Jimmy Carter,
Bill Clinton, and
both the elder and
the younger George
Bush all found the
third and fourth
years of their
presidencies harder
than the first and
second. The nation
and the world grew
tired of their
speechmaking. The
novelty of a new
commander-in-chief
faded; poll numbers
went south. The same
thing is now
happening to
President Obama on a
variety of fronts.
Democrats assured
voters that we would
love Obamacare once
the new federal
health-care plan was
at last implemented.
Republican critics
warned that we would
like it even less
once we saw it
unfold. We will soon
find out who is
right, as the
four-year
implementation
begins in earnest
during 2011. But if
100 organizations
and corporations
have already
obtained exemptions
from the Obama
administration, how
many more will seek
to avoid the new law
in 2011?
Something also
has to give on the
budget this year.
Keynesian spending
was supposed to
jump-start the
economy and bring in
more federal tax
revenue. Instead,
borrowing another $3
trillion over the
last two years has
not led to much
improvement in the
economy, as
unemployment is
still well above 9
percent. We will see
a rendezvous with
fiscal reality in
2011 since either
Social
Security,
Medicare and
Medicaid, or defense
— which together
total 60 percent of
the government’s
yearly budget
expenditures — will
have to be trimmed.
It is one thing for
politicians to give
speeches about
reckless spending
and unsustainable
debt, but quite
another to freeze
Social Security
increases, up the
retirement age, or
cut Medicare
benefits.
For the last two
years, the Obama
administration has
worked on two energy
assumptions: (1) The
global economic
downturn in late
2008 that caused oil
prices to crash
would give strapped
American consumers a
sudden gift of
cheaper gas without
much government
action. (2) Solar
and wind power and
“millions of new
green jobs” would
usher in our
alternative-energy
future.
But harsh realities
have intervened.
While the Obama
administration was
making it far harder
to develop oil and
gas on
government-owned
western lands, and
hampering offshore
drilling in the
eastern Gulf of
Mexico and along the
Pacific and Atlantic
coasts, the world
economy was
recovering — and
with the recovery,
energy demands were
increasing. As oil
now approaches $100
a barrel, gas is
already over $3 a
gallon and headed
still higher. It may
have been two years
since the
beleaguered motoring
public embraced the
chant “Drill, baby,
drill,” but when
voters begin paying
nearly $4 a gallon
in 2011, they will
want far more oil
production and far
fewer pie-in-the-sky
green speeches.
With the new
proposed defense
cuts, the U.S. Army
will lose almost
50,000 troops in
four years, the
Marine Corps another
20,000 — along with
radical curtailments
in the number of
armored
vehicles,
front-line jet
fighters, and new
ships. But will
there be
commensurate
reductions in
American commitments
overseas?
Perhaps all U.S.
troops will soon
leave Afghanistan
and Iraq, and China
will not flex its
muscles against
Taiwan or Japan.
Maybe North Korea
will not attack
South Korea. Cyprus
probably will stay
quiet. The former
Soviet republics in
theory could improve
their relations with
Russia. The Balkans
should remain
peaceful. Israel
does not want
another war with
Hamas, Hezbollah, or
Syria, or a new one
with Iran. Mexico
may win its drug
war. Yet the rub is
not that there is a
likelihood in 2011
of simultaneous
conflicts in a
variety of hotspots,
but that there are
no assurances that
there won’t be at
least one among so
many scary places.
Finally, President
Obama has proclaimed
a new willingness to
seek compromise and
consensus with the
Republican
opposition. However,
the new
Republican-controlled
House of
Representatives,
energized by the Tea
Party, believes that
such sudden
presidential
outreach is
predicated only on
the electoral
reality of the
Democrats losing 63
House seats in the
last election. The
conservative
opposition also
assumes that it was
elected to
dismantle, not
facilitate, the
Obama agenda.
So in 2011 we will
see whether Obama
still talks of his
opponents as
“enemies” who need
to be “punished” and
kept in the
“backseat,” or
whether he is
willing to concede
that bipartisanship
now may mean that
his liberal vision
of 2009 was rendered
inoperative by the
political reality of
last November.
On a variety of
fronts — health
care, the budget,
energy, defense, and
politics — we have
heard lots of easy
rhetoric the last
two years. But now
the reckoning comes
due in 2011 — and it
may be not a pretty
thing to watch.
—
Victor Davis Hanson
is a classicist and
historian at the
Hoover Institution,
Stanford University,
and the author, most
recently, of
The Father of Us
All: War and
History, Ancient and
Modern.©
2011 Tribune Media
Services, Inc.
