by Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n
NRO’s\u00a0The Corner<\/em><\/p>\n ‘Hope And Change’ Meet ‘A Return to Normalcy’?<\/strong><\/p>\n It seems that, on the one hand, some conservatives are relieved that on matters of the Bush tax policies, the reaction to the financial meltdown, and foreign policy, including two wars, Obama has suddenly triangulated and, in sober and judicious fashion, become a mixture of a Clinton and GWB third term.\u00a0<\/p>\n But, on the other hand, while there is relief that Chomsky will not head State, and Bill Ayers not be Secretary of Defense, there is something troubling about announcing a candidacy in 2007 on a rather hard left premise of radical hope and change, running during 2008 on renouncing many earlier H & C positions (FISA, NAFTA, campaign financing, guns, abortion, taxes, capital punishment, drilling, nuclear, coal, missile defense, Iraq, the surge, Iran, etc.) to ensure election, and then as President-elect re-hiring many of the most emblematic status quo fixtures of the last 16 years.<\/p>\n As I interpret reaction to all that, there seems to be a assumption that we are getting Clinton III or Bush Lite, but with a hip soothing veneer that will bring obvious dividends in binding up wounds here and abroad.<\/p>\n Or in other words, first, the noble end of getting elected justified the disingenuous means of flipping positions, and, second, that noble end in turn was strengthened by the pragmatic means of getting Democratic centrists back in power that will win over independents, soothe conservative critics, and pretty much ignore the loud base, or buy them off with lower-level social and cultural bumper-sticker appointments.<\/p>\n Are we to be happy then that the elected Obama is proving to be a realist and pragmatist with some fine appointments rather than the ideologue outsider who savaged Hillary or demonized Bush and caricatured McCain, or rather shocked that the apparent consistency is only the desire to find political advantage? Who knows? \u2014 I surely don’t.<\/p>\n Still, it is hard to reconcile Obama’s status quo appointments with his fiery campaign anti-status quo rhetoric (e.g., “I also know that real change has never been easy, and it won\u2019t be easy this time either. The status quo in Washington will fight harder than they ever have to divide us and distract us with ads and attacks from now until November.”) \u2014 and once one goes down the slope of expediency trumping all else, the way gets slippery fast.<\/p>\n Is it 2008 \u2014 or 1984?<\/strong><\/p>\n We should all let President-elect Obama have some honeymoon time, but that said, so far the sudden cessation in ‘hope and change’ that became part of the American mindset for two years is surreal, and one of the most remarkable developments in recent American political history. Obama’s Clintonite appointments, his reliance on those well-known DC fixtures credentialed by Ivy League Law Schools, and his apparent backtracking on radical tax hikes on the “wealthy”, instantaneous shut-down of Gitmo, prompt withdrawal from Iraq, and repeal of anti-terror legislation seem to have delighted conservatives, relieved that the Daily Kos and Huffington Post are not calling the shots. But two minor points, it is still November, not late January. So no one knows anything yet and we should suspend judgment, despite the FDR and Lincoln daily comparisons.<\/p>\n Second, if we should see in January that the government really does not want to evict Khalid Sheik Mohammed & co. from Guantanamo, and does want to stay in Iraq until 2011 to finish up, and does want to let the present tax code ride for a bit, and does want to leave most Bush-enacted homeland security measures in place, then Obama has not merely embarrassed his hard-left base, but has terribly humiliated the media as well.<\/p>\n For years now we have been preached to that Guantanamo is a gulag where Korans are stomped and flushed (not laptops provided to the chief architect of 9\/11), that we waged a foolhardy, amoral, and hopelessly ‘lost’ war against the Iraqi people, that the rich plundered the economy on the backs of the poor, and that the Constitution was burned so that covert agencies could play James Bond. I could go on, but you get the picture.<\/p>\n Given all that, are we now suddenly \u2014 in 1984-fashion \u2014 around late January either to be told all that was not quite so, or will we simply hear no more about how these Bush legacies have ruined America \u2014 or what exactly is the party line to be? There is still such a thing, after all, as Google.<\/p>\n The point is that somewhere around early to mid-2007 ABC, NBC, CBS, MSNBC, CNN, the\u00a0New York Times<\/em>, the\u00a0Washington Post<\/em>, NPR,\u00a0Newsweek<\/em>,Time<\/em>, etc. chose to become \u2014 in the manner that they selected, emphasized, and presented their news stories \u2014 a quasi-official Obama media, or at least a quasi-official what-they-thought-Obama-was news media. Chris Matthews’ asinine statement about his investment in the success of the Obama administration was merely a crude summation of the creed of the more sober and judicious.<\/p>\n I don’t really think they can now pull off an Animal-Farm-like ‘two-legs were bad’, ‘now two-legs good’ complete turn-about just because they’ve taken over the manor. I do think that the media’s unprofessional lobbying for the cause of Obama \u2014 not now, but in a decade or two \u2014 will become a classic case study in any graduate class on journalistic ethics.<\/p>\n \u00a92008 Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Victor Davis Hanson NRO’s\u00a0The Corner ‘Hope And Change’ Meet ‘A Return to Normalcy’? It seems that, on the one hand, some conservatives are relieved that on matters of the Bush tax policies, the reaction to the financial meltdown, and foreign policy, including two wars, Obama has suddenly triangulated and, in sober and judicious fashion, […]<\/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":[737],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-PI","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":3150,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/2008-teeter-totter-our-that-was-then-this-is-now-year\/","url_meta":{"origin":3206,"position":0},"title":"2008 Teeter Totter: Our ‘That Was Then, This Is Now’ Year","author":"victorhanson","date":"December 29, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services As 2008 comes to a close, almost nothing has turned out as was expected at the beginning of the year \u2014 whether we consider oil prices, the war in Iraq, political corruption or the collapse of the U.S. financial system. Oil For much\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "December 2008"","block_context":{"text":"December 2008","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2008\/december-2008\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":712,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/from-hope-and-change-to-fear-ad-smear\/","url_meta":{"origin":3206,"position":1},"title":"From Hope and Change to Fear ad Smear","author":"victorhanson","date":"June 11, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services Barack Obama lately has been accusing presumptive rival Mitt Romney of not waging his campaign in the nice (but losing) manner of John McCain in 2008. But a more marked difference can be seen in Obama himself, whose style and record bear no\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Election 2012"","block_context":{"text":"Election 2012","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/obama-administration\/election-2012\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3222,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-same-old-change\/","url_meta":{"origin":3206,"position":2},"title":"The Same Old Change","author":"victorhanson","date":"November 17, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services We will likely see a lot of political \"readjustments\" come January, once President-elect Barack Obama and many new Democratic congressmen assume office, and the Republican administration leaves. Take the filibuster. For much of the Bush administration, out-of-power Democratic senators defended it as a\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "November 2008"","block_context":{"text":"November 2008","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2008\/november-2008\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7805,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-madness-of-2008\/","url_meta":{"origin":3206,"position":3},"title":"The Madness of 2008","author":"victorhanson","date":"August 26, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"A nation became unhinged by trivialities like \u201chope and change.\u201d It has now awakened. \u00a0 by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review Online America is suddenly angry at the laxity, incompetence, and polarizing politics of the Obama administration, the bad optics of the president putting about in his bright golf\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Obama Administration"","block_context":{"text":"Obama Administration","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/obama-administration\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"On the campaign trail, October 2008 (Joe Raedle\/Getty Images)","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/pic_giant_082614_SM_Barack-Obama-2008-G.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":3275,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/not-over-yet\/","url_meta":{"origin":3206,"position":4},"title":"Not Over Yet","author":"victorhanson","date":"October 11, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Reasons for hope on the first Tuesday in November. by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online Of course, this is a Democratic year. The public is tired of George Bush and eight years of an incumbent administration. War, Wall Street, and the absence of a conservative Reagan-like charismatic figure should\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":645,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/biden-unbound\/","url_meta":{"origin":3206,"position":5},"title":"Biden Unbound","author":"victorhanson","date":"July 14, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson NRO's\u00a0The Corner Joe Biden is at it again, accusing the president\u2019s opponents of hoping for bad news and the Republicans in particular of rooting for dismal economic reports, by virtue of opposing legislation of the sort they supposedly earlier would have supported. 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