Obama's liberal arrogance will be his undoing
The hubris and
overreaching of the left sets the stage for the political correction sure to
come.
Jonah Goldberg
April 28, 2009
The most remarkable, or certainly the least remarked on, aspect of Barack
Obama's first 100 days has been the infectious arrogance of his presidency.
There's no denying that this is liberalism's greatest opportunity for wish
fulfillment since at least 1964. But to listen to Democrats, the only check
on their ambition is the limits of their imaginations.
"The world has changed," Sen. Charles E. Schumer of New York proclaimed on
MSNBC. "The old Reagan philosophy that served them well politically from
1980 to about 2004 and 2006 is over. But the hard right, which still
believes ... [in] traditional values kind of arguments and strong foreign
policy, all that is over."
Right. "Family values" and a "strong foreign policy" belong next to the
"free silver" movement in the lexicon of dead political causes.
No doubt Schumer was employing the kind of simplified shorthand one uses
when everyone in the room already agrees with you. He can be forgiven for
mistaking an MSNBC studio for such a milieu, but it seemed not to dawn on
him that anybody watching might see it differently.
When George W. Bush was in office, we heard constantly about the poisonous
nature of American polarization. For example, Democratic pollster Stanley
Greenberg came out with a book arguing that "our nation's political
landscape is now divided more deeply and more evenly than perhaps ever
before." One can charitably say this was abject nonsense. Evenly divided?
Maybe. But more deeply? Feh.
During the Civil War, the political landscape was so deeply divided that
600,000 Americans died. During the 1930s, labor strife and revolutionary
ardor threatened the stability of the republic. In the 1960s, political
assassinations, riots and bombings punctuated our political discourse.
It says something about the relationship of liberals to political power that
they can overlook domestic dissent when they're at the wheel. When the GOP
is in office, America is seen as hopelessly divided because dissent is the
highest form of patriotism. When Democrats are in charge, the Frank Riches
suddenly declare the culture war over and dismiss dissent as the scary work
of the sort of cranks Obama's Department of Homeland Security needs to
monitor.
If liberals thought so fondly of social peace and consensus, they would look
more favorably on the 1920s and 1950s. Instead, their political idylls are
the tumultuous '30s and '60s, when liberalism, if not necessarily liberals,
rode high in the saddle.
Sure, America was divided under Bush. And it's still divided under Obama
(just look at the recent Minnesota Senate race and the New York
congressional special election). According to the polls, America is a bit
less divided under Obama than it was at the end of Bush's 100 days. But not
as much less as you would expect, given Obama's victory margin and the
rally-around-the-president effect of the financial crisis (not to mention
the disarray of the GOP).
Meanwhile, circulation for the conservative National Review (where I work)
is soaring. More people watch Fox News (where I am a contributor) in prime
time than watch CNN and MSNBC combined. The "tea parties" may not have been
as big as your typical union-organized "spontaneous" demonstration, but they
were far more significant than any protests this early in Bush's tenure.
And yet, according to Democrats and liberal pundits, America is enjoying
unprecedented unity, and conservatives are going the way of the dodo.
Obama has surely helped set the tone for the unfolding riot of liberal
hubris. In his effort to reprise the sort of expansion of liberal power we
saw in the '30s and '60s, Obama has -- without a whiff of self-doubt --
committed America to $6.5 trillion in extra debt, $65 billion for each one
of his first 100 days, and that's based on an impossibly rosy forecast of
the economy. No wonder congressional Democrats clamor to take over
corporations, tax the air we breathe and set wages for everybody.
On social issues such as abortion and embryonic stem cell research, Obama
has proved to be, if anything, more of a left-wing culture warrior than Bush
was a right-wing one. All the while, Obama transmogrifies his principled
opponents into straw-man ideologues while preening about his own humble
pragmatism. For him, bipartisanship is defined as shutting up and getting in
line.
I'm not arguing that conservatives are poised to make some miraculous
comeback. They're not. But American politics didn't come to an end with
Obama's election, and nothing in politics breeds corrective antibodies more
quickly than overreaching arrogance. And by that measure, Obama's first 100
days have been a huge down payment on the inevitable correction to come.
jgoldberg@latimescolumnists.com