by Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n
National Review Online<\/em><\/p>\n By Sunday afternoon, the Gallup tracking poll showed a 17-point spread in the president\u2019s approval rating \u2014 38 percent approval to 55 percent disapproval. Such polls are fickle and can go up and down quickly, often depending on unwarranted and unfair perceptions and media hype, hinging on everything from hurricanes to killing bin Laden. That said, these recent abysmal numbers might suggest that for the first time, a considerable number of Americans are starting to be turned off not just by Barack Obama\u2019s economic policies, but by Barack Obama himself. But why now?<\/p>\n The president\u2019s latest Martha\u2019s Vineyard vacation was a public-relations disaster, wholly unnecessary, and in part responsible for Obama\u2019s most recent slide in the polls. Part of the problem was purely coincidental and no one\u2019s fault: Who could have expected that while the president of the United States was resting on an exclusive private beach on a tony island on a calm August day, millions of Eastern Seaboarders around him would be engaged in a media-driven frenzy of emergency preparation and evacuation?<\/p>\n Yet most of the negative perception was the president\u2019s own doing. For nearly three years, there has been something strange about the First Family\u2019s ritzy getaway tastes. The annual Martha\u2019s Vineyard rentals were bookended by First Family junkets to Vail, Costa del Sol, and Hawaii. The choice of venues spawned at least three problems for the president that have nothing to do with the First Family\u2019s right, and indeed duty, to enjoy a little well-earned vacation time \u2014 or with the fact that other presidents have vacationed in nice places.<\/p>\n First, Obama\u2019s fiery rhetoric (\u201cfat-cat bankers,\u201d \u201ccorporate jets,\u201d \u201cmillionaires and billionaires,\u201d \u201credistributive change,\u201d \u201cat a certain point you\u2019ve made enough money,\u201d etc.) has demonized the better off. Many successful liberal presidents do that, but they finesse the necessary fundraising and schmoozing with Wall Street zillionaires with tact and discretion. Bill Clinton was a past master at gluing a populist veneer atop his deep fascination with old money and hip celebrity. The Obamas are far clumsier in both their class-warfare boilerplate and their overt elite tastes, whose contradictions they apparently either miss or don\u2019t much care about.<\/p>\n No doubt this August the presidential advisers, without a clue about life in Tulare or Des Moines, gave sycophantic pep talks to the Obamas not to listen to \u201cright-wing talk radio\u201d and just enjoy what they like to enjoy. Obama himself apparently is still confident that the media will always exempt his golfing in a way they never did Bush\u2019s far less frequent putting. Michael Moore, after all, is not going to cut and paste a video clip of Obama on the fairway.<\/p>\n Yet some photos inevitably leaked out of the \u201credistributive change\u201d statist at his $50,000-a-week rented estate, surrounded by \u201cmillionaires and billionaires\u201d who could alone afford such rental prices, many of whom flew in on \u201ccorporate jets.\u201d That disconnect appears to the American public as abjectly hypocritical. We all know that for the president to keep pushing his agenda of higher taxes, he will soon inevitably get back to bashing the rich. But we also assume that this time the public has seen the flip side of a one-eyed Jack and wonders, when the president hits up his Vineyard neighbors for campaign cash at his $20 million rented estate, whether he will first make sure that they are not \u201cfat cats\u201d and owners of \u201ccorporate jets.\u201d<\/p>\n Even right-wing presidents, even in good times, know enough not to rub in too much the perks of being president. George W. Bush was pilloried for chain-sawing at \u201cthe ranch,\u201d as if he were a counterfeit outdoorsman; but he still knew that his media critics suffered far more in his beloved nowheresville of Crawford than did he. The \u201cReagan Ranch\u201d in the Santa Barbara Mountains was not really a ranch at all, but a rustic hovel, and the videos of Reagan in his early seventies, chopping wood amid burrs and stickers, with sweat spots under his arms, were not faked. In contrast, the elder Bush liked boating off his family estate in Maine \u2014 and was flayed for being a bit too happy with his seaside, preppie-sounding Kennebunkport mansion.<\/p>\n Timing poses a second problem, hurricanes apart. The United States is in the doldrums. The economic news \u2014 high unemployment, credit-downgrading, a ruined housing market, almost no growth, record debt, trillion-dollar-plus deficits, soaring fuel and food prices \u2014 is not just bad, but seems to be getting worse. Could not the president have gone home to Chicago for a week, followed by a weekend at Camp David \u2014 demonstrating in symbolic fashion to hurting Americans that their chief executive is cutting back on exclusive travel and amenities? Even Jimmy Carter knew enough to turn down the White House thermostat and put on a cardigan sweater when gas was hard to find. The misdemeanors of phony man-of-the-people photo-ops (the awkward, camouflaged John Kerry coming back from goose hunting) are usually far outweighed by the felonies of \u201cI do what I want to do\u201d overt elitism (the smug windsurfing John Kerry in spandex).<\/p>\n Finally, this summer\u2019s golfing at Martha\u2019s Vineyard has torn the curtain away from an image that Barack Obama has taken a lifetime to cultivate, to considerable advantage. He was decidedly a middle-class prep-schooler in Hawaii. He was not born into Clinton-like poverty. Occidental and Columbia are not Eureka College or Texas A&M. When Obama finally got some real money, he almost immediately bought a wannabe Chicago mansion and tried to enhance his grounds with help from Mrs. Tony Rezko. Nothing in Obama\u2019s r\u00e9sum\u00e9 suggests poverty \u2014 or disdain for elite enjoyment.<\/p>\n To square his apparently embarrassing middle-class circle, Obama has brilliantly manipulated some weird facets of American culture: Being not quite so-called \u201cwhite,\u201d and vocally left-wing, can mean that even a multi-millionaire has innate street credibility and can qualify for minority victimhood. The fact that Barack Obama is part Kenyan meant for many \u2014 and apparently for Barack Obama himself \u2014 that a record number of presidential golf outings, and Michelle\u2019s Costa del Sol jetting, were still excused by the fossilized 1960s nexus between poverty, prejudice, and race.<\/p>\n Likewise, Obama (thanks to the two-decade tutelage of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright) does not talk like someone from Hawaii \u2014 at least not all the time. With some flair, he is able to turn on and off the slightly southern soaring cadences of the inner city (better than Hillary Clinton\u2019s awkward attempts at clingers populism), both to reassure skeptical blacks of his racial solidarity and authenticity, and (as Harry Reid bluntly noted of the adroitly opportunistic diction) to remind his white liberal supporters that their efforts at penance really were genuinely well grounded. Again, in our upside-down world of race, a Clarence Thomas or a Condoleezza Rice, who grew up amid the authentic African-American struggle against Jim Crow, could never quite be as legitimately \u201cblack\u201d as was Barack Obama (preppie, half-white\/half-Kenyan), simply because liberal identity politics offers instant superficial authentication in a way real life cannot.<\/p>\n But this last in-your-face Martha\u2019s Vineyard vacation was one too many even for our most adroit gymnast of identity and class politics: The public at last really does believe that Barack Obama, whatever his heritage or nomenclature, is an out-of-touch elitist who simply likes hanging out with wealthy people and shares their refined tastes, even as millions are out of work or broke. This summer all the old SEIU talk about \u201cfat cats\u201d and \u201ccorporate jets\u201d has been reduced to a parlor game.<\/p>\n In short, this year\u2019s vacation was a vineyard too far.<\/p>\n \u00a92011 Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online By Sunday afternoon, the Gallup tracking poll showed a 17-point spread in the president\u2019s approval rating \u2014 38 percent approval to 55 percent disapproval.<\/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":[619],"tags":[12,342,105,665,1036,134,88,296,1052,67,592],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-CH","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":736,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/two-three-many-obamas\/","url_meta":{"origin":2399,"position":0},"title":"Two, Three, Many Obamas","author":"victorhanson","date":"June 1, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online As the campaign heats up, one problem is that we continue to meet lots of different Barack Obamas \u2014 to such a degree that we don\u2019t know which, if any, is really president. I think the president believes that private-equity firms harm 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":[]},{"id":2319,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/war-what-war\/","url_meta":{"origin":2399,"position":1},"title":"War–What War?","author":"victorhanson","date":"September 2, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services The anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan headed to Martha's Vineyard this week, where President Obama is vacationing. Once again she is protesting our two wars abroad. But Sheehan is a media has-been. ABC's Charlie Gibson used to cover her anti-Bush rallies in Crawford, Texas.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "September 2009"","block_context":{"text":"September 2009","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2009\/september-2009\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":720,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/obamas-hypocritic-oath\/","url_meta":{"origin":2399,"position":2},"title":"Obama’s Hypocritic Oath","author":"victorhanson","date":"February 17, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online Barack Obama has a habit of identifying a supposed crisis in collective morality, damning straw men \u201cthem\u201d who engage in such ethical lapses, soaring with rhetorical bromides \u2014 and then, to national quiet, doing more or less the exact things he once swore\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Second Term Policies"","block_context":{"text":"Second Term Policies","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/obama-administration\/second-term-policies\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1969,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ten-lessons-from-obama\/","url_meta":{"origin":2399,"position":3},"title":"Ten Lessons from Obama","author":"victorhanson","date":"October 8, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online The election of Barack Obama brought all sorts of contradictions. A man with about the least prior executive experience in presidential history was suddenly acclaimed a \u201cgod\u201d and the smartest man ever to assume the office. Most important, a number of critical changes\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":1088,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/postmodern-populism\/","url_meta":{"origin":2399,"position":4},"title":"Postmodern Populism","author":"victorhanson","date":"January 11, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson NRO's\u00a0The Corner Newt\u00a0Gingrich\u00a0soaring in the polls 90 days ago \u2014 with an inspired strategy of critiquing Obama, reprimanding the left-wing media during the debates, playing down his ego while showing mastery of the issues, and calling for an end to internecine bickering \u2014 stumbled for a\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":1649,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/who-are-these-fat-cat-few-at-the-top\/","url_meta":{"origin":2399,"position":5},"title":"Who Are These Fat-Cat Few at the Top?","author":"victorhanson","date":"November 8, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services First lady Michelle Obama the other day railed at \u201cthe few at the top,\u201d who do all sorts of bad things. 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