Obama: the legacy
Obama actually offers up a proposal that at least gives the appearance of being a compromise (entitlement cuts for tax raises), and the left gets angry at him, naturally:
Progressive groups and lawmakers, including Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), are blasting the Obama administration for cuts to Social Security and other programs expected to be unveiled in the president’s budget next week.
One progressive group, Democracy for America, is threatening primary challenges to those Democrats who support the cuts.
Things haven’t really been going all that well for Obama of late. Of course, they don’t have to, because he already won re-election. But no doubt he wants to preserve his legacy. That would include Obamacare, which appears to be becoming more unpopular as time (or Time) goes by, rather than less.
Could it even be that, as Victor Davis Hanson writes, Obama will go down in history as a failed president?:
But the right shouldn’t rejoice about that. Even if Hanson is correct, I fear the damage is done–and there’s more damage to come, since we’ve only gotten through the first few months of Obama’s second term. There’s quite a bit more to go.
And the remedies may be too Draconian for people to accept:
We are institutionalizing, in European style, huge government, high unemployment, sluggish GDP growth, serial annual deficits, ballooning aggregate national debt and massive dependency, along with near-zero interest rates.
Hanson thinks that, after Obama, the two parties will come to agree on the remedies and the American people will not want us to “continue down the road to Italy or Spain.” I hope he’s correct but I believe he may indeed be wrong, and that instead we have reached some sort of tipping point in pro-welfare state public opinion, and that it would take something very major to change our reliance on big government.
Hanson agrees, though, that even if Obama fails as a president, he will never fail in the eyes of liberals:
Obama’s economic record will be dispassionately acknowledged to be similar to that of Jimmy Carter. But, unlike Carter, Obama will remain a mythical figure in liberal circles.
To borrow a line from a classic Western, “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.” And so we will do just that.
Ha!
I do believe I’ve been channeling VDH! lol …this column states in a far more articulate fashion than most why the creep of optimism has been encroaching upon my depression since the last election.
Yes, yes: the doofuss won, the American electorate embraced the adage attributed to PT Barnum about “suckers” and “birth” (or, if you prefer, the saying linking “fools” and “money”), but Obama is still Obama, and he’s done, and the Left’s nudity is becoming as apparent, and America is, after all America, and we’ll work our way through this idiot after all is said and done, again.
Money is coming to us: vast amounts of the ready, via abiogenic oil (only flat-earthers can still maintain that dinosaurs and squashed plants formed oil deposits, regardless of the Wikipedia article …of which the response is: yeah, like the dinosaurs and abundant primordial plant life on Titan formed its lakes and seas of hydrocarbons? …what feeble twit wrote that, anyways).
We will do this. And reservoirs of money can solve a lot of what seem to be currently insurmountable economic problems. Dawn’s comin’ baby. Don’t worry. Be happy.
Like VDH – says: “…History will not be anything other than very unkind to the political “skills” …of President Obama. (Note: quote edited for clarity.)
The contrast of VDH’s post with the JPod post last week is rather striking too, neh?
…yeah, I’m feeling optimistic …out on the edges, the signs are there …well, if you squint in just the right way lol.
Mostly OT (but worthy of consideration for Golden State conservatives) is this VDH for CA governor in 2014 article …which would be the best thing that’s happened to CA since …I dunno: statehood, maybe.
“[I]nstead we have reached some sort of tipping point in pro-welfare state public opinion, and that it would take something very major to change our reliance on big government.”
. . . Like an electorate that’s decidedly below 50 percent (consumers of public largesse) plus (collectivists of varying stripes) plus (people who vote for who’s hip rather than who’s the grownup).
Even if history (finally, like the rest of us) recognizes Obama and his “policies,” such as Obamacare as failures, it doesn’t make that much of a difference.
We have already established a “new normal” in terms of what we, as Americans, expect.
Case in point the economy, specifically jobs; it is now “normal” to be grateful for a job that offers no benefits, no holiday pay, no vacation pay, no severance pay, nothing except a flat hourly pay rate. This is part of Obama’s legacy.
We The People are going to have to win this one – against our neighbors I’m afraid; by argument of course.
I never let the opportunity pass to let my Diabolical Dem friends and neighbors know that Obama and the party they support is the cause of 90% of our troubles and therefore I am not the least interested in their whining. If they want change, vote for he other party or take what you get.
I got an email from a sibling who works at MegaGovtHigherEd U that contained a long letter from this or that Dean of Running the School via Government Handouts sounding the alarm about drastic cuts and need for savings as a result of the Sequester!
The email went out to over 15000 Uni people. Polls tell us they vote Overwhelming Diabolical Dem.
Let them suffer the pain they voted for then. That’s called Justice and Karma. We only need to point out to them at every possible opportunity that they are (supposed to be) grownup and get what they asked for.
This should be a resounding and growing cry across the land – accusing the true culprits.
Today they told us over 600,000 dropped out of the job market.
The next target should be the States making those people feel the pain of their unwise and destructive votes.
It’s always, “I’ll give you some cuts (which never happen), if you will give me some more tax increases (Which always happen!).” This is so transparent. Yet the willfully blind won’t/don’t see. And Obama hopes that continues.
Although it’s hard, I have optimism like VDH and davisbr. Why? Because Obamacare is becoming such a Frankenstein monster. Everyday there are new revelations that curl one’s hair.
Obama’s foreign policy of making nice with everybody is not working either.
Today’s employment report was a disaster. Why? Fear of Obamacare, the increase in taxes on business owners (people making over $400,000), the increase in FICA taxes, and Obama’s demands for more taxes. Who wants to expand and hire under those conditions? The first quarter may have been good (2%+ growth?) but business appears to be contracting again.
Obamacare is going to self destruct. The Repubs need to be ready to pick up the pieces.
The rise of oil and gas production could be enhanced by proper government policies. A booming energy sector would lift all boats.
We still have very productive farms and manufacturing firms are slowly returning home. They would return much more quickly if there was a pro-business government policy.
Though the warmers are still pushing their “sky is falling” propaganda, the tide seems to be shifting because there has been no real increase in temperatures since 1998. And they can’t explain why in a way that makes sense.
All these things give me confidence that the LIVs will begin to see that the promises have been empty, the policies poorly thought out. We CAN turn things around with proper leadership.
He can’t lose with this proposal – either his party never puts it to a vote, and he can claim he tried, assuming somebody asks, or he suckers the republicans into voting for it so he can veto it. And then he will beat them over the head with it, gloating at his brilliance, because he knows he controls the media and the story that will be told.
The only way I will believe he’s serious is if he actually CAMPAIGNS for it, relentlessly, nauseatingly, like he does for entitlement programs or gun control. The last thing he really wants to been seen doing is cutting entitlements.
Hanson is whistling past the graveyard about post Obama America. The two parties are more of one mind and the one problem with this country is greater than the sum of its parts. What the American people want has been made moot by what they will get. The status quo is as appealing to one Party as the other; not because there is much to recommend it but because the Parties are no longer the impetus, they are the pawns.
I have valued VDH’s commentaries ever since he began writing on PJMedia 6 or 7 years ago. He has experienced the costs of the welfare state far more than have I, and yet he is optimistic enough to stay in the fray. We need persons like that. Hopelessness will get us nowhere, even if I feel that way often.
I suppose that, as a life-long Democrat, he would run as a Democrat, which might give him an advantage in California. Were he to run, he is a Democrat worthy of a conservative’s vote.
The solution is misery. We’re seeing the start of it but unfortunately there is just enough left of the American spirit and tradition to keep the misery at a tolerable level until we make a comeback. Then we’ll have another narrative where Obama takes the place of FDR.
I suppose it is possible that a new narrative and new laws really reassert our original foundation where people were prevented from making their living with their votes and our borders were strictly protected and diversity was bounded by the Constitution.
Hope for that or something just less, but there’s also the chance of something much worse.
Just read that Mickey Kaus piece at The Daily Caller suggesting VDH should run for governor that davisbr linked to. Seems a bit crazy at first glance, but then who knows? Kaus makes some good points:
I am quite amazed that VDH feels”Obama will go down in history as a failed President”.
It was some commie Russian (?Stalin) who said a long time ago, “He who controls history controls the future.”
History recording is NOT an objective science or art, and a classical historian like VDH should know that, especially at his age. History is not seismometry. History is written by the winners, and, since I believe we have passed a critical tipping point with the 2012 election, I have little doubt as to how ‘historians’ of the future will view Obama: He will be viewed as a Great Man, in the pantheon that includes Wilson, FDR, LBJ. And Black to boot.
If in doubt, just consider Zinn’s American History, used as the text in many if not most public high schools. That is the kind of history we have now and shall have in the future.
Obama is a Saint! A Saint, if not Our Messiah! VDH is a Tool of Satan! /sarc
The Gonnabee ending is always traumatic.
The puss will explode from the pustule.
Only at the end will all of his weird psychic defenses rupture.
We might even see him smoking in public.
Relevant to his psyche: his wife self-describes — “I’m a single mother.”
As for management ‘style’ he’s an angry autocrat.
Hence, his choice of passive-submissive appointees.
We have Mumbles as our Secretary of Defense!
}}} Could it even be that, as Victor Davis Hanson writes, Obama will go down in history as a failed president?:
America wanted Jackie Robinson.
Instead it got Jackie Wizseschnitzl.
.
.
(Who? Exactly.)
I am proud to say that, even before he was first elected, in 2008, that I said he would, IF elected, make us appreciate the quivering mound of incompetence that was the Jimmy Carter presidency. I am not happy I was correct, but I am happy about being correct… if you get my drift.
If the Left doesn’t win in this decade, they will win in the next. If not the next, then 5 decades from now. If not 5, then 10.
So long as people want to fight a political battle with the Left, rather than treating it as a war, they will always fail.