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Victor Davis Hanson: Growing Worries about Our Pied Piper
National Review Online ^ | July 10, 2009 | Victor Davis Hanson

Posted on 07/12/2009 2:40:41 PM PDT by neverdem








Growing Worries about Our Pied Piper
Americans are catching on to Obama’s fiscal sins and rhetorical devices.

By Victor Davis Hanson

Recent news that President Obama’s approval ratings are beginning to slip is understandable. Even popular leaders lose appeal once they have to govern, and therefore offend, rather than merely promise and please.

And so far, these fairly modest declines in popularity are not resulting in much Republican traction. Few opposition leaders have presented systematic, clear alternatives to the Obama agenda, and even fewer have been knowledgeable and charismatic in voicing them.

All that being said, I think the Obama presidency is going to encounter far more public skepticism than one would expect in the usual post-honeymoon political adjustments. Why? Because our president often acts and talks as if he were at war with what we might loosely call “human nature.”

There is a growing collective recognition that things simply do not work the way Obama thinks they do. They may in the hothouse at Harvard Law School or in the charade of Chicago politics, or among young, hip bloggers right out of Yale, but not necessarily in the larger American landscape or the real world abroad.

First, Obama’s budgetary agenda defies common sense. If it were true that the United States with impunity could borrow $2 trillion this year — and, in the aggregate, run up another $10 trillion in collective debt over the next eight years — then the rules of finance as we know them would be rendered null and void.

In truth, all that borrowed money not only will have to be paid back, but paid back with compounded interest through higher taxes and cuts to government services. And the more we borrow from ourselves and the Chinese, Japanese, and Europeans, the more likely it is that the interest rates will climb — both because we will strain capital markets and because the current deflationary downturn cannot last forever.

The American people sense this. They assume that what goes up must come down. At times they themselves have splurged on their credit cards — and enjoyed the thrill of consumption that comes with borrowed money, or even the notion of magnanimity of helping others with someone else’s cash. But they likewise remember that mounting debt at some point overwhelms the borrower, who must either default or radically curb his standard of living. When voters hear that a broke government is talking of “a second stimulus,” they conclude that there is a collective madness in Washington.

Second, there is likewise a spreading feeling of doubt about our foreign policy. All Americans like to be liked — and like to think they are confident enough to admit mistakes. But Obama is beginning to be predictable, boring even, in his once sincere, but now serial apologies about America’s past and present — to almost everyone from Latin Americans and Europeans to Turks and Muslims in general. And why are we more worried about the feelings of a hostile Ahmadinejad than of a friendly Maliki or Netanyahu?

We already have come to expect a certain boilerplate theme, in which the president seeks to placate his hosts by confessing the errors of previous Americans. But the lawyer does not regularly apologize to his rival firm over courtroom disputes; the contractor does not routinely call up his competitor to confess to his own past unfair business practices that unduly won him the disputed contract; the principal, as a matter of habit, does not call in the teacher to show regret over his own theatrical exercise of influence and power.

In the perfect world of the university lounge, perhaps such noble things transpire. But most Americans suspect that gratuitous magnanimity can earn contempt as often as appreciation. Like serial borrowing, a tab comes due. And in the case of foreign affairs, we all sense that sometime soon, a rather dangerous thug or two is going to gamble that his aggression either will not or cannot be deterred by a remorseful and unsure United States.

Also, in emphasizing America’s alleged sins, Obama shows himself to be somehow oblivious to the simple fact that he enjoys such power and prestige as a U.S. president because someone, at some time, must have done something quite extraordinary. Surely there is more to America than slavery and Hiroshima. So many Americans are vaguely beginning to sense that Obama is simply ignorant of Valley Forge, the Oregon Trail, and Iwo Jima. What happened at these places seems absent from his knowledge of the past, and so fails to inform his present narrative of and future plans for the nation.


Third, the same sense of something not quite right is beginning to characterize Obama’s obsessive evocation of George W. Bush, the prior administration, the need to hit the reset button, the “mess” we inherited, and all the other blame-gaming themes that have been daily fare the last six months.

Most of us inherit jobs from someone else. Many of us think that we do a better job than our predecessors. And some of us also like to think we are cleaning up messes that others left. But such self-serving referencing has a brief shelf life. It becomes soon monotonous, then irksome, and finally repugnant. Obama is nearing that third stage of whining, when many Americans are beginning to bristle, and think privately, “Okay already. We’ve heard enough of your ‘he did it’ routine. Now snap out it, get a life, and take responsibility for the consequences of your own actions.”

Fourth, people often fail, not just because of the bogeymen “they” who “raised the bar,” but also due to their own actions. But too often in the world of Obama, max out on your credit card and it’s the fault of predatory banks. Default on your mortgage and you were tricked into buying more house than you needed. Choose to buy a cell phone or TV rather than make a monthly payment on a private catastrophic-health-insurance plan, and it is because you were neglected by government. Do not pay taxes, get a tax credit — but then still blame those “who do not pay their fair share.” In contrast, Americans sense that the world of debt and trust will not work without responsibility and personable culpability — and that often our problem is not just to be found in “them” — the duly chastised and arrogant Lords of the Universe on Wall Street — but sadly in “us” as well.

Fifth, novelty wears off. Bush’s tough right/wrong talk sounded welcome after the Clinton era’s indecision and moral relativism. But soon critics got bothered by the excess of “smoke ’em out,” “dead or alive,” and “bring it on” lingo, which emphasized rather than mitigated a certain unease with Texan braggadocio.

With Obama, the charm of last year is slowly wearing off. What once sounded fresh, even cool, is now suddenly predictable and sometimes trite. When we hear “Let me be perfectly clear” and “Make no mistake about it,” Americans suspect that some sort of dissimulation may follow: Obama is not going to be perfectly clear, and we will understandably make plenty of mistakes about it.

Disavowals of government intervention presage a takeover of the auto industry. Promises to be fiscally sober indicate reckless deficit spending to follow. “Not raising taxes on anyone but the very wealthy” suggests everyone will have to pay more. “The most ethical administration in history” guarantees plenty of lobbyists and tax dodgers.

We now expect to hear in these speeches that gargantuan, costly new federal programs will in fact magically save us money. We anticipate listening to a string of evil “some,” “they,” “others,” and all the other bad straw men cited to create false enemies and, in turn, fake heroes.

Presidential talks are to be peppered with a dozen first-person pronouns, as in “I have directed” or “my team is at work on.”

Obama’s personal “story” inevitably follows, as if Americans, after six months of daily reminders, did not yet know that their president is half African-American, grew up without a father, has a non-traditional background, comes from a family with Muslim connections on his father’s side, has an unusual name, possesses unusual insight into race and religion, or is himself a metaphor for a new, diverse America. In the fashion of the obligatory 19th-century log-cabin birthplace and bloody-shirt gallantry at Gettysburg, we get the message “I am not your white-male president.” Ten times I think would have been enough, and after a hundred occasions such self-referencing wears thin.

When the president’s tone, and indeed accent, almost magically change, and he abruptly goes into his southern-Baptist rhetorical cadences, we have a vague sense that his oration must end with the usual ruffles and flourishes of last summer — “hope and change” and “this is our moment” tropes, but delivered without the passion and sincerity of a year ago. The tunes of last year’s Pied Piper are no longer mesmerizing, but becoming sort of creepy and even ominous.

Finally, Obama seems to believe that the exalted ends justify the often questionable means. Having a Latina on the Supreme Court trumps Justice Sotomayor’s past racialist talk and writing. Landing a supposed genius like Timothy Geithner at Treasury excuses Geithner’s inability or unwillingness to pay his fair share of taxes. Becoming popular in the Muslim world invites fabrication about Islamic discoveries and inventions, or the conflation of Middle Eastern religious and gender felonies with American misdemeanors.

So the problem is not just that Obama, like Bill Clinton, is proving insincere, or like Richard Nixon, at times duplicitous. And the rub is not even that he, like Ronald Reagan on occasion, is showing a limited repertoire or, in the manner of the Bushes, is becoming predictable in speech and custom. Obama, like Jimmy Carter, earns the added injury that all wannabe prophets incur when they promise more than mortal purity while proving to an ordinary human in character.

Americans are waking up to the fact that their president says, promises, and does things that simply do not make sense, at odds with what they know of human physics — with the predictable nature of the way humans have conducted themselves for centuries: Borrowing is debt, not “stimulus”; serial apologies soon sound insincere or become counterproductive; blaming someone else becomes tiresome; scapegoating leads nowhere; taking responsibility for failure is as necessary as being praised for success; people can be fooled only so many times by sonorous, ego-laced rhetoric.

Because Obama is a revolutionary who seeks to overturn 50 years of doing business in America both at home and abroad, his shortcomings have the potential not only to diminish his own stature through unmet impossible expectations, but to take all those who signed on to his megalomania down with him.

Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and a recipient of the 2007 National Humanities Medal. © 2009 Tribune Media Services, Inc.



TOPICS: Crime/Corruption; Culture/Society; Editorial; Political Humor/Cartoons
KEYWORDS: obama; vdh; victordavishanson
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To: neverdem

[The tunes of last year’s Pied Piper are no longer mesmerizing, but becoming sort of creepy and even ominous.]

I’ve always found it creepy.


21 posted on 07/12/2009 5:34:11 PM PDT by KansasGirl (I still think Obama is just plain creepy.)
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To: neverdem
As if we need any more proof of about what this feckless Marxist jerk is all about, check this one out...

Obama releases Iranian Quds commanders

22 posted on 07/12/2009 5:35:39 PM PDT by Gritty (The Obama Doctrine: Every enemy a friend, or can be made into one. Let's talk about it.-Ralph Peters)
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To: neverdem

Now we’re back on point. Good stuff.


23 posted on 07/12/2009 5:46:09 PM PDT by Dysart (It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong--Voltaire)
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To: neverdem

Bookmarked for future mass emailings.

“President” Hussein ZERO brings to mind the much feared German battleship, the Bismarck. It was hailed (as the DimoRATs hail their saviour and messiah 0bummer) as the largest warship of its time. Every Navy on earth feared the Bismarck. In theory, it could have greatly helped change the war against the U.S. and Britain.

It set sail in mid-May 1941 and was sunk by the British Navy just two weeks later.


24 posted on 07/12/2009 6:31:15 PM PDT by RocketMan1
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To: neverdem

As a wise man told me yesterday, “The economist says, ‘I believe that works in practice, but does it work in theory?’”


25 posted on 07/12/2009 6:46:51 PM PDT by bethtopaz (www.rapturealert.com)
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To: neverdem

Thanks for posting. Great article by VDH!


26 posted on 07/12/2009 7:28:29 PM PDT by PGalt
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To: neverdem

“Because Obama is a revolutionary who seeks to overturn 50 years of doing business in America both at home and abroad, his shortcomings have the potential not only to diminish his own stature through unmet impossible expectations, but to take all those who signed on to his megalomania down with him.”

I am waiting for that moment with baited breath.... That is with out a doubt going to be a very sweet moment.


27 posted on 07/12/2009 7:35:00 PM PDT by Danae (Conservative does not equal Republican. Conservative does not compromise.)
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To: Free State Four; neverdem
Google "Obama deeply" - LOL it deserves its own thread ...

Here - I'll save you the trouble of typing: Google: 'Obama deeply' ;-)

28 posted on 07/12/2009 7:51:26 PM PDT by Tunehead54 (Nothing funny here ;-)
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To: neverdem
Few opposition leaders have presented systematic, clear alternatives to the Obama agenda, and even fewer have been knowledgeable and charismatic in voicing them.

The above equation pretty much ends at zero, as in nobody.

29 posted on 07/12/2009 9:10:28 PM PDT by Last Dakotan
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To: Tunehead54

That is “deeply embarrassing” - for the media!


30 posted on 07/13/2009 3:20:15 AM PDT by Free State Four
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To: neverdem
Very reasonable but wrong. Hanson is the one of the most reasonable and well read commentators — everything makes perfect sense. But when has he been right? Obama didn't implode as he predicted. Remember nothing sticks to this guy. Things will just carry on the way they are going, the way Obama wants.
31 posted on 07/13/2009 6:06:15 AM PDT by Blind Eye Jones
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To: neverdem; Lando Lincoln; SJackson; dennisw; kellynla; monkeyshine; Alouette; nopardons; ...


    Victor Davis Hanson Ping ! 

       Let me know if you want in or out.

Links:    FR Index of his articles:  http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/keyword?k=victordavishanson
                His website: http://victorhanson.com/
                NRO archive: http://www.nationalreview.com/hanson/hanson-archive.asp
                Pajamasmedia:
   http://victordavishanson.pajamasmedia.com/

 

Catching up with the last week:

What is Wisdom?—Sarah Palin and Her Critics
Laugh or Cry? deconstructing Maureen Dowd
A Thug’s Primer - How to win liberal friends and oppress your people
Writing Sarah Off

32 posted on 07/13/2009 8:49:12 AM PDT by Tolik
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To: neverdem
Surely there is more to America than slavery and Hiroshima.

I must say I love VDH, but I do have problems with his linkage in this statement.

33 posted on 07/13/2009 9:10:27 AM PDT by AxelPaulsenJr (Please God Save The United States From Barack Hussein Al-Obama. Amen.)
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To: WilliamofCarmichael
... czarred and fettered.

That's an awesome turn of phrase!

34 posted on 07/13/2009 10:36:25 AM PDT by AZLiberty (Yes, Mr. Lennon, I do want a revolution.)
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To: AZLiberty
Thanks!

Well.. I mean, there was a column posted recently called Czarred and Feathered.

I guess the author wasn't as old as me and did not recall all those Army Air Corp W.W.II movies where the pilots were always having to fetter one of their bomber's engines.

I agree, czarred and fettered is absolutely fitting vis-à-vis the Obama Administration; as is bullshitvik. However a search revealed that some have already coined the word. That's good especially because the Left is not likely to (as usual) steal this word and use it against us.

IMO everyone should know that they are being czarred and fettered.

35 posted on 07/13/2009 11:51:18 AM PDT by WilliamofCarmichael (If modern America's Man on Horseback is out there, Get on the damn horse already!)
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To: WilliamofCarmichael

I believe the correct terminology is to: “feather an engine”.


36 posted on 07/13/2009 12:03:13 PM PDT by AxelPaulsenJr (Please God Save The United States From Barack Hussein Al-Obama. Amen.)
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To: Bertha Fanation
If Obama wasn’t married to the most beautiful woman in the world, he’d never get by with this stuff.

And it's a twofer ... Her beauty is a positive boon to our national security!!!

Her face, after all, is so incredibly beautiful that it will inspire the launch of a two thousand ship navy!

37 posted on 07/13/2009 12:33:50 PM PDT by r9etb
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To: neverdem
So many Americans are vaguely beginning to sense that Obama is simply ignorant of Valley Forge, the Oregon Trail, and Iwo Jima. What happened at these places seems absent from his knowledge of the past, and so fails to inform his present narrative of and future plans for the nation.

Here, I think, Hanson doesn't go nearly far enough. Obama is probably not "ignorant" of them, so much as he simply does not care about those things. They're simply not relevant to the way he thinks about the world.

To Obama the narcissist, history is unimportant in comparison to Obama's sense of the world, which is based on how he thinks things should be; and that's based on a worldview that's informed by juvenile feelings and juvenile logic, applied to the leftist ideas with which he was brought up.

I truly believe that Obama's thinking is little changed from when he was 19 years old. That's the age where most of us begin to realize that our idealism isn't necessarily congruent with reality. To a narcissist, though, idealism is reality, and "real" reality doesn't count.

And if we sum up the various parts of VDH's list, I think we can approach what Americans are beginning to think, even if they haven't yet stated it in words: Obama's narcissism poses a real and serious danger to the nation.

38 posted on 07/13/2009 12:42:50 PM PDT by r9etb
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To: AxelPaulsenJr

Thanks for the correction. All these years I thought the actor was saying fetter (to restrain; i.e., reduce the power).


39 posted on 07/13/2009 12:49:43 PM PDT by WilliamofCarmichael (If modern America's Man on Horseback is out there, Get on the damn horse already!)
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To: WilliamofCarmichael
I can see how it would sound like fetter. But the action being taken is to feather the angle at which the propeller blades of an engine strike the air. The term can also be applied to feathering the oar of a boat in such a manner that the oar has no drag, i.e. "pull" through the water.

Now as to why the word "feather" is used instead of some other word, I can't say.

40 posted on 07/13/2009 1:08:06 PM PDT by AxelPaulsenJr (Please God Save The United States From Barack Hussein Al-Obama. Amen.)
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