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A Stranger in Our Midst
By Robert Weissberg
Professor of Political Science - Emeritus at the
University of Illinois , Urbana
As the Obama administration enters
its second year, I -- and undoubtedly millions of others -- have struggled
to develop a shorthand term that captures our emotional unease.
Defining this discomfort is tricky. I reject nearly the entire Obama agenda,
but the term "being opposed" lacks an emotional punch. Nor do terms
like "worried" or "anxious" apply. I was more worried about America 's
future during the Johnson or Carter years, so it's not that dictionary,
either. Nor, for that matter, is this about backroom odious
deal-making and pork, which are endemic in American politics.
After
auditioning countless political terms, I finally realized that the Obama
administration and its congressional collaborators almost resemble a foreign
occupying force, a coterie of politically and culturally non-indigenous
leaders whose rule contravenes local values rooted in our national
tradition. It is as if the United States has been occupied by a
foreign power, and this transcends policy objections. It is not about
Obama's birthplace. It is not about race, either; millions of white
Americans have had black mayors and black governors, and this unease about
out-of-synch values never surfaced.
The term I settled on is "alien
rule" -- based on outsider values, regardless of policy benefits -- that
generates agitation. This is what bloody anti-colonial strife was all
about. No doubt, millions of Indians and Africans probably grasped that
expelling the British g uaranteed economic ruin and even worse governance,
but at least the mess would be their mess. Just travel to Afghanistan
and witness American military commanders' efforts to enlist tribal elders
with promises of roads, clean water, dental clinics, and all else that
America can freely provide. Many of these elders probably privately
prefer abject poverty to foreign occupation since it would be their poverty,
run by their people, according to their sensibilities.
This
disquiet was a slow realization. Awareness began with Obama's odd
pre-presidency associations, decades of being oblivious to Rev. Wright's
anti-American ranting, his enduring friendship with the terrorist
guy-in-the-neighborhood Bill Ayers, and the Saul Alinsky-flavored
anti-capitalist community activism. Further add a hazy personal
background -- an Indonesian childhood, shifting official names, and a
paperless-trail climb through elite educational institutions.
None of
this disqualified Obama from the presidency; rather, this background just
doesn't fit with the conventional political r?sum?. It is just the
"outsider" quality that alarms. For all the yammering about George W.
Bush's privileged background, his made-in-the-USA persona was absolutely
indisputable. John McCain might be embarrassed about his Naval Academy
class rank and iffy combat performance, but there was never any doubt of his
authenticity. Countless conservatives despised Bill Clinton, but
nobody ever, ever doubted his good-old-boy American bonafides.
The
suspicion that Obama is an outsider, a figure who really doesn't "get"
America , grew clearer from his initial appointments. What "native"
would appoint Kevin Jennings, a militant gay activist, to oversee school
safety? Or permit a Marxist rabble-rouser to be a "green jobs czar"?
How about an Attorney General who began by accusing Americans of cowardice
when it comes to discussing race? And who can forget Obama's weird
defense of his pal Louis Henry Gates from "racist" Cambridge , Massachusetts
cops? If the American Revolution had never occurred and the Queen had
appointed Obama Royal Governor (after his distinguished service in Kenya ),
a trusted locally attuned aide would have first whispered in his ear, "Mr.
Governor General, here in America , we do not automatically assume that the
police were at fault," and the day would have been saved.
And then
there's the "we are sorry, we'll never be arrogant again" rhetoric seemingly
designed for a future President of the World election campaign. What
made Obama's Cairo utterances so distressing was how they grated on American
cultural sensibilities. And he just doesn't notice, perhaps akin to
never hearing Rev. Wright anti-American diatribes. An American
president does not pander to third-world audiences by lying about the Muslim
contribution to America . Imagine Ronald Reagan, or any past American
president, trying to win friends by apologizing. This appeal
contravenes our national character and far exceeds a momentary embarrassment
about garbled syntax or poor delivery. Then there's Obama's bizarre,
totally unnecessary deep bowing to foreign potentates. Americans look
foreign leaders squarely in the eye and firmly shake hands; we don't bow.
But far worse is Obama's tone-deafness about American government.
How can any ordinary American, even a traditional liberal, believe that
jamming through unpopular, debt-expanding legislation that consumes
one-sixth of our GDP, sometimes with sly side-payments and with a thin
majority, will eventually be judged legitimate? This is third-world,
maximum-leader-style politics. That the legislation was barely
understood even by its defenders and vehemently championed by a
representative of that typical American city, San Francisco , only
exacerbates the strangeness. And now President Obama sides with
illegal aliens over the State of Arizona , which seeks to enforce the
federal i mmigration law to protect American citizens from marauding drug
gangs and other miscreants streaming in across the Mexican border.
Reciprocal public disengagement from President Obama is strongly suggested
by recent poll data on public trust in government. According to a recent Pew
report, only 22% of those asked trust the government always or most of the
time, among the lowest figures in half a century. And while pro-government
support has been slipping for decades, the Obama presidency has sharply
exacerbated this drop. To be sure, many factors (in particular the
economic downturn) contribute to this decline, but remember that Obama was
recently elected by an often wildly enthusiastic popular majority. The
collapse of trust undoubtedly transcends policy quibbles or a sluggish
economy -- it is far more consistent with a deeper alienation.
Perhaps the clearest evidence for this "foreigner in our midst" mentality is
the name given our resistance -- tea parties, an image that instantly
invokes the American struggle against George III, a clueless foreign ruler
from central casting. This history-laden label was hardly
predetermined, but it instantly stuck (as did the election of Sen. Scott
Brown as "the shot heard around the world" and tea partiers dressing up in
colonial-era costumes). Perhaps subconsciously, Obama does remind
Americans of when the U.S. was really occupied by a foreign power. A
Declaration of Independence passage may still resonate: "HE [George III] has
erected a Multitude of new Offices [Czars], and sent hither Swarms of
Officers [recently hired IRS agents] to harass our People, and eat out the
Substance."
What's next?