by Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n
National Review Online<\/em><\/p>\n The noun\u00a0d\u00eamag\u00f4gos<\/em>\u00a0first appeared in Thucydides\u2019 history, mostly in a neutral, only slight disparaging way (usually in reference to the obstreperous Cleon), in its literal sense of \u201cleader of the people.\u201d<\/p>\n But very soon \u2014 in later fifth- and fourth-century authors (e.g., Aristophanes, Xenophon, Aristotle, the Attic orators) \u2014 both the concrete and the abstract nouns (demagogue and demagogy\/demagoguery) and the verb (to demagogue) became ever more pejorative, describing crass popular leaders who alternately flattered and incited the masses (ochlos<\/em>). Their trick was to obtain and expand their own personal power by clever rhetoric directed against the better off, coupled with promises of more entitlements for the \u201cpoor\u201d paid for by a demonized \u201cthem.\u201d<\/p>\n We often associate demagoguery in the US with wild right-wing nationalists or cultural chauvinists, such as Joe McCarthy or Father Coughlin, or with folksy Southern \u201cspread-the-wealth\u201d populists, such as William Jennings Bryan (\u201cThe Great Commoner\u201d) or Huey Long. And, of course, abroad there were no better demagogues than Mussolini and Hitler, who both started out as national socialists and then united the classes by transferring class hatred onto foreign bogeymen, in a fashion we later see most effectively in Juan and Eva Per\u00f3n.<\/p>\n Demagoguery, at its best, requires good oratory and charisma \u2014 which is why Jimmy Carter was such a dismal failure at it, despite his half-hearted demonization of three-martini lunches and private yachts at a time of a record misery index that saw high unemployment, out-of-control inflation, and usurious interest rates, coupled with a neutralist foreign policy that had led to Russians in Afghanistan, Communist takeovers in Central America, and American hostages in Teheran. Carter\u2019s mock-serious delivery was so droll, his presence so wooden, that his fist-pounding against \u201cthem\u201d turned into caricature.<\/p>\n Under a more skilled practitioner such as Barack Obama, the arts of demagoguery have become somewhat more refined in our time, but they nevertheless follow the same old patterns:<\/p>\n 1)\u00a0The use of an incendiary, but otherwise unimportant, example to whip up anger against the so-called establishment classes<\/em><\/p>\n Why mention \u201calligators and moats,\u201d or claim that doctors wantonly lop off limbs and rip out tonsils, or accuse jet-setting corporate grandees of draining the federal Treasury at the expense of \u201ckids\u2019 scholarships\u201d? The president knows full well that the American-Mexican border is only one-third fenced and the influx of illegal aliens is still considerable. He must appreciate that the vast majority of doctors, in this age of promiscuous malpractice suits, do not insist on dangerous and unnecessary surgeries to gouge the patient. And corporate depreciation schedules for personal aircraft reflect a minuscule cost to the Treasury, one analogous perhaps to the tab for personal jet aircraft for those in federal and state government. If the president cannot adduce cogent arguments to oppose increased oil exploration, then he turns to ridiculous anecdotes about the importance of inflating tires, tuning up cars, and trading in 8-mpg clunkers.<\/p>\n 2)\u00a0The demagogic rejection of demagoguery<\/em><\/p>\n Recently the president called for a civil, respectful tone among the parties negotiating the looming debt crisis \u2014 a sort of prep for tarring his Republican opponents as holding a \u201cgun\u201d to the \u201chead\u201d of his supporters. In fact, for most of Barack Obama\u2019s career we have seen violent similes packaged with Sermon on the Mount forbearance: Divisive language like \u201cbring a gun to a knife fight,\u201d \u201cget in their face,\u201d and \u201cmake them sit in the back seat\u201d is always juxtaposed with lofty appeals for no more red-state\/blue-state rancor \u2014 in a style right out of the best of the fourth-century Athenian demagogues.<\/p>\n In classical times this technique was known as\u00a0praeteritio<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0paralipsis<\/em>\u00a0\u2014 deploring the very sort of tropes that you are about to embrace. Obama adds a concrete manifestation to his rhetoric: damning \u201cfat cat\u201d bankers and then playing golf more than any other modern president as he courts Wall Street, or deriding private jets but using his own presidential jets to junket the first family to Costa del Sol, Vail, and Martha\u2019s Vineyard.<\/p>\n 3)\u00a0The evocation of anonymous straw men, sometimes referred to as \u201csome\u201d or \u201cthey\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n In the Manichean world of Barack Obama there are all sorts of such demons, mostly unnamed, who insist on extremist politics \u2014 while the president soberly and judiciously splits the difference between these fantasy poles. So for the last three years we have heard, but been offered few details, about the perils of both neo-con interventionists and reactionary isolationists, of both profligate big spenders and throw-grandma-over-the-cliff misers, of both socialist single-payer advocates and heartless laissez-faire insurers who shut emergency-room doors to the indigent in extremis \u2014 always with the wise Barack Obama plopping down in the middle, trying, for the sake of all the people, to hold onto the golden mean between these artificially constructed zealots.<\/p>\n 4)\u00a0First-person nausea<\/em><\/p>\n The demagogue, in messianic fashion, sees himself as a lone crusader taking on special interests, again always on behalf of \u201cthe people.\u201d Almost everything is personalized in these cosmic struggles. So,\u00a0ad nauseam<\/em>, we hear of the narcissistic \u201cI,\u201d \u201cmy,\u201d \u201cmine,\u201d etc., as if the executive branch is but one man of genius and compassion, set against existential challenges and demonic enemies everywhere.<\/p>\n 5)\u00a0Inconsistency of position, predicated on the (always changing) perception of 51 percent majority opinion<\/em><\/p>\n At various times, Barack Obama has lashed out at those who wished to refuse to raise the debt limit, although as a senator that is just how he voted. He deplored the polluting effects of big money in campaigns, only to raise more Wall Street cash than anyone else in presidential history \u2014 as he became the first candidate to reject the public financing of general-election presidential campaigns and the limitations on fundraising that such four-decade-old laws entailed. He once decried the very idea of not applying the War Powers Act that as president he has completely ignored. He insisted that drilling and increased supply had little effect on oil-price stability \u2014 but maintained that releasing a small amount of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve most surely would. The once-demonized Bush protocols \u2014 Guantanamo, tribunals, renditions, intercepts, wiretaps, Predators, Iraq, preventive detention \u2014 have been embraced or indeed expanded.<\/p>\n There is never a systematic agenda, a defined foreign policy. Instead, amid a fuzzy ideology of hope and change and spread the wealth, almost any position can be embraced one day and summarily rejected the next \u2014 no new taxes in December 2010, lots of them in June 2011; shovel-ready stimulus is once essential, but soon proves not so shovel-ready after all; new federal healthcare is mandatory, but so are 1,400 exemptions from it \u2014 depending on perceptions of what might win over a majority.<\/p>\n What impresses about Barack Obama is his ability to take an ancient art, refine it with an Ivy League veneer, and become a new, cool version of the old Cleon.<\/p>\n \u00a92011 Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online The noun\u00a0d\u00eamag\u00f4gos\u00a0first appeared in Thucydides\u2019 history, mostly in a neutral, only slight disparaging way (usually in reference to the obstreperous Cleon), in its literal sense of \u201cleader of the people.\u201d<\/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":[11,536],"tags":[598,12,48,105,261,592,497],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-EU","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":11096,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/our-unelected-officials-distortions\/","url_meta":{"origin":2536,"position":0},"title":"Our Unelected Officials\u2019 Distortions","author":"victorhanson","date":"March 30, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review On March 17, former CIA director John Brennan tweeted about the current president of the United States: \u201cWhen the full extent of your venality, moral turpitude, and political corruption becomes known, you will take your rightful place as a disgraced demagogue in the dustbin\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Samantha Power"","block_context":{"text":"Samantha Power","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/samantha-power\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":12727,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-left-politicizes-covid-irony-abounds\/","url_meta":{"origin":2536,"position":1},"title":"The Left Politicizes COVID: Irony Abounds","author":"victorhanson","date":"November 19, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review Where\u00a0has the coronavirus gone? 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