by Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n
PJ Media<\/em><\/p>\n Being There<\/strong><\/p>\n Gone is Bush the great Constitution-shredder. Tribunals, renditions, Predators, wiretaps, Iraq, Guantanamo, preventative detention \u2014 these are now either embraced or expanded. Iraq (\u201cthe surge is not working\u201d) is Obama\u2019s \u201cgreatest achievement.\u201d The public I think believes Obama demagogued all those protocols for political advantage, then as commander-in-chief looked at the intelligence, and quietly adopted them all. Okay, politicians do that. But how can one \u201cvirtually\u201d oppose all that he embraces? Does he just make things up as he goes along, assuming we all have collective amnesia?<\/p>\n The Candidate<\/strong><\/p>\n The same thing has happened to Keynesian economics that gave us near 10% unemployment and $3 trillion more in debt, taking a bottoming-out recession and turning it into near European-like stasis. Suddenly, the Bush tax rates are critical. There is talk of budget cutting. Red states, not blue states, are proper fiscal models \u2014 for liberals as well as for conservatives. Do we believe that a Gov. Paterson had more answers than a Gov. Christie? Government apparently cannot create jobs by printing money. Christina Romer, Larry Summers, and Peter Orszag are gone back to either academia or the big money on Wall Street. Was early 2009 all a dream? Is all this what we call \u201cmoving on\u201d?<\/p>\n Elmer Gantry<\/strong><\/p>\n Ditto what happened to Obama the healer. Was that too just a convenient fa\u00e7ade that was to come and go \u2014 and come?<\/p>\n Are we no longer all purple state friends, but to be at each other\u2019s throats \u2014 and quite literally? Thus the great healer Obama just warned of impending \u201chand-to-hand combat\u201d if the Republicans take over. He once declared of Sean Hannity that one of his supporters would \u201ctear him up.\u201d He thought he was a Chicagoan Sean Connery in the\u00a0The<\/em>\u00a0Untouchables<\/em>\u00a0boasting that \u201cif they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun.\u201d He advised Latinos \u201cto punish\u201d their Republican \u201cenemies.\u201d Not long ago candidate Obama pontificated that his supporters just had to confront Republicans and Independents and \u201cget in their face.\u201d We remember his \u201cwhose ass to kick\u201d or his relegation of Republican opponents to \u201chostage takers\u201d and suicide bombers: \u201cHere\u2019s the problem: It\u2019s almost like they\u2019ve got \u2014 they\u2019ve got a bomb strapped to them and they\u2019ve got their hand on the trigger. You don\u2019t want them to blow up.\u201d<\/p>\n Obama clearly likes the tough guy imagery of metaphorically slicing, shooting and bombing: \u201cWe can\u2019t have special interests sitting shotgun. We gotta have middle class families up in front. We don\u2019t mind the Republicans joining us. They can come for the ride, but they gotta sit in back.\u201d So are we back to the Valerie Jarrett, Rahm Emanuel, David Axelrod, Bill Daley Chicago style? What happened to our new president as Deepak Chopra?<\/p>\n Cyrus Vance Redux?<\/strong><\/p>\n I know Obama has a liberal agenda, but more recently he seems to have no agenda, as he flits about, trying this and trying that, in the manner of a forty-something academic who found out his faculty utopianism does not quite work outside the quad. Is Putin now \u201con our side\u201d or snickering at our na\u00efvet\u00e9? Should we try a fifth threat to Iran to stop proliferation by a particular date or else? Are we bullying or not bullying or sort of semi-bullying Israel? Did that outreach to Syria and Venezuela bring dividends yet? Do national security bureaucrats really employ \u201coverseas contingency operations\u201d and \u201cman-caused disasters\u201d \u2014 do their foreign counterparts laugh when they receive such memos? Do our anti-terrorism experts really refer to Guantanamo thugs as \u201cdetainees\u201d and forbid the use of \u201cjihadist\u201d in discussion of radical Islamic terrorism? Is that still operative?<\/p>\n \u201cEnergy Independence\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n When gas hits $4 a gallon, will we still stop new offshore exploration, table oil and gas leases in the west for more Van Jones \u201cwind and solar and millions of green jobs\u201d and inflating our tires to avoid the need for new oil drilling rigs? Or is that too all inoperative? Suddenly will Obama claim he was always for nuclear, gas, oil, shale, coal \u2014 any and all energy to get gas and power prices back down to tolerable levels?<\/p>\n Let Me Be Perfectly Clear And Make No Mistake About It!<\/strong><\/p>\n Obama reminds me of a lot of graduate school professors who had no syllabi and no plan of instruction. Instead they would wing it, and lecture, sermonize, and remonstrate until about week six into the semester when the students started to rebel, wondering whether there were any real reading assignments, any tests, any papers, any rationale to grading \u2014 as they waited for an intervention from a senior colleague to inform us that our professor really did have a course plan somewhere, really did know what he was doing.<\/p>\n I also saw an Obama sort once in farming. To up his production on his weak vineyard, sometimes he used manure, sometimes calcium nitrate, sometime winter rye grass. In each manifestation, he swore that he alone was onto the proper way to fix nitrogen to the vines in his particular sort of soil \u2014 no other formula would do except the one he was trying at the time (and he tried a lot of times).<\/p>\n Pruning was the same. In a four-year period I was told that the secret to good harvests was leaving 4, then 5, then 6 and finally 8 canes. Irrigation was similar: he lectured as time went on that a Thompson vine needed water every week, every two weeks, every three weeks, every month \u2014 and had to have all water cut off before raisin harvest at least by July 4th, July 15th, or August 1st. One O-mite spray was all one needed. No, two were essential. Yes, in fact three gave complete protection \u2014 no matter that his vineyard seemed to burn up with red-spider mites each July.<\/p>\n Come harvest only natural paper trays worked, only rain-resistant, only new fast-dry waxed ones. No concession was made either to the ideas of other farmers, or even to his own prior ones that apparently had failed to achieve his loudly proclaimed prognostications. There was no failure; each failed strategy was the logical and requisite precursor leading to the final successful protocol \u2014 endlessly so.<\/p>\n The wonder was not that he needed to experiment in remedying such a poorly producing vineyard, but that with each new therapy he sounded as self-assured as during his last incarnation. He never worried about hypocrisy or inconsistency, much less was he humble enough to suggest that his own lack of experience and knowledge might account for his inability to fathom the mysteries and complexities of grape production. Indeed, there was never any self-doubt or even self-reflection; that was the stuff of his listeners, never his own. I add here he looked fit and trim, with nice belt buckles, clean cap, polished boots, and an immaculate truck. Surely one who presented so in control, who spoke so assuredly, could not be so inept?<\/p>\n I was 30 when I finally was done with him. I remember now that I had wasted a lot of time listening to his mellifluous lectures and constant chiding. A crusty ditch tender, old Harold at 80, finally cleared my silly head and the spell ended with, \u201cOh, him? He just likes hearing himself talk, talk, talk to you fools since he knows everything \u2014 and nothing \u2014 about growing grapes. He\u2019d have been better off had he just housed himself up \u2014 and not as broke either had he just let his vines grow on their own.\u201d<\/p>\n Ditto that for Obama and running this country.<\/p>\n \u00a92011 Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Victor Davis Hanson PJ Media Being There Gone is Bush the great Constitution-shredder. Tribunals, renditions, Predators, wiretaps, Iraq, Guantanamo, preventative detention \u2014 these are now either embraced or expanded. Iraq (\u201cthe surge is not working\u201d) is Obama\u2019s \u201cgreatest achievement.\u201d<\/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":[146,536],"tags":[12,1057,50,726,213,527],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-140","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1073,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/cutting-the-military-is-a-bad-idea\/","url_meta":{"origin":4092,"position":0},"title":"Cutting the Military Is a Bad Idea","author":"victorhanson","date":"January 15, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Ricochet.com After World War II, Harry Truman and Louis Johnson wanted to cut the Marine Corps; by winter 1950 what was left of it almost single-handedly saved the reputation of the collapsing US military in Korea. After Vietnam, we were told there was no more need\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "National Security"","block_context":{"text":"National Security","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/politics\/national-security\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3418,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/america-through-the-looking-glass\/","url_meta":{"origin":4092,"position":1},"title":"America Through the Looking Glass","author":"victorhanson","date":"March 26, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson PJ Media President Obama yesterday praised Brazil for its new offshore oil industry and said he wants to buy as much oil as possible in this new win-win partnership \u2014 although we have piled up $5 trillion in new debt, curtailed new petroleum exploration off shore\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":4086,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-tab-comes-due-in-2011\/","url_meta":{"origin":4092,"position":2},"title":"The Tab Comes Due in 2011","author":"victorhanson","date":"January 17, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, and both the elder and younger George Bush all found the third and fourth years of their presidencies harder than the first and second. The nation and the world tired of speechmaking. The novelty of a new commander in\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "First Term Policies"","block_context":{"text":"First Term Policies","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/obama-administration\/first-term-policies\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":115,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/when-big-deficits-became-good\/","url_meta":{"origin":4092,"position":3},"title":"When Big Deficits Became Good","author":"victorhanson","date":"January 16, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services As a senator and presidential candidate, Barack Obama said that he detested budget deficits. In 2006, when the aggregate national debt was almost $8 trillion less than today, he blasted George W. Bush's chronic borrowing and refused to vote for upping the debt\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Debt and Deficits"","block_context":{"text":"Debt and Deficits","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/politics\/debt-and-deficits\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1969,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ten-lessons-from-obama\/","url_meta":{"origin":4092,"position":4},"title":"Ten Lessons from Obama","author":"victorhanson","date":"October 8, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online The election of Barack Obama brought all sorts of contradictions. A man with about the least prior executive experience in presidential history was suddenly acclaimed a \u201cgod\u201d and the smartest man ever to assume the office. Most important, a number of critical changes\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Commentary"","block_context":{"text":"Commentary","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/obama-administration\/commentary-obama-administration\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1119,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/all-the-new-that-is-unfit-to-print\/","url_meta":{"origin":4092,"position":5},"title":"All the New That Is Unfit to Print","author":"victorhanson","date":"November 21, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson PJ Media When News is No News Here are a few important developments that remain strangely ignored. I say strangely, but most readers understand why some news becomes news and some does not. 1) Iraq. The United States military between 2007 and 2009 crushed al Qaeda\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "November 2010"","block_context":{"text":"November 2010","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2010\/november-2010\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4092"}],"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=4092"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4092\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4094,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4092\/revisions\/4094"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4092"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4092"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4092"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}