by Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n
National Review Online<\/em><\/p>\n To Obama, \u201cthey\u201d are responsible for all our troubles. Problem is, \u201cthey\u201d are most of us. In turn, we were to suspend disbelief over his past hardball campaigns for the state senate and the U.S. Senate. The young, charismatic, post-racial, post-political inheritor of Camelot could not really have compiled the most partisan record in the Senate. We were to think away his tough-guy Chicago-style associates. His pastor at the time, the venomous Rev. Jeremiah Wright, was an aberration. And when candidate Obama occasionally derided George W. Bush, it was considered rough, but deserved.<\/p>\n Alas, the first nine months of this administration have proven the most polarizing in memory. Polls show a 61 percent partisan gap. Obama is now rated as the most divisive first-year president in the past four decades. As this week\u2019s elections suggest, even in liberal New Jersey and moderate Virginia, voters are becoming tired of being caricatured as either saints or sinners, depending on the degree to which they embrace the Obama vision. No wonder. As a Manichean, he increasingly envisions the world as \u201cus\u201d versus \u201cthem.\u201d<\/p>\n Who are \u201cthey,\u201d who have raised the bar on everyone else?<\/p>\n First, of course, \u201cthey\u201d are the rich in perpetual war against the poor. \u201cThey\u201d made out like bandits under Bush, so \u201cthey\u201d should have their federal income taxes raised to make \u201cthem\u201d \u201cpay their fair share\u201d in \u201cpatriotic\u201d fashion. Forget that currently about 5 percent of taxpayers shoulders nearly half the federal income-tax burden. It matters little that a greater percentage of households (well over 40 percent) now pays no federal income tax whatsoever.<\/p>\n On the Obamist reading, the record federal deficits are not due to waste and fraud. Nor are unnecessary government spending and excessive entitlements the culprits. A bankrupt Medicare and soon-to-be-bankrupt Social Security, congressional pork-barrel projects, and interest due on past profligate spending did not cause our budget crisis. Instead, the red ink is almost entirely due to a shortage of revenue, and brought on by the greedy who have the capacity, but not the caring, to fork over more.<\/p>\n \u201cThey\u201d should be targeted as well by the states, many of which have rightly raised their tax rates \u2014 in California, to over 10 percent. \u201cThey\u201d are easily able to pay a new healthcare surcharge, the greedy few lending a helping hand to the virtuous many. \u201cThey\u201d surely have enough to pay the full 15.3 percent FICA tax on most of their income over the current $106,000 cap. Add it up, and soon state, federal, FICA, property, and sales taxes will reach 60 to 70 percent of \u201ctheir\u201d incomes.<\/p>\n But that is a tolerable bite since income is now seen as inherently arbitrary and rigged. How compensation is calibrated is somehow illegitimate in the first place \u2014 and thus it cannot properly belong entirely to the earner. At least, I think that conjecture reflects the president\u2019s own past unguarded references concerning the need for \u201credistributive\u201d change and his exhortations to \u201cspread the wealth.\u201d<\/p>\n Who exactly are \u201cthey\u201d? The selfish Chamber of Commerce. The profit-driven doctors who cut out tonsils unnecessarily. The rapacious insurance companies, which jack up healthcare costs. Wall Street, of course, which ruined the economy. Those who do not have overdue accounts on their credit cards, who pay their taxes in full, and who meet their mortgage payments do so not because they live by a particular code and forgo some discretionary spending, but only because \u201cthey\u201d somehow have more income than others.<\/p>\n \u201cThey,\u201d however, are not always quite defined by income alone. Barack Obama himself lived in a spacious home. His populist advisers David Axelrod and Rahm Emanuel have used their insider contacts to make millions. So has a surprising number of other high-ranking administration officials, from Larry Summers to Timothy Geithner. Populist Obama supporters Charles Rangel and Chris Dodd both found sweetheart deals to finagle vacation homes. Compliance with the tax code is not a characteristic of an Obama cabinet appointee, or of a liberal congressman who lobbies for higher tax rates. \u201cThey,\u201d in other words, means every American who makes over $250,000 (or is it $200,000? or really $150,000?) \u2014 but does not support Barack Obama.<\/p>\n In this world of \u201cthem\u201d versus \u201cus,\u201d an individual is not so responsible for his own circumstances. All those without health insurance, but who have money for cell phones or plasma televisions, nonetheless face a veritable \u201cmurder\u201d by the neglect of the affluent. Illegal aliens, who choose to send $50 billion annually back to Latin America, are forced to live in the shadows without adequate federal entitlements. The young over 23, who choose to spend some of their disposable income on cars, plasma TVs, or cell phones, obviously don\u2019t have a dime for a catastrophic insurance plan. In this new world, wealth and poverty are judged in relative fashion \u2014 to be impoverished is not to have as much as \u201cthey.\u201d<\/p>\n A second binary is the vicious and cruel political opposition. Fox News is not a news organization at all: It is \u201copinion journalism\u201d like \u201ctalk radio\u201d \u2014 and thus to be ostracized at all costs. The White House communications director said nicer things about mass-murdering Chairman Mao than anyone in the administration has said about Rush Limbaugh. To Barack Obama, the opposition \u201cdoes what they\u2019re told.\u201d To his former green czar, Republicans are \u201ca\u2014\u2014\u2014s.\u201d If you rally or protest, you become the mob, Nazi-like and astroturf-like. Town-hall protesters are to be derided by the media with the graphic sexual slur \u201cteabaggers.\u201d<\/p>\n Abroad, good things happen because of Obama\u2019s inspiration, bad things are the residue of George W. Bush. To be an Obama diplomat is to start a speech by trashing the prior president of the United States. There is no sense of decades of a unified foreign policy, and no memory that Democrats during the Bush administration authorized everything from two wars to the Patriot Act.<\/p>\n Unfortunately, race is also an Obama-administration binary. The tell-tale symptoms of the campaign have now grown into a clear pathology. In a moment, white police can become stereotypers who act \u201cstupidly.\u201d America suddenly is \u201ccowardly\u201d on matters of race. Black congressmen or state governors who are unhappy with their political fortunes take their cue from the Obama administration and cite \u201cracism\u201d for their troubles.<\/p>\n If protesters at town halls are not proportionally representative in racial terms, they are of course \u201cracists.\u201d In the world of Obama favorite Van Jones, whites steer pollution into black communities, and white suburban kids are more likely than black urban kids to commit mass murders. Valerie Jarrett, arguably one of the most powerful women in the world by virtue of her access to the president of the United States, in her war against Fox News resorts to the coded civil-rights trope of \u201cspeaking truth to power.\u201d Apparently, in this cosmic struggle, by virtue of her race and her anointed vision she has perpetual truth on her side, while others, less saintly, have perpetual power, which is to be assailed.<\/p>\n When 97 percent of African-American voters preferred Obama to a liberal Hillary Clinton in the primaries, that does not suggest racialism, but a modest majority of whites voting for John McCain likely does.<\/p>\n Racism, cited during the last weeks of the campaign as the only reason why an otherwise shoo-in Obama might lose, now often explains Obama\u2019s falling popularity. Indeed, to the degree that Barack Obama gets what he wishes, the country is deemed to be on racial probation; to the degree he does not, it is considered recidivist and back to Jim Crow days.<\/p>\n But race, wealth, and politics are not the only good-guy\/bad-guy dichotomies. Obama has somehow managed to inject divides even into the most mundane things we do. Buy a car? Purchasing a Ford now means something politically different from buying a Chevy. Get an NEA grant? If so, you are part of the solution; if not, you\u2019re not. If you\u2019re behind the DMV counter wearing a purple union T-shirt, you\u2019re a progressive and for the \u201cpeople\u201d \u2014 even if you care little about the long lines of waiting customers. An oilman who finds precious natural gas to fuel an energy-starving America is not of the same moral sort as a \u201cgreen\u201d visionary who garners federal subsidies for an inefficient solar-panel project.<\/p>\n One America, now out of power, did all sorts of terrible things that require atonement and apology overseas; another America, now in power, did all sorts of good things that explain our current status and influence. In the age of Obama\u2019s apologetics, innocence would require a plea like, \u201cBut my family was from the North. But I wasn\u2019t alive in August 1945. But my grandmother was 1\/16 Cherokee. But I voted for Al Gore and John Kerry.\u201d<\/p>\n As we saw in the elections in purple state Virginia and blue state New Jersey, the problem with Obama\u2019s various binaries is that they are beginning to overlap. In short, those finding themselves on the bad \u201cthem\u201d side of the equation are growing in number, while the anointed \u201cus\u201d shrinks.<\/p>\n \u00a92009 Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online To Obama, \u201cthey\u201d are responsible for all our troubles. Problem is, \u201cthey\u201d are most of us.<\/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-yQ","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":2464,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/spare-us-the-sermons-mr-president\/","url_meta":{"origin":2160,"position":0},"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":11453,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-origins-of-progressive-agony\/","url_meta":{"origin":2160,"position":1},"title":"The Origins of Progressive Agony","author":"victorhanson","date":"October 16, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review What has transformed the Democratic party into an anguished progressive movement that incorporates the tactics of the street, embraces maenadism, reverts to Sixties carnival barking, and is radicalized by a new young socialist movement? Even party chairman Tom Perez concedes that there are \u201cno\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Kavanaugh"","block_context":{"text":"Kavanaugh","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/kavanaugh\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1809,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/obama-too-little-too-late\/","url_meta":{"origin":2160,"position":2},"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. But it comes\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "March 2010"","block_context":{"text":"March 2010","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2010\/march-2010\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":9671,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/9671-2\/","url_meta":{"origin":2160,"position":3},"title":"From an Angry Reader: Re:\u2026","author":"Megan Ring","date":"December 14, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"From an Angry Reader: Re: Obama's initiatives What a horrible president and yet, 57% approval rating! Wow! How is that possible! I think he did quite well considering that Republicans vowed on the first day not to work with him and never did! \u00a0Connie Knapp Victor Davis Hanson's Reply: Dear\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Angry Reader"","block_context":{"text":"Angry Reader","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/angry-reader\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1511,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/obamas-new-take-on-partisanship\/","url_meta":{"origin":2160,"position":4},"title":"Obama’s New Take on Partisanship","author":"victorhanson","date":"July 9, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online One of President Obama\u2019s strangest complaints is that there are too many in Congress who act, well, like former senator Obama. 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\n<\/em>
\nBarack Obama ran a healing campaign. He offered sonorous themes of a country no longer to be divided by blue-state\/red-state animosities, by race, by income \u2014 or by much of anything.<\/p>\n