by Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n
PJ Media<\/em><\/p>\n What Might Have Happened<\/strong><\/p>\n Remember Obama\u2019s initial signature speech (e.g., \u201cthere is not a liberal America and a conservative America \u2014 there is the United States of America\u201d), and all the subsequent conciliatory talk of no blue state, no red state America? Obama won, of course, because he captivated the tiny, but influential left, registered vast numbers of new minority voters, raised a billion dollars, and reconstituted the liberal base. But the key margin that got him from 45 to 53% were the independents and old Reagan Democrats. And what put them on board was not just their weariness with George Bush, but rather their flawed hunch that Obama was another Clinton rather than Carter, a realist and centrist rather than an ossified ideologue, who could talk well, bring factions together, and govern from the center.<\/p>\n Had Obama just continued his charade of the campaign in which he reassured centrists on taxes, defense, energy, and spending, he would now be in a far stronger position with Congress, and not falling in the polls.<\/p>\n Imagine not that in his first six months Obama had acted like a conservative (he could not since he won on a liberal agenda), but simply as a more moderate Clinton-like Democrat, albeit with more humility and skepticism:<\/p>\n 1)\u00a0Financial<\/em>. Barack Obama rallies the nation in January to hang tough and await the natural upswing after the bust that followed an unusual boom period of a near decade. There is no wasted stimulus. There is no $2 trillion deficit. Instead, he promises to hold spending to an annual rise of 2%, and reassures the country that balanced budgets are on the way. Markets steady on news that we won\u2019t be adding another $11 trillion to the debt, and Obama gets credit for the natural cyclical upsurge.<\/p>\n 2)\u00a0Taxes<\/em>. Obama says he ran on the Clinton-era tax rates \u2014 and so must keep his word. Top rates go to 39.5%, but there is no further talk of a healthcare surcharge, much less a lifting of the FICA caps on income over $106,000. In other words, Obama is a classically liberal tax-raiser, who salivates over a 50% state and federal combined rate \u2014 but not one approaching 70% in some states. The public accepts that he is a Democrat of the tax and spend sort, but is assured he is no socialist.<\/p>\n 3)\u00a0Reconciliation<\/em>. After the obligatory two to three weeks of throat-clearing and liberal trashing of his predecessor, Obama by March goes quiet on Bush. To the extent he mentions him, he praises the prior President for keeping us safe for seven years, but promises to do far better on the budget. He taps into independents\u2019 and moderates\u2019 dissatisfaction with the previous deficits, but wins points for magnanimity by not serially evoking \u201che did it.\u201d In other words, he is not a \u201cthey raised the bar on me\u201d\/\u201che did it, not me\u201d\/\u201chis mess, not mine\u201d whiner.<\/p>\n 4)\u00a0No apologies<\/em>. When abroad, Obama makes few apologies. He promises to listen anew, even suggests that there is a new era in American diplomacy \u2014 but eschews all the \u2018reset\u2019 button jargon. He never mentions all the past tropes about Native Americans, the atomic bomb, colonialism, racism, insensitivity to Muslims, and all the other ways in which he has apologized for an apparently embarrassing America \u2014 convinced that unapologetic Russians, Chinese, Germans, Japanese, and others have far more to atone for than does his own country. Instead, in his first six months we hear of things like Shiloh, Guadalcanal, Midway, Inchon, Chosin, Thomas Edison, Alexander Graham Bell, the Wright Brothers, and lions like Teddy Roosevelt and Harry Truman, in addition to his\u00a0de rigueur<\/em>\u00a0citations of slavery, racism, sexism, class strife and all the other sins of America.<\/p>\n 5)\u00a0Go slow.<\/em>\u00a0Obama regrets that the financial meltdown of autumn 2008 has slowed his agenda. He will reform but not reinvent health care; he will strive for more autonomous energy sources\u2014wind, solar, bio\u2014but also more domestic natural gas, oil, shale, coal, and nuclear to improve our independence and balance sheet. He will encourage green power, but show hesitation about cap-and-trade, until issues of cost and international compliance are solved.<\/p>\n 6)\u00a0Race<\/em>. As was the case of Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice, Obama will let his own expertise and competence speak about his race. In other words, he will evolve beyond the constant referencing of his own diversity, non-traditional profile, post-racial heritage, transracial blah, blah, blah. When he speaks to African-American audiences it will be in the same cadence and accentuation that he employs when talking to white audiences or vice versa. He will make plenty of so-called diversity appointments but not the sort who constantly self-reference themselves as \u201cLatinas\u201d or dress down the nation as \u201ccowards\u201d on matters of race. Being part African will be incidental not essential to his public persona as he lets others, not himself, make of it what they wish.<\/p>\n 7)\u00a0The Democratic House<\/em>. Obama quickly sizes up Nancy Pelosi and Barney Frank as, well, crazy and polarizing, and in 1994-Clinton fashion begins to triangulate. Like Truman, he talks of social justice, but always juxtaposed with references to strong national defense, American exceptionalism and the need for fiscal sobriety. Those whom Frank and Pelosi turn off don\u2019t see Obama in quite the same league.<\/p>\n 8)\u00a0Low Profile<\/em>. Instead of hourly appearing on television and engaged in non-stop travel, Obama is seen only weekly, and his speeches are unique and much anticipated in part due to their very rarity. The first person plural \u201cwe\u201d is used instead of \u201cI\u201d \u2014 as in the unfortunate \u201cmy team,\u201d \u201cas I have ordered,\u201d \u201clet me be perfectly clear,\u201d \u201cit isn\u2019t about me,\u201d etc.<\/p>\n 9)\u00a0Truth<\/em>. Obama gains a reputation for honesty and consistency. If he says he will shut down Guantanamo, we know that he shuts down Guantanamo. If 95% of Americans are told that they will see no new taxes, they will not. If he promised during the campaign to drill offshore, explore for shale and natural gas, build nuclear, then he will. Obama really will have no earmarks, lobbyists, or ethically-compromised tax cheats in his cabinet. He gets the reputation of a stubborn ethicist, rather than a charismatic Chicagoan Blagoan. When he talks of history, Obama has his facts, and is accurate, and so cites its tragedy of bad and worse choices, rather than make it up as you go, in the therapeutic fashion of \u2018if we were not perfect then we were not good.\u2019 I say all of the above not because it is at all believable, but only because that had he taken such a path he would have continued to mesmerize the country. In contrast, most of us (but not all) realized that the above is completely ridiculous and the real story is the rush to neo-socialism either to beat the impending popular backlash or in hopes of a massive-deficit-driven inflationary upsurge that gives us a year of recovery before the tab of stagflation comes due.<\/p>\n In 1968 a divided country elected Nixon \u201cto bring us together\u201d in the mistaken notion that he was a Reaganesque conservative rather than a vindictive partisan. So too forty years later,\u00a0mutatis mutandis<\/em>, the country wanted to go a notch left, and ended up instead with a European socialist nursed in the politics of Chicago \u2014 and like Nixon, unless he changes, doomed to implode.<\/p>\n \u00a92009 Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Victor Davis Hanson PJ Media What Might Have Happened Remember Obama\u2019s initial signature speech (e.g., \u201cthere is not a liberal America and a conservative America \u2014 there is the United States of America\u201d), and all the subsequent conciliatory talk of no blue state, no red state America?<\/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":[714],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-FH","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":3300,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/obamas-race-card\/","url_meta":{"origin":2585,"position":0},"title":"Obama’s Race Card","author":"victorhanson","date":"August 7, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"by Bruce S. Thornton Private Papers The liberal media are in full Captain Renault mode, \u201cshocked, shocked\u201d to find race injected into the presidential campaign by a \u201cSwift-boating\u201d John McCain. How shameless can you get? The Obama campaign\u2013\u2013indeed, the whole of Obama\u2019s public existence\u2013\u2013is about nothing other than his perceived\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":6176,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-press-and-dr-faustus\/","url_meta":{"origin":2585,"position":1},"title":"The Press and Dr. Faustus","author":"victorhanson","date":"July 5, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Too late, American journalists realize their mistake. by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online In the old Dr. Faustus story, a young scholar bargains away his soul to the devil for promises of obtaining almost anything he wants. 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\n10)\u00a0Allies<\/em>. Obama is immune to third-world romance and sees nothing but thuggery in the Castros, Chavezes, Ortegas, and Ahmadinejads of the world. He is to the left of Bush, but understands that a Uribe, Maliki, and Netanyahu are closer to American values than the alternatives. As a liberal, he talks of empathy with those who support democracy in Iran, Iraq, and central America, and is an advocate for human rights without ambiguity.<\/p>\n