by Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n
National Review Online<\/em><\/p>\n After the election, dozens of op-eds \u2014 I wrote one myself \u2014 cautioned the president about second-term overreach, focusing on how either hubris or simple fate has seemed to do in most modern second presidential terms. The recent case histories are well known \u2014 Watergate, Iran-Contra, Monica, Iraq\/Katrina. And yet Obama apparently believed in the mythical \u201cmandate,\u201d or perhaps in his own messianic ability to create one where none existed.<\/p>\n Almost immediately, he reformulated the conditions of the \u201cgrand bargain\u201d to mean few cuts, no real deficit reduction, and lots of ways of raising taxes \u2014 as he simultaneously outlined ambitious hard-left agendas (redefining the Second Amendment,\u00a0de facto<\/em>\u00a0amnesty, a return to cap-and-trade, more \u201cstimulus\u201d). None of these initiatives had much chance of becoming law without substantial presidential investment in bipartisanship. Most of Obama\u2019s favorite issues polled among the public at below 50 percent support.<\/p>\n But again, in good Sophoclean fashion, Obama felt that his unique 50.6 percent reelection victory, plus his own formidable powers of persuasion, would allow him to steamroll the opposition \u2014 or at least he would enjoy trying. Ideally, the Republican House either would shortly cave, given the president\u2019s popularity and magnetism, or would be so discredited by its knee-jerk opposition that it would suffer a 2014 wipe-out that would return Obama\u2019s politics to a pre\u2013November 2010 golden age.<\/p>\n Although the 2014 midterm elections are unpredictable, neither historically nor empirically is there much support for such suppositions, which begs the question whether Obama even cared whether there ever were. Of course, Obama and the press talked of historic realignment, in the fashion of all reelected presidential teams, as he reinterpreted the minuscule fiscal-cliff \u201cvictory\u201d as a grand referendum on far more to come. The inevitable result of such hubris is the appearance of nemesis. Stories abound about giving bundlers who raise $500,000 for Obama\u2019s Organizing for Action group special access to the president, and there are ingenious ways of computing what the money saved by shutting down public White House tours could buy (e.g., how many tour days are worth a session with Tiger Woods, a ski junket to Aspen, a getaway to Costa del Sol, a stroll on the beach at Martha\u2019s Vineyard, etc.?). Or attention turns to Rand Paul\u2019s Mr. Smith-like performance over drone attacks and American citizens, which had effects on both left- and right-wing bases \u2014 energizing the libertarian tea-partiers, while embarrassing the now-mute Bush-despising ACLU wing. Suddenly Obama understandably wishes to talk to the opposition in a way that he did not for the first four months after the election.<\/p>\n The truth is that the Obama \u201cmandate,\u201d like the \u201cmandates\u201d of past presidents, is already gone, if it ever existed. At precisely the time he should have been compromising, given the approaching train wrecks on the horizon, Obama went full speed ahead with the fiscal-cliff bluster, the sequester fiasco (replete with untruths about the origin and effects of the cuts), and some Pyrrhic appointments like the deer-in-the-headlights Chuck Hagel, the buskined John Brennan, and in-and-out Jack Lew. All had the effect of bringing more mediocrities into the Obama administration, while exposing the commander-in-chief as weak on Israel and a hypocrite in his Wall Street and civil-libertarian sermonizing. It was almost as if Obama picked the least impressive candidates imaginable in order to force the Republicans to oppose them and thus earn the wages of \u201cobstructionism.\u201d For Obama, the likelihood of stirring up controversies, not the candidates\u2019 qualifications, seemed to drive the appointments.<\/p>\n What are those train wrecks on the horizon? Even before Obamacare is fully implemented, growing numbers of Americans are coming to fear it, because of the specter of higher taxes and higher insurance premiums, and hints of medical rationing. Americans will not be happy that their insurance premiums are going up, their care is eroding, and employers are cutting back on hours.<\/p>\n The burden of serial $1 trillion deficits and ever more regulations continues to be a drag on the economy. It really is one thing to owe $9 trillion and quite another to owe $16 trillion. We will soon feel the effects of higher income taxes on employers and the restoration of high payroll taxes on the middle class. We have reached the point where we become almost giddy when unemployment goes from 7.9 percent to 7.7 percent. Success is having one single month of the Obama administration\u2019s aggregate 50 months slightly lower in unemployment than the worst month of the Bush administration\u2019s 96 months.<\/p>\n Abroad, even \u201cArab Winter\u201d may prove a euphemism for just how badly Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, and Syria could end up. Outreach to Russia is a cruel joke. For some reason North Korea thinks it is funny to threaten to nuke the US and South Korea. Iran is quietly grinning in Cheshire-cat fashion. Substituting Turkey for Israel as our special Middle East partner was inexplicable. China shrugs at the frequent US sermons \u2014 puzzled as to why a debtor believes it can lecture its lender on global responsibility. It is old hat to say that we were warned about a looming moment of reckoning like Jimmy Carter\u2019s in 1980, but it is true nonetheless.<\/p>\n Of course, there are sober compromises and solutions that would allow Obama to cut deals with the Republicans in the fashion of Bill Clinton after the 1994 elections. Reforming entitlements by upping the retirement age would fall more heavily on the older, more affluent population and would help the pro-Obama younger population. On immigration, he could agree to pathways to citizenship for the majority of long-term illegal residents while conceding the need to deport the minority who are not working and are habitually on public assistance, who have criminal records, or who have only recently arrived \u2014 while also making legal immigration ethnically blind and predicated on merit. On energy, Obama could green-light more natural-gas and oil production on public lands, which would be about as easy a way to help the economy as he could devise. Indeed, since Obama is already taking credit for increased fossil-fuel production that has occurred despite rather than because of his efforts, he should have no problem with opening up federal lands and claiming that he really did not.<\/p>\n Yet Obama is likely going to pass on all of those. It is almost as if he does not wish to have a conventionally successful second term \u2014 which is probably true, in that he apparently defines success very differently from the way even his congressional allies might. For Obama, the means \u2014 the perpetual campaign; the constant assault on \u201cfat cats,\u201d \u201cmillionaires and billionaires,\u201d and the \u201cRepublican House\u201d \u2014 are not merely justified by the ends, but are more satisfying than achieving them.<\/p>\n Indeed, the Obama\u00a0modus operandi<\/em>\u00a0is based on a familiar constant over his time in the public eye: His \u201cnontraditional,\u201d post-racial persona, his youth, his teleprompted eloquence, and his spell over the media have convinced him that he can talk, pout, and tantrum his way to out-pointing others in lieu of concrete achievement. The thrill is found not so much in successful compromise as in perpetual acrimony and division. Think up a fantasy us\/them wedge issue \u2014 millions of assault weapons slaughtering the nation\u2019s youth, Latinos being deported while buying ice cream, the seas soon to lap over our cities, gay couples hounded by homophobic reactionaries, a nation of African-American victims like Trayvon Martin and Professor Gates in need of editorial support, the parents of tens of millions of children without sufficient food stamps or unemployment and disability insurance, planes falling out of the sky for want of federal air-traffic controllers \u2014 and then demonize the opposition, hit the campaign trail, and finally, exhausted, end up relaxing and golfing with the nation\u2019s plutocrats and celebrities \u2014 until the next round of us\/them theatrics.<\/p>\n For a soon-to-be post-presidential Obama, these psychodramas are expected to lead to a comfortable retirement and a lifelong reputation for uncompromising leftism among historians and sycophants. And for Obama, that may be enough. An undistinguished undergraduate record led to Harvard Law, where veritable non-productivity led to an offer of a law lectureship, where non-existent legal scholarship led to an invitation of tenure, even as an underachieving Chicago community-organizing career was deemed a success, a mediocre stint in the Illinois legislature was pronounced productive and a pathway to higher office, a brief nondescript interlude as a US senator was declared substantial, a Nobel Prize was awarded for being there, and one successful election was about mythical \u201chope and change\u201d and another about Mitt Romney\u2019s elevator and his equestrian wife. Does anyone today note that Obama was a so-so Columbia student, a mediocre Harvard Law Review editor, a nondescript state legislator and US senator, and a virtual Nobel Peace Prize winner \u2014 or is the consensus instead that he has compiled an impressive r\u00e9sum\u00e9?<\/p>\n Achievement is in both the contest and the symbolism of getting there, not in the accomplishment of anything after arrival.<\/p>\n For Obama there is not even \u201cMy way or the highway.\u201d You see, the highway \u2014 not my way \u2014 was the point all along.<\/p>\n \u00a92013 Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online After the election, dozens of op-eds \u2014 I wrote one myself \u2014 cautioned the president about second-term overreach, focusing on how either hubris or simple fate has seemed to do in most modern second presidential terms.<\/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":[536],"tags":[700,72,701,12,105,26,699,268,134,1071,88,40,1020,372,1052],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-Ea","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":3256,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-obama-enigma\/","url_meta":{"origin":2490,"position":0},"title":"The Obama Enigma","author":"victorhanson","date":"October 28, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services Lame-duck Republican President Bush's dismal poll ratings have descended to those of Harry Truman's when he left office. The Democratic majority in Congress will probably widen after the election. Republican nominee John McCain has not run a dynamic campaign. Gen. Colin Powell, George\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "October 2008"","block_context":{"text":"October 2008","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2008\/october-2008\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":418,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-clear-alternatives-in-the-presidential-debate\/","url_meta":{"origin":2490,"position":1},"title":"The Clear Alternatives in the Presidential Debate","author":"victorhanson","date":"October 6, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce Thornton FrontPage Magazine Forget all the pre-debate handicapping and advice about what Mitt Romney needed to do or what Barack Obama had to avoid. Last night\u2019s debate clarified the stark choice facing American voters on November 6. On the one hand, we heard a candidate who endorses limited\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":2571,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-blues-disappointment-in-the-era-of-hope-and-change\/","url_meta":{"origin":2490,"position":2},"title":"The Blues: Disappointment in the Era of Hope and Change","author":"victorhanson","date":"July 30, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson NRO's\u00a0The Corner The Gloves Come Off? I think the new combativeness coming out of the White House will only increase \u2014 given growing unhappiness over increased joblessness, the omnipresence of old Clinton-era attack dogs, new public doubts that vast new government programs are really the answer\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "July 2009"","block_context":{"text":"July 2009","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2009\/july-2009\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2488,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/is-the-president-in-recovery\/","url_meta":{"origin":2490,"position":3},"title":"Is the President in Recovery?","author":"victorhanson","date":"August 1, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services President Obama does not care much about deficits \u2014 other than worrying that big debt might matter in his re-election campaign. In his first three budgets, Obama borrowed nearly $5 trillion. Currently, the government is borrowing about 45 percent of everything that it\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":1751,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/chicago-does-socialism\/","url_meta":{"origin":2490,"position":4},"title":"Chicago Does Socialism","author":"victorhanson","date":"March 30, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Connect the dots of Obama's first year--an ugly picture emerges. by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online We can have a rational debate on any one item on President Obama\u2019s vast progressive agenda, arguing whether adjectives like \u201cstatist\u201d or \u201csocialist\u201d fairly describe his legislative intent. But connect all the dots\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":2464,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/spare-us-the-sermons-mr-president\/","url_meta":{"origin":2490,"position":5},"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":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2490"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2490"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2490\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2491,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2490\/revisions\/2491"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2490"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2490"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2490"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}