by Victor Davis Hanson in
PJ Media
What will history make so far of our five-year voyage with Barack
Obama? What will it make of hope and change — other than a sort of hysteria of
2008 that was a political version of the Pet Rock or the Cabbage Patch Doll
derangement? Did we really experience faux-Greek columns and Latin mottoes (vero possumus) as Obama props to usher in
the new order of the ages?
What exactly made David Brooks focus on trouser
creases, or Chris Matthews on involuntary leg tickles? How
could any serious person believe a candidate who promised to change the very
terrain of the planet? Why would sober critics declare a near rookie
senator “a god”?
Only as America slowly sobers up from five years of slumber can we
begin to fathom Obama’s likely legacy — which is mostly wisdom acquired only
from pain.
Liberals always had thought a right-wing bully president would
erode civil liberties. How ironic that a charismatic, post-racial,
self-described “constitutional law professor” has done more damage to our
Constitution than has any president since Richard Nixon. Had the AP, IRS, or
NSA scandals occurred during the Bush second term, congressional Democrats
would have been calling for impeachment.
The old controversial presidential
signing statements of the past are mere misdemeanors compared to
Obama felonies of declaring settled law null and void, from the employer
mandate to the implementation guidelines of Obamacare to exempting pet
businesses and congressional staffs from the requirements of the law. A
president can now decide not to
enforce the Defense of Marriage Act, or grant pre-election, de facto
amnesties. Why, then,
pass laws in the first place? The idea of political
opponents being audited by the IRS or critical journalists having their phones
monitored will be Obama’s
Nixonian legacy. After Obama, one of two things will happen: either the
presidency will be redefined as a sort of super-executive that can both make
and enforce statutes, or a constitutional reaction will set in, and Obamism
will be cited as a danger to the republic that we wish in the future never to
repeat.
Another legacy of Obama is the notion that there is no such thing
anymore as a scandal. Obama labeled the IRS corruption as “outrageous” and then
recently backtracked and berated progressive journalists for even
thinking that the Tea Party was treaty unfairly by his administration’s IRS
appointees. No one yet in the administration has confessed that a video did not
cause the deaths of Americans in Benghazi. Nor is anyone contrite about the AP
monitoring. That the president of the United States serially lied over
Obamacare earns a “duh.” The NSA mess warrants a “whatever.” Each time we
witness something akin to the NSA, IRS, AP, and ACA machinations in the future,
the supporters of the next untruthful or immoral president will no doubt offer
in defense, “But Obama did worse and nobody cared.” Obama’s ethical legacy is
the doctrine of medieval
exemption: declaring that he is seeking exalted ends excuses the tawdry
means of obtaining them.
What Not to Do in a Recession
In terms of fiscal and economic policy, quantitative easing,
trillion-dollar-plus deficits, massive stimulus, de facto zero interest
rates, tax increases and more federal regulation did not lead to a summer of
recovery. Instead they have discredited
Keynesian economics for a generation, branding it as a sure way to
ensure near zero economic growth and permanent 7% unemployment.
Obama logically expected all that liquidity would lead to an
economic rebound in 2009, especially given that historically the sharper the
recession, the more robust the recovery. Tragically, had he done nothing, he
might well have seen an upswing, given huge new energy discoveries and a strong
U.S. tech sector. Instead, Obama has taught us that vast expansions in
borrowing, public entitlements, sloppy infrastructure spending, huge new
federal programs, and the end of passbook interest are ways of
institutionalizing 7%-plus unemployment, near non-existent comic growth, and
growing collective dependency. Obama’s five-year economic recovery plan
will be studied for decades as a textbook example of what not to do in a
recession, or immediately following one.
Obamacare likewise offers many lessons. When a government pays far
more than the going rate for the construction of a website and receives in
return far less than the normal product — and then must turn to the private
sector for help — we are reminded why
federal take-overs of anything are a bad idea. For all
the millions of words written for and against Obamacare, for all the
presidential sloganeering and the fights in Congress over its birth, we are
left with a simple warning: even the most sophisticated ways of masking a vast
redistribution scheme do not work.
In the end, Obamacare was a crass effort to extract cash from
those who had health insurance and younger people who chose not to buy it in
order to give coverage to others — with a growing federal bureaucracy taking
its middle-man percentage cut as the price of adjudicating who should pay and
who should receive. Obama may be able to lower the earth’s temperature and
lower its seas, but he still cannot give more and better things to more people
at a vast savings, or convince those who lost their coverage, lost their
doctors, and paid more for the privilege that they are better off.
Obamacare also reminded us of two lessons about socialism: those
who were sober and careful to purchase their own plans had to be demonized as
callous or stupid for buying
“junk.” Those who were without care had to been seen as noble victims
without any free choice in the decision not to obtain coverage. The
redistributionists could not
simply tell the truth about what they were doing because a vast
majority would not like what they were doing.
Had Obama just said that “many of you more fortunate Americans
with insurance must pay more for coverage that you will not need in order to
subsidize those with less resources who will need it,” the plan would have been
aborted before birth. Without
deceit and propaganda, Obamacare would never have passed on its own
merits. Meanwhile, the exemptions to congressional staff, unions, and pet
businesses remind us that redistributionists are always exempt from the
ramifications of their own ideology. The reward for the brilliance and superior
morality of thinking up a coercive redistributionist plan is to be freed from
it.
No Grownups, but Plenty of Racial Polarization
Obama reminded us that while we might have once been envied abroad
as too muscular a hyperpower, we are now more readily despised as too squishy,
unreliable, and sanctimonious. All the euphemisms in the world — from
“man-caused disasters” to “workplace violence” — have made no impressions on
the Arab world. What did affect our reputation was Obama’s appeasement in
Syria, incompetence in Libya, flip-flopping in Egypt, and confusion on Iranian
proliferation. How odd that medieval Saudi Arabia trusts Israel more than it
does the U.S.
No one is fond of a bullying or blustering America abroad, but
they like even less an impotent while preachy United States. At the present
trajectory, the legacy of Obama’s foreign policy may well be the nuclearization
of Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan, serial clashes in the China seas, an Iranian
hegemony in the Middle East, and a Russian protectorate eastward from Germany.
Europe always took for granted a U.S.-led NATO for its security
and a booming free-market American economy for its exports. Given that
unquestioned guarantee, it was easy to opportunistically ankle-bite America.
The Euros dreamed that they wanted Obama as a partner in neo-socialism,
climate change activism, and non-alignment foreign policy. Well, they got what
they wanted, only to discover that the Western world does not work with two
European Unions. For an
adolescent to dream of cradle-to-grave entitlements and utopian
peace, there must be an adult to ensure free markets and military preparedness.
Critics of Colin Powell’s flawed UN presentation were not tarred
as racists. Those who tore apart Alberto Gonzales at congressional hearings
were not charged with nativism. Mocking Condoleezza Rice did not mean that her
liberal critics were bigots.
But Obama changed that calculus and equated his own popularity
with a referendum on racial harmony. The result is a creeping
racial polarization that we have not seen in fifty years. The
president weighed in against the police in the Professor Gates psychodrama, and
de facto against George Zimmerman, a defendant in the Trayvon Martin
shooting. But he remained mute about the growing targeting of Jews in the
faddish and mostly African-American game of
knock-out. Eric Holder called the nation racial “cowards” and referred to
blacks as “my people” (whose people does the attorney general of the United
States think whites, Asians, and Latinos belong to)? The president has talked
of “typical white people” and “punishing our enemies” — so much for race being
incidental and not essential to our characters.
Before Obama, the billionaire Oprah Winfrey was a national icon.
Morgan Freeman had transcended race and resented identity politics. A Kanye
West or Chris Rock made millions of dollars by appealing to suburbanites. All
have lost their broad appeal, largely due to some of the most polarizing racial
rhetoric in memory.
Oprah warns us that racism fuels Obama’s low polls and shrugs that
millions of Americans must die
for racism to end. Does Oprah define who should line up for the morgue?
Morgan Freeman had charged the entire Republican Party and the Tea
Party with
racism for its opposition to Obama. Does that include the 10% of
black voters who now voice disapproval with Obama?
A Jamie Foxx or Chris Rock casually derogates “white people”; does
that mean either wishes them not to go to their movies or shows? Kanye
West thinks it cool to peddle
Jewish stereotypes. Does his rich historical knowledge
apprise him where such thinking in the past had led?
The net result of the new racialism is an impossible situation of
establishing one’s racial fides only by permanent support for Barack Obama —
and because it is impossible, more are resenting those who imposed it.
We have three more years before the mast. By 2016 there will have
been a lot of damage to the United States — but perhaps a lot of painful wisdom
as well.
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