by Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n
Tribune Media Services<\/p>\n
More than 400 years ago, William Shakespeare wrote a riveting tragedy about a young, charismatic Danish prince who vowed to do the right thing in avenging his murdered father. That soon proved easier said than done. As a result, Hamlet couldn\u2019t quite ever act in time \u2014 given all the ambiguities that such a sensitive prince first had to sort out. In the meantime, a lot of bodies piled up through his indecision and hesitancy.<\/p>\n
President Obama wanted to give us all universal healthcare. But then he discovered that the country was broke and that most people did not like his massive federal takeover. So we got both his health care and, so far, more than 1,000 exemptions from his landmark plan for unions, corporations, and entire states.<\/p>\n
The president wished to please his liberal supporters with more government redistributive programs and higher taxes on the wealthy. But such entitlements cost lots of money \u2014 more than $4 trillion in new borrowing in just three years \u2014 and scare to death the job-creating private sector. So the president not only borrows at record levels, but also sets up a commission to warn us that his borrowing will soon bankrupt the country. He damns the \u201cfat-cat bankers\u201d and the rich who \u201cat some point\u201d have made enough money, even as he courts them for campaign donations and begs their companies to start hiring new employees.<\/p>\n
Obama warned us that we could not drill our way out of the ongoing gas crisis and needed instead to develop new green energy. As proof, he borrowed billions to promote wind and solar power, and stopped most new leases for fossil-fuel exploration in Alaska, the west, and offshore. But it turned out that we still need lots of oil as gas nears $4 a gallon. So the president brags that America is now pumping more oil under his green administration than ever before \u2014 but neglects to mention that this is true only because Presidents Clinton and Bush long ago approved the sort of oil leases that Obama had rejected.<\/p>\n
President Obama wanted so much to discontinue George W. Bush\u2019s war on terror that he banned the phrase \u201cwar on terror\u201d altogether. He apologized to the Muslim world, promised to \u201creset\u201d our foreign policy, and vowed to close Guantanamo Bay and stop the other nasty Bush antiterrorism protocols. But our \u201cto be or not to be\u201d Hamlet also wanted to continue to keep the country safe from another 9\/11-style terrorist attack, so he kept Guantanamo open, quadrupled the number of Predator drone attacks, and either preserved or expanded all the Bush protocols that he had once derided.<\/p>\n
Abroad, a new multilateral Obama wished to act only in concert with the United Nations and our allies. He vowed to respect the sovereignty of other countries and not \u201cmeddle\u201d in their affairs by imposing American values. And yet the president also embraced eternal and universal human rights and wanted the United States to be on the right side of history. So he criticized our intervention to foster democracy in Iraq even as his vice president praised it. We surged in Afghanistan even as we posted deadlines to leave. We promised not to meddle to support Iranian protestors, and to meddle to support Egyptian protestors.<\/p>\n
Hosni Mubarak was a dictator and was not a dictator, who had to leave yesterday, today, or maybe tomorrow. The situation in Libya is deemed \u201cunacceptable,\u201d but how exactly it could be made acceptable is never spelled out. Intervening there to support rebels is said to be good; but apparently so is supporting Saudi troops intervening in Bahrain to put down rebels and protect the status quo.<\/p>\n
Middle East strongmen, the president tells us, are cruel and must leave. But the why and how of it all are also never stated. Are they supposed to flee only when protests reach a critical mass? In Egypt and Tunisia, but not in Saudi Arabia, Syria, or Iran?<\/p>\n
President Obama has spent most of his life either in, or teaching, school \u2014 or making laws that he was not responsible for enforcing. His hope-and-change speeches were as moving in spirit as they were lacking in details.<\/p>\n
But now Obama is chief executive, and learning, as did Prince Hamlet, that thinking out every possible side of a question can mean never acting on any of them \u2014 a sort of Shakespearean \u201cprison\u201d where \u201cthere is nothing either good or bad.\u201d Worrying about pleasing everyone ensures pleasing no one. Once again such \u201cconscience does make cowards of us all.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hamlets, past and present, are as admirable in theory as they are fickle \u2014 and often dangerous \u2014 in fact.<\/p>\n
\u00a92011 Tribune Media Services<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services More than 400 years ago, William Shakespeare wrote a riveting tragedy about a young, charismatic Danish prince who vowed to do the right thing in avenging his murdered father. That soon proved easier said than done. As a result, Hamlet couldn\u2019t quite ever act in time \u2014 given […]<\/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":[536,271],"tags":[12,181,105,405,1064,228,88,514,1022],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-Ta","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":2980,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/president-hamlet-its-to-be-or-not-to-be-time-for-obama\/","url_meta":{"origin":3420,"position":0},"title":"President Hamlet: It’s ‘to Be or Not to Be’ Time for Obama","author":"victorhanson","date":"February 4, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online Instead of Scott McClellan, who was inept and disingenuous as White House spokesman, we now get Robert Gibbs, a nicer sort \u2014 who is likewise inept and disingenuous. For all the promises of a revolution in ethics, President Obama has created a new\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "February 2009"","block_context":{"text":"February 2009","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2009\/february-2009\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1756,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/is-it-go-easy-or-go-for-broke-mr-president\/","url_meta":{"origin":3420,"position":1},"title":"Is It Go Easy or Go for Broke, Mr. President?","author":"victorhanson","date":"March 29, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services After the bloodletting over the healthcare bill, President Obama is now at a crossroads. Not one opposition member voted for his healthcare reform. That, along with tawdry buyoffs for fence-sitting members of the Senate and a reconciliation process that avoids another Senate vote\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "March 2010"","block_context":{"text":"March 2010","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2010\/march-2010\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1879,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/our-philosopher-king-obama\/","url_meta":{"origin":3420,"position":2},"title":"Our Philosopher-King Obama","author":"victorhanson","date":"January 25, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services In Plato's ideal society, philosopher kings and elite Guardians shepherded the rabble to force them to do the \"right\" thing. To prevent the unwashed from doing anything stupid, the all-powerful, all-wise Guardians often had to tell a few \"noble\" lies. And, of course,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "January 2010"","block_context":{"text":"January 2010","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2010\/january-2010\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":655,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/supreme-court-hypocrisies\/","url_meta":{"origin":3420,"position":3},"title":"Supreme Court Hypocrisies","author":"victorhanson","date":"July 10, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services Until last week, Chief Justice John Roberts was vilified as the leader of a conservative judicial cabal poised to destroy the Obama presidency by overturning the federal takeover of healthcare. But with his unexpected affirmation, Roberts suddenly was lauded as the new Earl\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Punditry"","block_context":{"text":"Punditry","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/opinion\/punditry\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1809,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/obama-too-little-too-late\/","url_meta":{"origin":3420,"position":4},"title":"Obama–Too Little, Too Late","author":"victorhanson","date":"March 1, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services The United States may very well owe a crushing $20 trillion by 2020. And thus President Obama last week named a bipartisan commission to find ways to address our national debt. Such a Periclean response might sound sincere and worthwhile. But it comes\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "March 2010"","block_context":{"text":"March 2010","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2010\/march-2010\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1877,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/our-populist-president\/","url_meta":{"origin":3420,"position":5},"title":"Our Populist President?","author":"victorhanson","date":"January 27, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson NRO's\u00a0The Corner Obama and Populism I could believe President Obama\u2019s postmortem take that the same populist sentiment that propelled Scott Brown to office also earlier sent him to the White House \u2014 if we saw fresh liberal Democrats winning seats in places like Alabama against entrenched\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "January 2010"","block_context":{"text":"January 2010","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2010\/january-2010\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3420"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3420"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3420\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3421,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3420\/revisions\/3421"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3420"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3420"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3420"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}