by Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n
PJ Media<\/em><\/p>\n Only Room for One Obama?<\/strong><\/p>\n I got a lot of flak the last year for writing two or three columns suggesting the Europeans and other Leftists abroad might be careful about what they wish for in Obama: he might well leap-frog over them, leaving them all with the world they used to fantasize about, while in reality they profited from the world they demonized. (As I wrote, a keen Frenchman whispered to me at a reception \u201cThere is room for only one to play Obama \u2014 and we are already Obama.\u201d)<\/p>\n Comrade Hugo<\/strong><\/p>\n Consider: the U.S. reacted quickly and meddled unambiguously in condemning the Honduran arrest of President Zelaya. It mattered little that for the first time in memory we Americans now were on the side of autocrats like Castro, Chavez, Morales, and Ortega in showing revolutionary solidarity with Zelaya ( and of course the U.N. as well).<\/p>\n We cared little that both the Honduran Supreme Court and Parliament had acted lawfully in ordering their President\u2019s removal on grounds that he had acted unconstitutionally, in bold, unlawful efforts to obtain a third presidential term through a likely rigged plebiscite.<\/p>\n (It would be analogous to an Obama or Bush demanding a third term, illegally acquiring ballots to force a plebiscite, ignoring a Congressional conviction of impeachment, and a Supreme Court edict of unconstitutionality, only to be arrested by the Joint Chiefs and escorted out of the country).<\/p>\n The Real Project for the New American Century<\/strong><\/p>\n What is our logic? Given the history of imperialism and colonialism, anytime in Latin America anyone in uniform arrests an elected president in a tie, it is a coup and must be condemned, no matter the legality or the ideology involved.<\/p>\n But let us not miss the forest for the trees. The larger fact is that suddenly the United States has become a sort of revolutionary force itself. At the next G-8 summit there will be no more hectoring of Europeans to stop selling sniper rifles to Iran or sophisticated machines tools used to enhance nuclear centrifuge operations.<\/p>\n Instead, the Europeans \u2014 \u201dshocked\u201d over the mayhem in the streets of Tehran, and still hurting over the kidnapping of British sailors, the jailing of Western journalists, and the arrest of Western embassy personnel \u2014 will be hectoring the Obama administration to please tighten up the old Bush sanctions. (In the new, no-more-anti-ballistic-missile age, Frankfurt and Paris will soon be in range of the planned Iranian nukes.)<\/p>\n And Americans, I think, will resist increased sanctions or embargoes. As a transracial, transnational Gandhi-like figure, Obama believes that he alone understands and empathizes with the previously demonized Third-World revolutionary leaders.<\/p>\n Yes, on our behalf it is his destiny to talk with them, and tame them in a manner of speaking, perhaps to stop their terrorizing, drug-running, arming, and bullying, or more likely the overt manifestation of all that. In other words, he\u2019s our Che, a universal pop star, part Bono, part Mandela, part Michael Jackson, and part Al Gore that deflects criticism that we are all Texas oil men with twangs who talk about Gawd, Eye-Rack, and Jasus.<\/p>\n This metamorphosis is to be accomplished by Obama\u2019s singular charisma and \u2018empathy\u2019: as a person of color, on his paternal side from a \u00a0Muslim family, and of African heritage, Obama \u201cknows\u201d that he too has been on the butt-end of Western hegemony (forget the subsidized ride to prep school, Occidental, Columbia, Harvard, the mansion, etc.; we are talking of perceptions, not reality), and thus can assure an Ahmadinejad he \u2018feels\u2019 what it is like to be an Iranian leader with all sorts of globalized and Western-inspired pressures. Just as the elite Sotomayor knows what it is to be a Latina in a repressive America, so Obama knows what it is to be a leader of color in a Western-dominated global order.<\/p>\n Our America \u2014 nationalizing the auto industry, socializing the health care system, allowing state, local, and federal income and payroll tax to confiscate 65-70% of the wealthy\u2019s income, gravitating to a state-run, Ministry of Information media in which ideology governs access, news dissemination and appraisal, and even the banalities of press conference questioning \u2014 is now to be not that different from previously demonized states.<\/p>\n We are no longer \u201cexceptional\u201d (Obama\u2019s words, not mine), and merely a postnational state with no particular global interests other than \u201cworld peace\u201d and \u201cglobal fairness\u201d. In other words, there is now no real reason why an Iran or Venezuela should have any reason to be angry with the United States. Our President sympathizes with much of their past hurts and sensitivities; he has voiced similar criticism of the past global role of the United States; and America will now find its new role as one with those it used to isolate and bully. (The Europeans used to despise sanctimonious, moralistic and non-interventionist Jimmy Carter; but they can\u2019t really get mad at Obama. He\u2019s no Georgia peanut farmer, with drawl, Bible, and Billy, but a metrosexual, Europeanized one of them who will drive them absolutely crazy as he sermonizes and pontificates.)<\/p>\n \u201cDemocracy\u201d is largely a neoconservative construct, definable through a myriad of narratives, none of which with any exclusive claim on a relative notion like \u201ctruth.\u201d Who is to say that Iranian or Venezuelan democracy is any less valid than the American strain of democracy? (Again, for those who think I exaggerate or am being facetious, cf. Bill Clinton\u2019s Davos praise of Iranian democracy in 2005). Or who is to say that what we call aggression is not merely someone\u2019s self-defense? Only an empathetic soul can fathom how the other sees and suffers reality, since there is no real objective reality, just what we with power used to proclaim it as.<\/p>\n Ironies Abound<\/strong><\/p>\n In this brave new age, there will be ironies glories, not all of them in the short-term uncomfortable. No more European internationalists will be taking cheap shots at U.S. \u2018hegemony\u2019 as we protect them. No, they will be more worried that (1) America has out-lefted them (much more so than in the 1930s when we did not wish to join \u201cBritish imperialism\u201d in its efforts to stop Hitler, or during the 1950s when we objected (with Russia) against Anglo-French efforts to \u201crecolonialize\u201d Suez.). (2) We are no longer the \u201cbad cop,\u201d but the divine one, who has separated ourselves from the colonial European tradition. Oh yes, Europe wanted Obama, but he is not a creature of the Sorbonne salon, but rather sees himself and his paternal family more a victim of past colonialism (cf. the fate of the Churchill bust).<\/p>\n I think after Afghanistan, NATO will be analogous to the International Criminal Court \u2014 a Hague-like institution that will let the Euros deal with the Russians or the Islamists on their own, while issuing all sorts of moral \u201cgrave concern\u201d and \u201cextremely troubled\u201d communiqu\u00e9s.<\/p>\n Hey, What Happened to Awful America?<\/strong><\/p>\n We won\u2019t be giving any more lectures on \u201cneo-liberalism\u201d and the glories of free markets. More likely, Americans will rather offend the socialist Europeans with our gargantuan public spending, vast pressure on international banks and lending institutions, repressively high taxes, big government, slow growth, high unemployment, and protectionist, unionized economy \u2014 an equality of result culture that in good ol\u2019 American fashion trumps their own. I don\u2019t think the game any longer is to label George Bush\u2019s America heartless and cruel while you ship over billions of dollars in Mercedeses, Volvos, and elegant olive oil to a wide-open, no-holds-barred, free market consumer economy \u2014 as Bush the \u201cDecider\u201d leers at Russians, Muslims, Eye-ranians and anyone else that might push around the Euros.<\/p>\n But Wait a Minute<\/strong><\/p>\n The problem with all this is that Obama\u2019s sleek Boeing jet, his neat helicopters, his Chicago mansion, his children\u2019s\u2019 upscale prep schools, the flying in of chefs or flying in for a night in New York, are all predicated on a bountiful, profit-minded capitalist system of production, in which entrepreneurs take enormous risks in search of sizable personal profits, and are left alone to profit within government\u2019s wide parameters of fair play.<\/p>\n A state-of-the-art military protects the global capitalist order, ensuring both free sea lanes and communications, but also plays the theoretically ultimate enforcer of fair play on things as diverse as copyright laws to patent protection. Tamper with all that? I don\u2019t know at what point the proverbial goose and golden egg rule applies, but it is somewhere \u2014 as we see in the messes elsewhere in most of the world.<\/p>\n Obama has surrounded himself with legions of \u2018fixers.\u2019 Bright men and women who have Ivy League law degrees, business school credentials, PhDs in the social sciences, and academic pedigrees in science, humanities, and engineering. Quite impressive, these Platonic Guardians of the soon to be perfect state. But most of their careers in finance, government, business, and academia have been well-paid jobs critiquing, administering, regulating, nuancing, writing about, and hectoring those who create things \u2014 builders, developers, industrialists, farmers, truckers, transportation execs, retailers, lenders and investors.<\/p>\n We are being run now by film critics, not directors, book reviewers not writers, music columnists, not musicians. And it is far easier to fault than to birth, nuance rather than build. The irony is that the muscular classes carry the regulating and talking classes on their backs. They don\u2019t mind being whipped occasionally and even bridled, but like any good mule will suddenly stop and no longer move when they feel the rider either does not know where he is going, or is going to kill the mule with his switch, spurs, and yanking on the bit.<\/p>\n Yes, we are in the chrysalis stage and we will come out looking altogether different from what we were when we went in the cocoon.<\/p>\n \u00a92009 Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Victor Davis Hanson PJ Media Only Room for One Obama? I got a lot of flak the last year for writing two or three columns suggesting the Europeans and other Leftists abroad might be careful about what they wish for in Obama: he might well leap-frog over them, leaving them all with the world […]<\/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-FZ","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":2612,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/missing-our-moment-in-iran\/","url_meta":{"origin":2603,"position":0},"title":"Missing Our Moment in Iran","author":"victorhanson","date":"July 6, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services Last month, hundreds of thousands of Iranians took to the streets to protest a rigged presidential election. Our president was extremely cautious in his initial criticism of the Iranian government's fierce crackdown against the protestors. At first, President Obama said that the United\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":8342,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/obama-and-revolutionary-romance\/","url_meta":{"origin":2603,"position":1},"title":"Obama and Revolutionary Romance","author":"victorhanson","date":"April 14, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"His foreign-policy errors result not from incompetence but from a conscious agenda. by Victor Davis Hanson\u00a0\/\/ National Review Online Lots of questions arise about the muddled foreign policy of the Obama administration. Critics suggest that America\u2019s friends have now become enemies, and enemies friends. Others cite incompetence and na\u00efvet\u00e9 rather\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "American Culture"","block_context":{"text":"American Culture","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/american-culture\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"(Bill Pugliano\/Getty)","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/04\/pic_giant_081814_SM_Barack-Obama-G_1-500x292.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":2250,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/bitter-harvests-to-come\/","url_meta":{"origin":2603,"position":2},"title":"Bitter Harvests to Come","author":"victorhanson","date":"October 3, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson NRO's\u00a0The Corner Reflections on the Speech to Congress If one were to sum up the Obama speech to the joint session of Congress, it is the same old, same old formula: \"I am a uniquely post-American fresh start; the era of Bush and our dreadful past\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "October 2009"","block_context":{"text":"October 2009","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2009\/october-2009\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2119,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/bowing-dithering-and-trashing-america\/","url_meta":{"origin":2603,"position":3},"title":"Bowing, Dithering and Trashing America","author":"victorhanson","date":"November 28, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson NRO's\u00a0The Corner When Reality Catches up to Rhetoric The growing problem for the Obama administration is that the public has finally caught on that the president's tough rhetoric and soaring oratory don't match reality. \"Considering all options\" and \"wanting more information\" essentially mean dithering and voting\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "November 2009"","block_context":{"text":"November 2009","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2009\/november-2009\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6203,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/obamas-authoritarians\/","url_meta":{"origin":2603,"position":4},"title":"Obama’s Authoritarians","author":"victorhanson","date":"July 16, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Mouthing Sixties-style anti-Western slogans is the way to win the president's heart. by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/\u00a0National Review Online There were many paradoxes left after the protests of the 1960s. 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Most Americans granted that anti-Communist strongmen like Ferdinand Marcos,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Political Culture"","block_context":{"text":"Political Culture","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/american-culture\/political-culture\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/OvalOffice.whitehouse.jpg?fit=401%2C247&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":2103,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/resetting-the-reset-button\/","url_meta":{"origin":2603,"position":5},"title":"Resetting the Reset Button","author":"victorhanson","date":"December 5, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"As promised, Obama has set our diplomacy on a new track. by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online After ten months of \u201cBush did it\u201d diplomacy, the Obama administration needs to reset its reset button. Europe On substantial issues, relations with Europe have not improved. 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