by Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n
National Review Online<\/em><\/p>\n As the campaign heats up, one problem is that we continue to meet lots of different Barack Obamas \u2014 to such a degree that we don\u2019t know which, if any, is really president.<\/p>\n I think the president believes that private-equity firms harm the economy and that their CEOs are at best indifferent and sometimes unsympathetic to the struggle of average Americans. I say \u201cI think\u201d because Obama has himself collected millions of dollars from such profit-driven firms, and uses their grandees to raise cash for his reelection. Cynical, hypocritical, or unaware? You decide.<\/p>\n I think the president is in favor of publicly funded campaign financing but against super PACs; but again I say \u201cI think\u201d because Obama renounced the former and embraced the latter. Are Guantanamo, renditions, tribunals, and preventive detention constitutional necessities or threats to our security? Some of Obama\u2019s personalities have said they are bad; others apparently believe them to be good.<\/p>\n One Barack Obama crisscrosses the country warning us that a sinister elite has robbed from the common good and must atone for destroying the economy. Another Barry Obama hits the golf links in unapologetically aristocratic fashion and prefers Martha\u2019s Vineyard for his vacation. So I am confused about the evil 1 percent. Obama 1 feels they have shorted the country and must now pay their fair share, while Obama 2 feels they are vital allies in helping the poor by attending his $40,000-a-plate campaign dinners.<\/p>\n Barry Obama respects those who make billions from Berkshire Hathaway, Microsoft, Apple, Google, and Facebook, but Barack Obama does not respect those who make billions from oil, farming, and construction. Is Wall Street the source of our national problems or the source of the president\u2019s political salvation? There is an Obama who runs against a prep-schooled mansion-living member of the elite; there is another Obama who was a prep-schooled mansion-living member of the elite.<\/p>\n I thought one Obama swore to us that borrowing $5 trillion was vital \u2014 Keynesian pump priming, stimulus, averting 8 percent\u2013plus unemployment, and all that. But now another Obama claims that his serial $1 trillion deficits are proof not of \u201cgrowth\u201d of the sort that improved GDP and reduced unemployment, but rather of fiscal discipline that stopped reckless Republican spending. So Obama over the last four years brought both austerity that checked wild Bush spending, and also Keynesian growth that snapped us out of the Bush lethargy? Spending is saving? Record deficits are record fiscal restraint?<\/p>\n Lots of Obamas keep talking about civility and bringing us together; but lots more Obamas talk about punishing our enemies, emphasizing racial differences, and formally organizing supporters by racial groupings. An angelic Obama lectures about the end of red-state\/blue-state divides; a less saintly Obama refers to xenophobic clingers, typical white persons, stereotypers, and arresters of children on their way to ice-cream parlors.<\/p>\n I recall that once upon a time Obama derided fossil fuels, bragging that \u201cmillions of new green jobs\u201d would accrue from subsidizing wind and solar power and \u201cbankrupting\u201d coal companies, as energy prices would accordingly \u201cskyrocket.\u201d But then once upon another time, Obama bragged that on his watch we are pumping more oil than ever before, apparently because private firms ignored his pleas and drilled despite his efforts to shut down leasing on public lands. So we are to credit Obama for stopping oil leasing on public lands, which forced greater production on private lands, while being impressed that he lost billions subsidizing doomed solar and wind companies? When the government fails to promote new energy, that constitutes success because those outside the government then must do more? Do the various Obamas represent both the good but failed intention and the bad successful one?<\/p>\n Unfortunately, the paradoxes involve more than just the usual flip-flopping of all politicians. They strike to the heart of who is, and is not, Barack Hussein Obama.<\/p>\n The fringe Birthers made outlandish claims for years that Obama was not born in the United States and therefore was not eligible to be president. But suddenly, after nearly four years of his presidency, we discover that for over a decade and a half Obama\u2019s own publicity bio listed him as Kenyan-born. Why and how did this happen \u2014 given that authors customarily write their own autobiographies and have annual opportunities to edit them? Did Obama think that to fudge an identity might make his book on a mixed-race heritage more saleable in 1991, and then himself more exotic as a state legislator and senator in the ensuing 16 years \u2014 but for some reason not as a presidential candidate?<\/p>\n What is real and what is not? The Obama \u201ccomposite\u201d girlfriend who sort of existed and sort of did not? Was there one Obama named Barry and another who became Barack, one with the middle name Hussein that was taboo to utter in the campaign of 2008 and another with the middle name Hussein that after January 20, 2009, was supposed to resonate in the Muslim world?<\/p>\n One Obama was the constitutional-law professor at the prestigious University of Chicago; another was a part-time lecturer who never published and was rarely seen or heard at the law school. One Obama was a brilliant\u00a0Harvard Law Review<\/em>\u00a0editor; another never wrote an article. One Obama had the highest IQ of any entering president and was indeed the smartest man we ever elected commander-in-chief; another Obama proved it by not releasing his college transcripts. One Obama is the fittest and most energetic of recent presidents; another Obama is the most secretive and reluctant about proving it through the customary releasing of medical records.<\/p>\n To be fair, Barack Obama wrote a memoir explaining how he had no identity, given the absence of his father, the serial trips of his mother, and his need not to be biracial, but sometimes black, sometimes white, in the manner that he had to be and not to be part of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright\u2019s Chicago community, and to vote present in the Illinois state legislature in order to be for and against what you must be for and against. Dr. Barack and Mr. Obama can both dutifully attend worship services \u201cevery Sunday\u201d at Trinity United Church of Christ and emulate the pastor\u2019s writing and speaking \u2014 and yet only occasionally drop in, to get married and to hear sonorous platitudes about self-help and healing.<\/p>\n Is Obama just the usual chameleon politician? Or is Obama emblematic of postmodern America, where there is no truth, but, like an Elizabeth Warren or a Ward Churchill, we legitimately are who we declare we are \u2014 and then again are not what we are when we choose not to be? Or is Barack Obama not a metaphor for much of anything other than the fact that it is harder to be president of the United States than to be at Harvard or Chicago Law School, the Illinois legislature or the US Senate, where everyone declared that you did everything by doing not much at all?<\/p>\n \u00a92012 Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online As the campaign heats up, one problem is that we continue to meet lots of different Barack Obamas \u2014 to such a degree that we don\u2019t know which, if any, is really president.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","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":[96],"tags":[12,308,1057,293,73,134,242,67],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-bS","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":720,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/obamas-hypocritic-oath\/","url_meta":{"origin":736,"position":0},"title":"Obama’s Hypocritic Oath","author":"victorhanson","date":"February 17, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online Barack Obama has a habit of identifying a supposed crisis in collective morality, damning straw men \u201cthem\u201d who engage in such ethical lapses, soaring with rhetorical bromides \u2014 and then, to national quiet, doing more or less the exact things he once swore\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Second Term Policies"","block_context":{"text":"Second Term Policies","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/obama-administration\/second-term-policies\/"},"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":736,"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":6860,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/vdh-quoted-in-barack-obamas-past-as-murky-as-his-word\/","url_meta":{"origin":736,"position":2},"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":687,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/obamas-they-did-it-campaign\/","url_meta":{"origin":736,"position":3},"title":"Obama’s ‘They’-Did-It Campaign","author":"victorhanson","date":"June 24, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online The next five months should be interesting \u2014 given that Barack Obama is now experiencing something entirely unique in his heretofore stellar career: widespread criticism of his performance and increasing weariness with his boilerplate and his teleprompted eloquence. Starting with his Occidental days,\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":1067,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/obamas-racial-politics\/","url_meta":{"origin":736,"position":4},"title":"Obama’s Racial Politics","author":"victorhanson","date":"January 19, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online Never has America been more assimilated, integrated, and intermarried \u2014 as is evident in everything from politics to popular culture, from statistics to anecdotes. Yet from late 2007 to 2012, Barack Obama has been establishing new rules of racial referencing. In general, his\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Identity Politics"","block_context":{"text":"Identity Politics","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/american-culture\/identity-politics\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6697,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/obamas-credibility-gap\/","url_meta":{"origin":736,"position":5},"title":"Obama’s Credibility Gap","author":"victorhanson","date":"October 31, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"The former hope-and-change president no longer gets a pass. by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/\u00a0National Review Online\u00a0 By 1968, President Lyndon Baines Johnson was finally done in by his \u201ccredibility gap\u201d \u2014 the growing abyss between what he said about, and what was actually happening inside, Vietnam. \u201cModified limited hangout\u201d and\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":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/736"}],"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=736"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/736\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":737,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/736\/revisions\/737"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=736"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=736"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=736"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}