u201d He should know: Here is what he advised Latino groups before\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Punditry"","block_context":{"text":"Punditry","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/opinion\/punditry\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1273,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/our-waning-obama-worship\/","url_meta":{"origin":2148,"position":3},"title":"Our Waning Obama Worship","author":"victorhanson","date":"September 10, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"We Americans know not what we do. by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online In just 20 months, President Obama\u2019s polls have crashed. From near 70 percent approval, they have fallen to well below 50 percent. Over 70 percent of the public disapproves of the Democratically controlled Congress. Hundreds of\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":1295,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/obama-derangement-syndrome\/","url_meta":{"origin":2148,"position":4},"title":"Obama Derangement Syndrome?","author":"victorhanson","date":"December 29, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson PJ Media I\u2019d say if you live in the United States of America and you vote for George Bush, you\u2019ve lost your mind. \u2014 John Edwards When does the legitimate \u201cI oppose Obama\u201d descend into the illegitimate \u201cI hate Obama\u201d? It is popular now to suggest\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Punditry"","block_context":{"text":"Punditry","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/opinion\/punditry\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1067,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/obamas-racial-politics\/","url_meta":{"origin":2148,"position":5},"title":"Obama’s Racial Politics","author":"victorhanson","date":"January 19, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online Never has America been more assimilated, integrated, and intermarried \u2014 as is evident in everything from politics to popular culture, from statistics to anecdotes. Yet from late 2007 to 2012, Barack Obama has been establishing new rules of racial referencing. 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