by Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n
PJ Media<\/em><\/p>\n Fissures in the Obama Totem<\/strong><\/p>\n Oh, I know that President Obama\u2019s approval ratings are still around 62%. But I also remember that George Bush\u2019s at the end of 2001 got even higher \u2014 and stayed at or above 60% through most of 2002, explaining why he increased his congressional majority in the midterm elections.<\/p>\n Nevertheless, I think we are beginning \u2014 after less than four months \u2014 to see fissures in Obama\u2019s pentellic statuary. And the cracks will widen, because in about six areas he has taken on human nature itself, age-old logic, and common sense-opponents that even a Harvard Law degree and Chicago organizing are no match for.<\/p>\n The Rule of Law<\/strong><\/p>\n We are on dangerous ground here with the reordering of the bankruptcy statutes with Chrysler and the UAW; with the strong-arming of stimulus money for California predicated on the protection of unions; with the serial disdain for paying taxes on the part of Geithner, Solis, Daschle and others; and with the selective release of CIA memos, to denigrate those out of office as veritable torturers (they should reread the transcript of Eric Holder\u2019s 2002 CNN interview with Pauli Zahn in which he grandly denies that the Gitmo detainees have any recourse to the Geneva Convention Accords and can be held there for as long as we think the war lasts). What separates the U.S. from Mexico, Cuba, or Haiti is the rule of law, the protection of capital and property, the evenhanded treatment of investment, and the faith in a fair media to uncover abuse. I think that is now all in question, as the utopian ends justify the tawdry means.<\/p>\n Energy<\/strong><\/p>\n We are finding more natural gas than ever. There are billions of barrels of U.S. oil in Alaska, offshore, and in shale. Yet rigs sit idle and government leases are constricting rather than expanding \u2014 and for reasons other than the economy. Logic dictated a simple course: expand exploration, increase production, use the revenue to pay down the deficit, and, along with conservation, ready ourselves for the next round of inflationary energy hikes, petro politics, and Middle East petro-bribery by transitioning to alternate energies. In other words, the rare carbon bounty of the U.S. was vital in providing a window of survival, until technology solves wind and solar and biofuel by making them more competitive and plentiful.<\/p>\n No to all that common sense. Obama instead is ignoring the potentials of coal, nuclear, gas, and oil, intent instead on cap-and-trade, and pie in the sky present-day Gorish wind and solar. The result will be that our energy bills will skyrocket. Our vulnerability will increase. Our overt enemies will gain leverage, and covert ones will keep using coal and nuclear for economic advantage. This is a disastrous energy policy and apparently has been outsourced to the Al Gore cadres. We have a rendezvous with real trouble when the global economy rebounds and demands more oil and gas. Al Gore will keep his yacht, jet on private planes, and tinker with his various contraptions at his estate; the rest of us will be in gas lines.<\/p>\n Debt<\/strong><\/p>\n Obama has somehow already used the tax last resort. That is, his figures assume taking off FICA caps, watching the states increase their own tax rates, upping the federal rate to 40%, curbing deductions \u2014 and effectively increasing the total state and federal bite to above 65% on top incomes.<\/p>\n Fine \u2014 but the deficits still go up, adding an aggregate $8-9 more trillion to the debt. The magnitude of borrowing is so staggering that there is almost no conceivable way that we can ever balance the budget without simply confiscating incomes in toto, or taxing our very sneezes. This will blow up in the administration\u2019s face as well \u2014 the taxes will discourage and dishearten entrepreneurship as the spending increases unproductive sectors of the now federalized economy, as in turn a larger fossilized constituency demands ever more entitlement and more taxes for \u201cthem.\u201d<\/p>\n I do not know what is worse, the mega-interest to come on the debt; the stifling of economic initiative and the rise of barter, off the books income, tax avoidance, or simple slowdowns; or the creation of vast new dependent classes who vote in exchange for entitlement.<\/p>\n We have a rendezvous with hyperinflation, or perhaps stagflation, in that all at once we will see high interest, high inflation, low growth, and nagging unemployment as we finagle ways to service a $15-to-20-trillion debt. Expect not just high taxes, but higher Social Security retirement ages, means-testing, higher FICA taxes, rationed Medicare, and still all that will not be enough\u2026<\/p>\n Security<\/strong><\/p>\n Very schizophrenic. We keep FISA, Patriot Act, rendition, military tribunals (Gitmo for now?), Predator attacks, Iraq and Afghanistan \u2014 while we trash their Bush origins, apologize abroad, and try to out CIA memos to embarrass the country between 2001-8.<\/p>\n At some point, Putin, Ahmadinejad, Chavez, Kim Song Il, Assad, and others will conclude that Obama is either not serious or confused \u2014 and therefore ready to be tested. Right now hostility to the U.S. garners attention and apology; loyalty and alliance win neglect and complacence: better to be an enemy than a friend of America. If we get hit again at home, then the Obama administration is effectively over as a successful governing experiment; if we are tested abroad, Obama will almost have to overreact to restore squandered deterrence. Not good. Obama for 24 months ignited the left to slur the Bush protocols as kryptofascism, then found (1) they worked, (2) they were not fascist at all, (3) and now he cannot muzzle the leftwing multi-headed Cerberus he unleashed.<\/p>\n Civil Discord<\/strong><\/p>\n In just three months Obama has caused more disunity than most presidents in recent memory. Why and how? He has chosen to demonize as greedy (cf. the Super bowl quips, the \u201cspeculators\u201d jab, the \u201cfair share\u201d and \u201cspread the wealth\u201d slips, etc.) capitalists\u00a0en masse<\/em>. Why laugh as Ms. Sykes wished for Limbaugh to die of kidney failure, which set a new low for presidential uncouthness. He treats the media with contempt as all earls do to obsequious court jesters. There is a mood of \u2018them\/us\u2019 and \u2018time is running out\u2019, as the Obama administration used the panic over the autumn 2008 financial meltdown to steamroll through a statist, postmodern economic and social agenda before the people woke up. They embrace the term \u201c100 days\u201d; do they realize its genesis is 1815 and Napoleon\u2019s return from Elba? (they should: it ended at Waterloo). The cynicism is now such that anytime Obama offers a grand assurance (most ethical administration, no interest in government take-overs of autos and finance, unwavering support of Israel, no desire to look backward at the Bush administration, etc.) in Pavlovian fashion we expect the very opposite to follow.<\/p>\n Race relations<\/strong><\/p>\n Here I am worried. Far from bringing us together, I think Obama\u2019s serial emphasis on race may achieve the unintended opposite of polarization. He should have learned in the campaign (Rev. Wright, Trinity Church, typical white person, clingers, call for reparations, his grandmother \u2014 the purported prejudicial stereotyper, etc.), the perils of seeing the world through skin color. Yet to establish his own diplomatic fides abroad, he immediately evokes race at the South American summit. His interview with Al Arabiya highlights his race and family\u2019s religion. Race appears in presidential jokes. He distances himself from America prior to his coming of age.<\/p>\n Stranger still, Obama\u2019s heritage is unlike that of a Clarence Thomas, Tom Sowell, or Bill Cosby, who all knew real prejudice in 1950s America. He matured at a different time, was of African, rather than African-American, heritage, went from prep school to Occidental without the sting of experiencing the underbelly of American working class life, and yet has showcased (here I refer to the\u00a0Dreams From My Father<\/em>) racial difference and knows its emphasis is a proven route to professional success. Again, there is too much disingenuousness for such racial identification to turn out well.<\/p>\n Missed opportunity? Obama could have had a one-time stimulus, then vowed to balance the budget. He might have praised wind and solar, as he asked the carbon industry to \u2018get us through.\u2019 He could have politely disagreed with Bush, but framing differences in the tragic notion of no good choices. He might have cooled the overseas apologies, savvy that other nations have more to apologize for than his own. Obama should have established zero-tolerance for tax avoidance at a time of record tax increases. He could have remonstrated with Wall Street, and sought to rein in excess without Europeanizing the financial sector. He could have proactively reformed entitlements with bipartisan support, rather than, as will happen, drastically address them in the 11th hour. But then to do all that would be to assume he never went to Trinity Church, knew no Rev. Wright, Ayers, Khalidi, etc., did not run mysterious campaigns that eliminated opponents before the elections, was not the most partisan Senator in Congress, and avoided rather crude social and racial stereotyping while campaigning. Most who read this will not agree, given the mesmerizing effect of the Obama charisma. But in time, unless there are radical changes, I think the nation will come to learn that such talent was not put in service to our collective welfare.<\/p>\n \u00a92009 Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Victor Davis Hanson PJ Media Fissures in the Obama Totem Oh, I know that President Obama\u2019s approval ratings are still around 62%. But I also remember that George Bush\u2019s at the end of 2001 got even higher \u2014 and stayed at or above 60% through most of 2002, explaining why he increased his congressional […]<\/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":[716],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-IY","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":7254,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/foreign-policy-from-bad-to-none\/","url_meta":{"origin":2788,"position":0},"title":"Foreign Policy: From Bad to None","author":"victorhanson","date":"April 29, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"Our enemies are gloating, and our allies are grimly deciding where to go from here. by Victor Davis Hanson Barack Obama had a foreign policy for about five years, and now he has none. The first-term foreign policy\u2019s assumptions went something like this. Obama was to assure the world that\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Foreign Policy"","block_context":{"text":"Foreign Policy","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/obama-administration\/foreign-policy\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2290,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/obamas-address-to-congress-didnt-quite-do-it\/","url_meta":{"origin":2788,"position":1},"title":"Obama’s Address to Congress Didn’t Quite Do It","author":"victorhanson","date":"September 14, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson PJ Media Obama\u2019s problem with warning Americans about bickering, partisan politics, lying, and misrepresentation Wednesday night is that his green advisor Van Jones just left after it was disclosed that he called Republicans \u201ca\u2013holes\u201d, whites polluters\/more prone to mass murder in schools, and charged the former\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":2060,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/why-are-we-tiring-of-obama\/","url_meta":{"origin":2788,"position":2},"title":"Why Are We Tiring of Obama?","author":"victorhanson","date":"December 23, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson PJ Media The China Presidency I have an heirloom china pitcher on my mantle that has dozens of glued cracks \u2014 so much so that it is now purely ornamental and will not hold water. When I was a boy I\u2019d ask my mother when, and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "December 2009"","block_context":{"text":"December 2009","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2009\/december-2009\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6860,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/vdh-quoted-in-barack-obamas-past-as-murky-as-his-word\/","url_meta":{"origin":2788,"position":3},"title":"VDH Quoted In, “Barack Obama’s past as murky as his word”","author":"victorhanson","date":"December 19, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"by Jack Kelly \/\/\u00a0The Pittsburgh Press\u00a0 Onyango \u201cOmar\u201d Obama, 69, half-brother of Barack Obama Sr., came to the United States on a student visa in 1963, remained here illegally after it expired, was ordered to leave the U.S. in 1986, 1989 and 1992, but ignored the deportation orders. After Onyango\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":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1271,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/like-a-dog-the-origins-of-barack-obamas-petulance\/","url_meta":{"origin":2788,"position":4},"title":"‘Like a Dog’: The Origins of Barack Obama’s Petulance","author":"victorhanson","date":"September 11, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson PJ Media I Would Be Miffed Too If I Were Obama Obama in just twenty months has developed a reputation for being petulant, unusually sensitive to the normal run-of-the-mill criticism. His latest pushback was his strangest so far: \u201cAnd they\u2019re not always happy with me. 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