The Obama Administration After One Year

Victor Davis Hanson writes a very provactive article today. I post it here for your commentary. What is the next step that Obama will take? I want you input.

As Predictable As Clockwork

By VICTOR DAVIS HANSON, (Political analyst extraordinaire)
The Jewish Press, February 5, 2010

I think we could see what was coming. This presidency has about as much subtlety in plot as a grade-B western, soap opera or teenage tantrum. A lackluster McCain candidacy, the September 2008 meltdown, weariness with eight years of Bush incumbency, conservative anger over spending, liberal furor over Iraq, a toady media, and Republican congressional corruption all led to a 50/50 electorate that was open to being mesmerized by Obama’s rhetoric and the dream of the nation’s first African-American president.

With congressional majorities, a compliant press, soaring public support, a soon-to-be President Obama was convinced, as he had been convinced by his success in the Ivy League, in Chicago, and in the Senate that he had a left-wing mandate. He believed he could hope and change his way to almost anything he wanted, despite the thin record, self-contradictions, constant inconsistencies and general confusion.

The hard left was salivating that at last it had an effective delivery system that could usher in a long awaited European-style socialism. Therefore, what followed was predictable: In his hubris, Obama cast off the campaign mask of moderation. Thick and fast came proposals for state-run healthcare, government takeovers, talk of nationalizing the student loan program, bailouts, mega-deficits, more, borrowing as stimulus, multicultural mea culpas abroad, loony symbolic appointments, and promiscuous talk of higher income, payroll, inheritance, and healthcare taxes, but only on “them.”

In other words, we saw in a trendy, cool form the age-old attempt to institutionalize equality of result, as freedom and liberty give way to mandated egalitarianism and fraternity. But wait — two thorny problems arose. The country is not quite yet left wing, but voted for Obama for the perfect-storm reasons outlined above. Anyone who had read the history of America could see that it was always a different sort of place than France, Germany, or Sweden — and will be, at least for a while longer.

So to ram down a left-wing agenda, the thespian Obama would have to continue his role as the bipartisan healer, centrist, reformer, purple-state uniter, trans-racial unifier, etc. But, alas, old habits die hard and the public soon began, here and there, to get glimpses of the old reality behind the new mask.

The wages of years with Rev. Wright and Bill Ayers, the easy path through the Ivy League, the Axelrod-at-our throat politics and the snow job that had wowed deans, philanthropists and suburbanites all reappeared. Even as Obama sought to convince the farmer, plumber and insurance agent to accept state healthcare, a landscape of windmills and a EU-foreign policy, he slipped back into his old self. Thus, we got Van Jones and his racist, 9/11 truther bombast. Anita Dunn praised Mao. Commissars at the NEA boasted of the new Caesar.

The Professor Henry Gates incident prompted the president to trash the police first and get the facts second. Creditors were politically rescheduled for bailed-out businesses. The president thoughtlessly weighed in on everything from the Special Olympics and the tea party movement to Fox News and America’s purported sins. Suddenly we were no longer exceptional, but the Muslim world in fact had-jump-started the Renaissance and Enlightenment. The old bad guys — Ahmadinejad, Assad, Castro, Chavez and Putin — earned new, kind talk; the prior U.S. president was reduced to satanic status.

Conservatives are in a “I told you so mood” as the 2008 talk-radio bombast about Bill Ayers, Rev. Wright, “re-distributive” spread the wealth, European socialism, etc., turned out not to be bombast at all. Moderates and independents sigh, “I can’t believe this is happening to me; he seemed just like Clinton with all that balanced budget talk, balanced energy policy, and mainstream help-the-little-guy talk. What happened to the Barack we trusted?” Liberals wonder, “Why is the coolest guy around suddenly flubbing every opportunity to get our agenda passed?” The hard left laments, “This guy is a triangulator who gave us a nibble, then pulled away the bone.”

His supporters counter: “See, he is a pragmatist and centrist who alienates the extremes.” No, No, No. He alienates them, but now the middle as well. What keeps his approval ratings in the forties is only the idea that the American people cannot quite yet accept a failed presidency after a mere 12 months — a presidency in which they had invested such hopes after the poll-crashing of Bush’s final two years.

Finger pointing and blame-gaming have begun because no one can properly address the real and only problem: Obama has had no previous identity or independent ideology. By osmosis (rather than by careful study or lifelong experience) he absorb the trendy left-wing cant that variously manifested itself wherever he traveled, from the Occidental lounge dorm to the Ivy League salon groupthink to Chicago organizing to Rev. Wright’s pulpit to the liberal caucuses of the U.S. Senate.

For a while, it was all as easy as sonorously thundering “hope and change. He never before had to articulate his leftism in any real detail, defend it, debate it, or analyze it. Now as his polls dip, we hear instead gripes over tactics, not the essence of the problem, which is the absence of an identity confidently and honestly expressed. So we get nonsense: “He’s too detached and cool.” He outsourced his agenda to the polarizing, corrupt and inept Reid/Pelosi wing.” “He surrounded himself with one too many shady Chicago polls.” “He took on too much all at once.”

What’s next? We can predict it in our sleep. He will continue the “let me be perfectly clear,” “fat-cat banker” talk to his base, do his selected-audience hope and change rants while trying to do a move-to-the-center light. Oh yes - a commission to balance the budget - sorta. Tough talk abroad — kinda. Health-care reform we can all agree on - maybe.

In the past, every time Obama has been in a jam, two things followed. He first threw under the bus perceived liabilities (yesterday’s Rev. Wright and grandmother will be this year’s Rahm Emanuel, Timothy Geithner and Janet Napolitano). Second, he adopted bipartisan “there is only one America” rhetoric. Yes, soon we can expect to hear of American exceptionalism, and a thing called “the war on terror,” and deficits that must be paid back and “working across the aisle.”

I doubt we’ll get genuine effort at balancing the budget, keeping businesses competitive, cutting waste, restoring American alliances, securing borders, centrist appointments, real bipartisanship, or a simplified tax system.

Instead, we’ve gone from the idealistic-sounding, centrist candidate Obama, to the Carter McGovern President Obama, to the wannabe Clinton triangulator. The only constant is no real identity, no firm belief, no core convictions from which to make the argument that his left-wing vision is good for the country. Obama never had to make that argument. Left-wing dogma was always a state religion in his circles and once Obama the nightingale started his song, few of the hypnotized worried about the inane message that followed. Being president is all so... so unfair!

Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and the author of numerous works on military history.