Barack Obama has given us several real doozies in this campaign. Some of his utterances have been notable for their gooey vacuousness – harmless tufts of rhetorical fluff that cause his disciples to swoon but initiates the gag reflex in the rest of us. “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for” may draw huge applause and chants of “O-Ba-Ma, O-Ba-Ma” but forces the rest of us to listen to his speeches on an empty stomach lest our most recent repast make an unwelcome appearance in the form of industrial sized chunks of barely digested Cheeto’s.
Recently, Obama tried to explain why he is running for president to a seven year old kid at a town hall meeting. This is a question any presidential candidate worth his salt should be able to tee up, take a mighty swing, and hit the ball out of the park. Even a Democrat should be able to muster the appropriate patriotic bombast and teary-eyed evocation of how much he loves this country and wishes to make it better.
Not our Barack. Forget the bombast. Forget love of country. Let’s just say America sucks and if you want it to be less sucky, elect me:
At a campaign stop in Elkhart, Indiana, a seven-year-old girl asked the Democrat why he wants to be President — and he told her that America has gone downhill:
“America is …, uh, is no longer, uh … what it could be, what it once was. And I say to myself, I don’t want that future for my children.”
Of course, as Ed Morrissey points out, we have heard similar deep thoughts from Michelle Obama as well.
The problem is Obama’s incoherence. Is he saying that America is not what it could be? This is standard lefty grist that illustrates their definition of patriotism. Extrapolate out from that thought and you get the “highest form of patriotism,” according to the left – dissent. In order to improve America you must dissent from what is, in order to achieve what should be. I have written of this definitional difference of patriotism between the right and left and Obama himself has spoken of it on more than one occasion.
But Obama slips in an entirely different thought; that America is “not as it once was.” This goes far beyond holding America responsible for its promises of equal opportunity for all and equal justice under the law. In fact, Obama demonstrates an extraordinarily lack of understanding of what America is all about. Of course we’re a different nation today than we were 10 years ago or 50 or 100 years in the past. America was designed that way. It was the Founder’s intent that America re-invent itself at the drop of a hat to reflect changing realities.
Prior to America coming into being, the only way that could occur was through bloody revolution. We have revolt built into our system of government as every four years, we have the opportunity to alter course 180 degrees or, in rarer cases, strike out in a new direction entirely.
This is the essence of America and it is revealing that Obama is disappointed that we have changed. But let’s forget Obama’s ignorance for a moment and look closer at just what kind of country we have today compared to the one that I grew up in.
I use my own life experience as a yardstick because it was roughly 40-50 years ago and that seems a sufficiently long period to contrast the America of today with the America of yesterday in order to judge whether Obama’s critique holds water.
First, allow me to interpret what Obama finds so horrible about today’s America.
- Health care costs are out of control and people can’t afford health insurance.
- The middle class is disappearing as wages have failed to keep up with inflation and real earnings have been dropping steadily (this has been happening since the 1970’s but for the purposes of Obama’s critique, let’s pretend it’s George Bush’s fault).
- Our industrial base is eroding. We are losing thousands of jobs every month to outsourcing and foreign competition.
- The world is warming up and we’re not doing anything to stop it.
- Housing is a mess thanks to the mortgage crisis.
- We have lost respect and no one in the world loves us because we act in a unilateral way on the world stage and pay no attention to the sensibilities of the rest of the world.
I would say that is a pretty fair partial rendering of what Obama thinks is wrong with America today. To draw a complete picture would require a surface the size of the Sistine Chapel ceiling. Obama is very fond of telling people that this is the most important election in his lifetime which may be one of the bigger exaggerations of his campaign. Perhaps he means it’s important because he’s in it. If he means the 2008 election is more important than 1968, 1972, or 1980 contests, he is full of it. I would even throw in 1964 if only because it handed the left it’s biggest victory and gave LBJ a mandate to create the welfare state in earnest.
But the question is, to which point does Obama want to return in American history that would secure his children’s future? Where in the past would Obama take us that would make us better than we are today?
The very nature of his campaign destroys his rationale as Ed Morrissey points out:
Everyone feels that we can improve ourselves, but we don’t usually cast it in terms of the country no longer being what it once was. Coming from the Obamas, that doesn’t even make sense. They have talked about how difficult it was to break through barriers, not without some justification, to reach this point in their lives and American history.Doesn’t that speak to the point that we continue to grow and to learn? And if not, which “good old days” did Obama mean? The 1980s? I doubt it, and if he means the Clinton era, then why did he run against Hillary in the first place?
Once again, Obama got off the teleprompter and put his foot directly in his mouth. He’s not selling Hope, he’s selling Despair, and himself as the snake oil that will cure us of all our ills.
The problem in returning to an America that once was is that the very idea of doing so is a chimera, a dream imagined only by those who fail to grasp the dynamism of the American experiment and how changes made in the past continue to mold and shape America today.
Yes we could return to a time when there was no health insurance crisis. There was a time where virtually every working American got their health insurance through their employer. But that world no longer exists, replaced by an extraordinary revolution in medicine that has allowed us to live a decade or more longer while also seeing government crowd out private insurance carriers by an ever more intrusive presence in the health insurance field. And that 1950’s world would also see Mr. Obama’s opportunities for the kind of life he leads now shrivel to damn near nothingness because of the color of his skin.
And yes, we could travel back to a time when unions were very strong and the pay of average Americans had no problem growing far beyond the cost of living. But that world was one still recovering from World War II with all of our major competitors today still rebuilding from that devastating conflict. Where a kid out of high school in Allentown, PA could be assured of a job at the plant and as long as he punched in and out, stayed out of trouble, and worked hard, he could expect a comfortable, middle class existence.
Those days are long gone never to return. The period from 1946-66 was an historical anomaly, a quirk, a hiccup on the historical timeline. Our industries weren’t just dominant. They were “it.” If a European wanted a car, chances are he bought a Ford or GM product rather than wait 2 years for a Euro-mobile. American steel, rubber, machine tools, and anything else manufactured in the US was in high demand around the world because no one was making them better or cheaper.
The reasons why that is no longer so speaks to our enormous success in remaking the world after the war rather than any intrinsic superiority in the way government worked at that time. How does Obama intend to bring them back? Limits on executive pay? Mandatory unionism? Maybe a well placed nuke or two to recreate the utter devastation in Germany, France, England, Japan, and the rest of the world that took a decade and more for them to recover?
Global warming? As long as we play lapdog for the Europeans on this issue and ignore the fact that China will be doing nothing to refrain from pouring carbon into the atmosphere as fast as their coal burning industries can shovel it, what good will it do? We’ve already cut our carbon emissions more than the Europeans over the last decade.
The America that once was had its good points and bad points. The changes that have been wrought have had mixed results as well. The bi-polar world has been replaced by, well, us. Europeans like to talk about “soft power” thus making the planet into something approaching rough equality. But I ask you, when Ahmadinejad, Assad, Kim Jung, Il, and a half dozen other thugs hit their knees every night to pray to their God, are they praying to be spared the wrath of Euro soft power or a visit from an F-117 carrying a bomb with their name on it? I rest my case.
Obama is right that America is “not what it could be.” But he is dead wrong to imagine he can take us back to an America that “once was.” America never looks back. And more than any other people – sometimes to our detriment – our people look to the future. The past is erased, trampled by our headlong rush to meet what will be. The present is just a way station, a temporary stop where we catch our breath before continuing that mad dash to create what is now without regard to what happened before.
“It is good to be shifty in a new country,” was actually an adage taught to school children at one time. It spoke to the fact that America has rolled forward like a steamroller, grinding the past underfoot and recreating itself on a regular basis. I have no doubt that the 2008 election will give us that opportunity to invent a new future for ourselves.
Just as long as we elect a president who understands this essential truth that has defined America for more than 200 years.
9:53 am
I have been given to recent musings on how and why lefties in this country support issues that are so easily seen by the right to be detrimental to the country. Ann Coulter believes it is because they hate America (and in some cases she is right), but I think it is a much deeper issue. I’ve concluded my layman analysis, resolved that one is born to either see a great country that can be made better, or a terrible country that needs to be “fixed”. I was born the former, Obama the latter. I see a successful company (e.g. Exxon) providing jobs, good income and health benefits to tens of thousands of people, but Obama sees a company that, if taxed out of existance, could provide “free” money to the poor. I believe that hard work and dedication has helped me to build a pretty good life, elevating me to a higher socioeconomic class, Obama (and other rich democrats) hypocritically believe there should be only one class (but a special class for them).
11:36 am
When he said ‘as it once was,’ I think Obama was referring to the period of time when GWB was not president. I must concede that I totally agree with him on that one.
Here’s the thing Rick. Your guys have literally had almost complete control of the country for between eight and twelve years. The Supreme Court, both legislative branches, and the executive. That’s not even mentioning all the party loyalists in Justice, Defense, and every other department in the federal government.
What you’re looking at right now is as good as the Republicans can do. This is it. The US, in its current state, is the pinnacle of Republican rule. Congratulations on your party. You must be so proud.
1:02 pm
Great analysis. Our government, like its citizens, react to current conditions; Short sighted? yes but that is human nature. Only in (benevolent, hopefully) dictatorships do long term goals for the common good make any progress, despite muffled complaints.
The security issue became suddenly acute and we had a leader that put his foot down, thank God. Here is a case of a leader with the foresight to change this course, otherwise my wife and daughter will be wearing burkas.
Now we have an acute energy situation it seems; let’s see who has the foresight to react.
11:28 pm
Chuck, you have hit upon a point that I should like elaborate further upon. Naturally, what Obama said was totally lacking in context in terms of what we have been through and evolved as a nation. To us history minded folks, it’s nonsense to go back to some better place in our past, unless as Ed Morrissey points out, he means the Clinton Era. And that is the whole idea!
Most Americans don’t know much about history, and Obama knows this. For 60% of people, “...what it once was” in fact refers to Clinton era times. Of course Obama would never let Hillary run the show, as he thinks he is better than her (Ed might disagree with me here), and in fact he beat the Clintons at their own game. You can hate the current situation all you want, but I can’t imagine that Hilary (with Bill in tow) would be preferable for us.
To get back to what Chuck said, the Republicans have had 14 years of running either Congress, the Presidency, or both at the same time. Only a partisan fool would argue that the GOP has done this nation well with their choice of actions. This is why the Democrats look likely to rule for a while; not so much because they promise to be good, but because their opponents have used up too many chances with the voters.
5:28 am
Good post Ric.
12:26 am
Surabaya, like Nancy Polosi has done this nation well, running home for a 5 week book promo and doing NOTHING to try to help us in this gas situation, ect., ect.,m ect.
I really don’t think the politicians can relate to any of us since they are all so damn RICH.
I for one would not mind seeing an all new congress and senate.
1:18 am
No one is a completely “bottom up” or BU thinker or analyst, just as no one is a completely “top down” or TD analyst of our way of life, government, and our many problems. The TDer makes many little problems out of very large problems in a coherent manner in order to solve them incrementally, whereas the BUer is always busy identifying problems at the lower levels, and literally cannot see the woods for the trees much of the time.
I see Obama as an interesting combination of 5% visionary TD, and 95% pieces and parts BU.
To be a visionary TDer is relatively easy, since our local, national, and world ideals are standing there screaming to be recognized and worked on by all of us. Just pick a few: World peace; Third World development; economic stability in the US; the Middle East; Judeo-Christianity versus Islam… Oil…
A pieces and parts BU type, on the other hand, is cursed with the perception of hundreds and hundreds of problems, only some of which are sufficiently interrelated that common solutions can be teased out of the morass and championed.
What seems worse to me is that the BUer finds it very hard to build his analysis upwards to join with the TD analyst at some middle ground to arrive at holistic, common solutions when they are feasible. Of the many side conditions for such a systhesis, is the preservation of our freedom and liberty, which must rule out authoritarian governmental modifications and Constitutional changes.
The obvious example is Obama’s Change and Unity mantras which highlight just about as pure a Top Down approach as one can find, and just about as vacuous, versus his wallowing around in a sea of other, lesser or tangential problems with only the dangerous channalizing of his leftist inclinations to guide him in a BU attempt. The focus on race, cleverly put in the guise of post-racial initiatives is certainly the clearest example of his BU mindset, and the thousand and one subproblems he is raising in the process, each requiring a solution, but still focused on race is a whole bunch of trees.
The problem set that Obama begins with is not necessarily in the mainstream of our desires, and the implications for beginning with his set and his priorities are to distort severely what most of us perceive as the proper direction for our governance, our taxes, our freedoms, our economy and our foreign policies—in short, the future of the nation.
10:31 am
Fascinating observation Drewsmom, would a desire for a new house and senate extend to the presidential candidates? (I can’t think of the last major candidate who made less than 6 figures.) This is all so confusing, because I always thought conservatives were all for people making as much money as legally possible. Shall there be a salary cap just like the NFL? (How socialist!) Also, isn’t the free market able to solve all our problems, including energy supply? Perhaps that’s why Pelosi is doing nothing; why are the Republicans desiring government intervention in a matter that the private sector is handling?
5:53 pm
...looking back,looking forward, what it once was…this is all just semantics. What America wants is new management. Just as Chuck Tucson mentioned above, Republicans had it their way and showed the damage they can do to our country. They have played their full hand and now we can see the pillagers for what they are. The lies, the deceit, the greed, the divisivenesses and the blatant exploitation of a country’s fears have brought us all right where we are. In the 2000 election when we should have been thinking about how we’re going to survive the 21st century, all the right could do was scream and cry over who should be allowed to make life-long monogamous commitments and who cannot. After all that, I think it takes a lot of nerve to nit-pick about what Barack Obama promises to do. Here’s all I need to know – Is he going to clean out the Republican cancer that has infested our government?
I don’t think McCain can, will or wants to.
So Barack it is….. Go Barack Obama ‘08!
8:50 pm
So now some people want the Democratic version of the same sins, Tim? I seriously doubt that Republicans will turn en masse to BHO, and I have equally grave doubts that BHO is all that secure within the Democratic Party, plus he is not only unknown, but for his soaring rhetoric from a teleprompter, he has some heavy baggage to tote as well. Most Americans do not want a Marxist/communist in the White House. That will be his undoing.