{"id":9064,"date":"2016-02-17T11:07:30","date_gmt":"2016-02-17T19:07:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/?p=9064"},"modified":"2016-02-23T06:49:10","modified_gmt":"2016-02-23T14:49:10","slug":"venezuela-on-the-potomac","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/venezuela-on-the-potomac\/","title":{"rendered":"Venezuela on the Potomac"},"content":{"rendered":"

Somehow, having an Enemies List is all right if you\u2019re Barack Obama and not Richard Nixon.<\/em><\/p>\n

By Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review Online<\/em><\/p>\n

It has become an iffy idea to cross Barack Obama. After seven years, the president has created a Hugo Ch\u00e1vez\u2013like deterrent landscape, intended to remind friends and enemies alike that he is perfectly willing to use the federal government\u2019s vast power to go after those he finds politically inconvenient, while exempting those he understands to be sympathetic to his agendas.<\/p>\n

In Freudian fashion, Obama has long joked about using the power of government in a personal way. As early as 2009, when he had been invited to give the Arizona State University commencement address but had not been granted an honorary degree, he warned of rogue IRS audits: \u201cI learned never again to pick another team over the Sun Devils in my NCAA brackets.\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0President [Michael] Crowe and the Board of Regents will soon learn all about being audited by the IRS.\u201d Jesting about politically driven IRS audits is always scary \u2014 scarier when life imitates art in the age of Lois Lerner.
\n<\/p>\n

Remember when Obama, on the Spanish-language Univision network shortly before the 2010 midterm elections, urged Latino groups to join him, in ancient tribal us\/them fashion, in going after \u201cenemy\u201d Republicans. Instead of sitting out the election, he told them in community-organizing fashion, they should say: \u201cWe\u2019re gonna punish our enemies, and we\u2019re gonna reward our friends who stand with us on issues that are important to us.\u201d<\/p>\n

That threat recalled his 2008 campaign braggadocio about urging his supporters to bring (of all things!) \u201ca gun\u201d (\u201cIf they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun. Because from what I understand folks in Philly like a good brawl\u201d), and \u201cto get in their face\u201d (\u201cI need you to go out and talk to your friends and talk to your neighbors. I want you to talk to them whether they are independent or whether they are Republican. I want you to argue with them and get in their face\u201d).<\/p>\n

Obama had apparently envisioned the campaign against John McCain as some sort of brawl in the waning days of the Roman Republic. Obama also jested about drones incinerating their targets when he warned the pop-rock group the Jonas Brothers to steer clear of his two daughters: \u201cSasha and Malia are huge fans, but boys, don\u2019t get any ideas. Two words for you: Predator drones. You will never see it [sic] coming.\u201d Joking about pushing a button to incinerate a suspected terrorist and anyone in his general vicinity \u2014 let alone a group of pop singers \u2014 is a most unliberal thing to do.<\/p>\n

Obama also personalized, in Ch\u00e1vez fashion, his war on a subset of the 1 percent (mostly the upper-middle-class entrepreneur rather than the trust-fund grandee). Obama certainly has a visceral dislike not of the wealthy per se (whose lifestyles he seems to idolize and uses government perks to emulate), but of the \u201cselfish\u201d rich whom he deems obstructive of his own worldview. He feels that an Economic Commander-in-Chief should adjudicate who deserves what: \u201cIf you\u2019ve got a business \u2014 you didn\u2019t build that. Somebody else made that happen.\u201d Or: \u201cI mean, I do think at a certain point you\u2019ve made enough money.\u201d Or: \u201cThere will be time for them to make profits, and there will be time for them to get bonuses \u2014 now is not that time. And that\u2019s a message that I intend to send directly to them.\u201d<\/p>\n

To have a legitimate disagreement with the president is to be caricatured as either a coward or a bully. On illegal immigration, Obama complained that Republicans were \u201cscared of widows and orphans coming into the United States.\u201d Earlier, he had claimed they wanted to round up kids having ice cream: \u201cBut now, suddenly, if you don\u2019t have your papers and you took your kid out to get ice cream, you\u2019re going to be harassed.\u201d<\/p>\n

But aside from the psychodramatic tics and the jokes in poor taste, Obama has used government in a fashion contrary to the Constitution. IRS official Lois Lerner directed the federal tax agency to dole out tax-exempt status to groups on the basis of their ideology, and \u2014 particularly during a campaign season \u2014 on whether they were perceived Obama supporters. After staging a phony question-and-answer mea culpa, she pled the Fifth Amendment before a congressional committee of inquiry and retired with her full pension and apparent exemption from criminal prosecution.<\/p>\n

President Obama by executive order has nullified U.S Immigration and Customs Enforcement\u2019s effort to enforce federal immigration laws, apparently on the basis of perceived political advantage \u2014 and in a manner contrary to his own earlier campaign warnings about the illegality of just such executive-order overreach: \u201cWith respect to the notion that I can just suspend deportations through executive order, that\u2019s just not the case, because there are laws on the books that Congress has passed.\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0.\u00a0We\u2019ve got three branches of government. Congress passes the law. The executive branch\u2019s job is to enforce and implement those laws. And then the judiciary has to interpret the laws. There are enough laws on the books by Congress that are very clear in terms of how we have to enforce our immigration system that for me to simply through executive order ignore those congressional mandates would not conform with my appropriate role as president.\u201d<\/p>\n

In similar fashion, the Environmental Protection Agency, under the leadership of Lisa Jackson (who left her directorship abruptly and in controversy over assuming a fraudulent e-mail persona in her official communications, and who is currently on the Clinton Foundation Board), exceeded federal law in targeting particular energy companies for their deemed opposition to the president\u2019s political agendas.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve apparently long forgotten how the administration and its ideological operatives, especially when in campaign mode, singled out Boeing in South Carolina, went after Gibson Guitar, seemed eager to talk about and mischaracterize the Romney tax returns, posted invective on Romney\u2019s campaign donors, and habitually harangued the NRA almost immediately after each tragic mass shooting (\u201cThis is something we should politicize,\u201d Obama remarked of the Umpqua Community College shooting in Oregon). The Obama administration has been a veritable continuation of Obama\u2019s 2004 Senate race, when the sealed divorce records of his two chief rivals \u2014 first in the primary election and then in the general election \u2014 mysteriously were released, imploding both campaigns.<\/p>\n

The common thread in the scandals or incompetence at the EPA, GSA, ICE, IRS, Justice Department, NASA, Secret Service, and VA has been Obama\u2019s desire to advance his own particular political agendas in a fashion contrary to the supposed disinterested nature of these bureaucracies, if necessary putting in place political incompetents who would unquestioningly do his bidding. NASA, for example, has no business making its \u201cforemost\u201d aim outreach to Muslims. In the Obama era, most Americans now just assume that Black Panthers can intimidate voters at a polling place; and that illegal aliens with criminal records do not face deportation in sanctuary cities; and that failed green companies can extort federal dollars, while successful coal companies and utilities are hounded; and that Cabinet secretaries facing accusations of scandal, incompetence, or unethical behavior \u2014 Lisa Jackson, Eric Shinseki at the VA, Kathleen Sebelius at HHS, Hilda Solis at the Department of Labor \u2014 just seem to quietly resign and float away in a fashion most unlike General Petraeus.<\/p>\n

Finally, it can be a career-ending gamble for an individual to publicly oppose the president in a manner that questions his various narratives. Obama\u2019s domestic critics can become regarded as greater threats than our traditional foreign enemies \u2014 at least if the comparative venom of the president\u2019s invective is any indication. The sudden indictment of Senator Robert Menendez (D., N.J.) on old charges came coincidentally right after the senator opposed the president\u2019s Iran deal, one of the few Democrats to do so.<\/p>\n

Obama critic and documentary filmmaker Dinesh D\u2019Souza was jailed for a minor campaign-contribution infraction of the sort that typically earns a small fine. Was wrongly circumventing campaign-donation regulations a more severe crime than diverting a federal Gulfstream jet to junket on the public dime at the Belmont Stakes with one\u2019s daughters and their boyfriends, in Eric Holder fashion? Which offense is the greater conspiracy to commit fiscal fraud?<\/p>\n

Again, the point is always two-sided deterrence \u2014 to remind Washington insiders to ask themselves whether they really wish to end up like D\u2019Souza and Menendez, or like Lerner and Holder.<\/p>\n

Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, an obscure Internet video-maker, suddenly was jailed on a minor parole violation and was damned publicly \u2014 and falsely \u2014 as the catalyst for the 2012 Benghazi attacks, in which four Americans were killed. No one now believes \u2014 as President Obama, National Security Adviser Susan Rice, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for so long insisted to the world \u2014 that Nakoula\u2019s amateurish video prompted spontaneous mobs to take to the streets of Benghazi (just by coincidence on September 11) and to torch the American consulate and zero in their ad hoc GPS-guided mortars on the consulate annex.<\/p>\n

Nakoula\u2019s jailing salvaged not just one but two of the president\u2019s reelection-campaign talking points: (a) that al-Qaeda, thanks to Obama\u2019s singular efforts, still \u201cwas on the run\u201d and impotent, and (b) that the president was still devoted to the Nobel-laureate work of opposing right-wing bigots, like the easily caricatured Nakoula, who were attempting to subvert the president\u2019s ecumenicalism and disrupt the lives of innocent Americans by inciting religious hatred.<\/p>\n

CIA Director General David Petraeus was forced to resign shortly after<\/em> Obama\u2019s successful reelection campaign in 2012, under mysterious circumstances, reportedly because he had improperly revealed classified information to a biographer, with whom he was having an affair. But that fact had been revealed to, but was not disclosed by, members of the Obama administration, months before<\/em> the November 2012 election. The strange timing poses the question of why such misconduct was considered a non-firing offense before, but not after, the president\u2019s reelection, when Petraeus, as CIA director, was likely to be slated to testify again, and at greater length, to a closed session of Congress on the Benghazi disaster.<\/p>\n

The serial message goes out that it is unwise for a federal official or a prominent individual to oppose President Obama and his policies \u2014 while illegal or incompetent conduct, if undertaken in the president\u2019s perceived interest, is considered to have been for a good cause and thus exempt from accountability.<\/p>\n

In other words, there is no rule of law any more \u2014 an ossified relic in our pen-and-phone era of social justice.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Somehow, having an Enemies List is all right if you\u2019re Barack Obama and not Richard Nixon. By Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review Online It has become an iffy idea to cross Barack Obama. After seven years, the president has created a Hugo Ch\u00e1vez\u2013like deterrent landscape, intended to remind friends and enemies alike that he […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","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":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[11,116,495,46],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-2mc","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":12545,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-new-old-obama\/","url_meta":{"origin":9064,"position":0},"title":"The New Old Obama","author":"victorhanson","date":"August 4, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ American Greatness In his latest incarnation as president emeritus and corporate multimillionaire community activist, we are reminded of the earlier Barack Obama of \u201cget in their face,\u201d \u201ctake a gun to a knife fight,\u201d and \u201cpunish our enemies\u201d vintage. From time to time, Obama ventures from\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7114,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/following-the-trail-nixon-blazed\/","url_meta":{"origin":9064,"position":1},"title":"Following the Trail Nixon Blazed","author":"victorhanson","date":"March 18, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"Obama shows the same Orwellian disregard for the Constitution. by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/\u00a0National Review Online\u00a0 What would a president do if he were furious over criticism, or felt that his noble aims justified most means of attaining them? Answer that by comparing the behavior of Richard Nixon to that\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":6037,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/you-dont-say\/","url_meta":{"origin":9064,"position":2},"title":"You Don’t Say . . .","author":"victorhanson","date":"June 10, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson NRO's\u00a0The Corner Barack Obama in his weekly radio address accused opponents of comprehensive immigration reform of rank partisan politics: \u201cThey\u2019ll try to stoke fear and create division. They\u2019ll try to play politics with an issue.\u201d He should know: Here is what he advised Latino groups before\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":736,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/two-three-many-obamas\/","url_meta":{"origin":9064,"position":3},"title":"Two, Three, Many Obamas","author":"victorhanson","date":"June 1, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"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. I think the president believes that private-equity firms harm the\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":9064,"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":6110,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/if-only-our-foreign-enemies-were-republicans\/","url_meta":{"origin":9064,"position":5},"title":"If Only Our Foreign Enemies Were Republicans","author":"victorhanson","date":"June 25, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson PJ Media I cannot recall, in the last five years, Barack Obama ever identifying the Iranians, Hezbollah, or the late Hugo Chavez as among our \u201cenemies,\u201d\u00a0in the fashion that he once urged Latino leaders to punish conservatives at the polls: \u201cWe\u2019re gonna punish our enemies and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Terrorism"","block_context":{"text":"Terrorism","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/war-on-terror\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9064"}],"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=9064"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9064\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9082,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9064\/revisions\/9082"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9064"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9064"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9064"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}