Proteus-in-Chief Obama’s rhetoric has swung from hard-left to moderate to hard-left to conciliatory. The problem is, his policies were real, not rhetorical.
Barack Obama 1.0 had a solid record of hard-left governance as an Illinois state representative and U.S. senator. He voted for partial-birth abortion, wanted all troops out of Iraq by March 2008, and proved himself the most partisan of the 100 members of the Senate, even to the left of the only Socialist senator, Bernie Sanders. He seemed unaware of or indifferent to the embarrassment of his long intimacy with the crackpot racist Rev. Jeremiah Wright and other Chicago radicals. Version 1.0 led to office, but not to the highest office.
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Barack Obama 2.0 then ran a stealth campaign in 2008 — now moderate more than hard left and often at odds with his own record. At times he called for fiscal sobriety, a more balanced approach to energy production, intrusions into Pakistan if need be, and a beefed-up presence in Afghanistan. In surreal moments, Obama almost seemed more centrist than Hillary Clinton and George W. Bush. Thanks to brilliantly voiced hope-and-change banalities, a lackluster McCain opposition, subservient media, the September 2008 financial meltdown, collective anger at President Bush, and the novelty of the first serious African-American candidate, the American people did what they hadn’t done in a half-century: They elected a liberal Democrat who didn’t have a southern accent. Version 2.0 achieved its purpose of election to the presidency.
Barack Obama 3.0 then reverted to his leftist roots. We saw appointments like Van Jones and Anita Dunn. Federal bailouts followed for politically approved businesses and crony capitalists. The SEIU leadership made serial visits to the White House. More than $3 trillion in spread-the-wealth borrowing was added to the national debt. Obama engineered a federal takeover of health care, and rhetorically waged war on the affluent, who were supposed to pay new taxes as penance for their assorted sins.
That was coupled with a fuzzy multicultural reset foreign policy that saw gratuitous slights of allies, apologies to foreigners for America’s supposed sins, and outreach to enemies on the principle that America’s problems began and ended with George W. Bush. Along the way, we heard silly pop editorializing on everything from the Ground Zero mosque and the Arizona immigration law to the Skip Gates debacle and the Fort Hood massacre. All of that earned the Democrats the greatest midterm congressional rebuke in 72 years and Obama himself approval ratings in the low forties. Version 3.0 pleased the base for two years, but nearly wrecked Obama’s presidency.
Barack Obama 4.0 now promises support for “clean energy” goals and more natural gas. Instead of damnations of Las Vegas and Super Bowl junkets from the president himself or Van Jones’s unhinged socialist rants, we get a pro-business op-ed by the president in the Wall Street Journal and a fat-cat banker as his new chief of staff (not that Mr. Daley’s predecessor, Rahm Emanuel, did poorly on Wall Street, where his utter lack of fiscal experience somehow netted him $16 million).
Bush’s once-despised Guantanamo, renditions, tribunals, preventive detention, and Patriot Act are now vital to Obama’s sober national-security policy — with the approval of a once-hysterical Left. Iraq is our “greatest achievement,” with our troops leaving “with their heads held high” (as opposed to fleeing in defeat in March 2008). The chances of trying Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in a civilian court, as promised by Eric Holder, are zero. Republicans are now praised for their bipartisan work in December. There is a new centrist civility. We are to forget that last October someone called his opponents “enemies” who needed to be punished and kept out of the metaphorical front seat of governance. Version 4.0 is designed to ensure Obama’s reelection.
Obama’s problem is not the shamelessness of adopting and rejecting positions as polls indicate. All politicians do that, with varying degrees of success. The rub is that during his two-year-long 3.0 phase, his policies were real, not rhetorical, and they made the recession far worse.
Right now gas prices are skyrocketing. The housing market is in worse shape than ever. Food costs are climbing. We are adding billions to the deficit every day. The world abroad is not safer, and in fact it’s heating up. Unemployment remains over 9 percent. A Proteus-in-chief can change only his own shape, not the shape of things as they are.
I was surprised at the content of his SOTU address on Tuesday. With the exception of the nod to the guy whose drill bit was the clincher in rescuing the Chilean miners, it was 2008 all over again. Maybe someone loaded the wrong presentation into the teleprompter. For all of the leaked tidbits in the news prior to the address, suggesting that we could expect something fresh, it was a snoozer.
It'll be interesting to see what persona he adopts in the 2012 speech, after what looks to be another year of high unemployment and high deficits, when he has to use it to make his case for reelection the following November. Will we get more promises of a "hard pivot" towards job creation and fixing our fiscal affairs with deficit reduction? I think he'll have a tough time inspiring even his far left core to muster much enthusiasm if he relies on the same old generalities.
Doctor VDH - Excellent as always. As I read your column, the following biblical quotation came to mind: Can a leopard change its spots? A rhetorical question of course, and as for the leopard so for this POTUS.
I have one question, though. Except for his base, why does anybody else believe him?
How things change in just a few long years. BHO now has a record to defend, something he has before done before. And then there is that nasty little thing called The Tea Party. No wonder BHO is ramping up into full campaign mode.
The only good thing about the healthcare exemptions - for friends of the regime, is that it keeps our current healthcare system on life support until we can dismantle Obamacare. Without the exemptions the system would collapse and candidate Obama would have to do a lot of explaining.
Wonderful, perceptive article, clearly written as always. VDH is one of my favorite authors.
It's good that someone is counteracting the new, deceptive marketing of Obama. Kudlow's "Trust but verify" tactic plays into Obama's new and deceptive marketing.
Very well written, thank you. It's always been a question for me why intelligent people (some whom I count as friends) can have the wool pulled over their eyes time and time again. The way you write it makes it seem so simple to understand, and yet here we are.
I live in the world of online design and marketing. The message is incredibly important. Watching Obama's campaign made me wonder why Republican front runners hadn't thought run their own campaigns similarly.
Some might say it's substance over style. Maybe. Maybe it's also a bit of shortsightedness on this side. Being smart about how you discuss your ideas isn't shallow. It's just being smart. We can talk to the nation about the smart way to lead without seeming like a lame movie from the 1970s.
Great piece, VDH. Compared to Obama, a Potemkin village has substance. What baffles me is how nearly half the country can approve of this man's leadership. We are truly a confederation of dunces.
Is there a reason not to say plainly that Mr. Obama is a liar? Saying he is "protean" suggests that he changes his mind. In 2008, I believed that Mr. Obama was an attractive, intelligent and well meaning person, though naive and inexperienced. I have come reluctantly to believe that he lies routinely about his views and intentions. Doubtless all politicians shade the truth from time to time, but Mr. Obama appears to excel others in this regard. It's really very disappointing.
Here is an indictment by a lawyer. Judge Scalia said once that Supreme Court need only to count the voices to make an impeachment of O.
Below in his article which remind us of Roman lawyer Cicero, VD Hanson prepares the accusation. As Republicans search the best way to attack, it may be less time than expected to start the trial.
The title must be: The American Ali Baba.
Obama is an opportunist. No. The absent sense of his contradictions makes him an opportunist psychopath.
Thank you for a great overview of this man in an empty suit!
He reminds me of Silly Putty - a squish here, a squish there...and no one can determine just who he is or what his stances are on ANY subject - because they will simply change at the next squish!
He has proven once and for all that 'present' is the best he can come up with. He has NO vision - NO concrete ideas - NO leadership abilities - he is nothing more than blather.
I guess the good Lord wanted to give us all a good shake to wake us up. As the growing tea party movement has shown, We the People HAVE awakened...and will not slumber until he is no longer in office!
"This is the same banal article VDH has been writing about Obama every few days for a year now. We get it, you don't like him."
Maybe that's because Obama does the same old banal things? Of course, people also need reminding about what Obama did, lest they just chuck it to him being a "politician".
"It'd be more interesting to read your thoughts on what he SHOULD be doing - as some of your fellow NRO writers at least take a stab at doing."
Here's a hint: How about doing everything that is completely opposite of what Dr. Hanson is writing about? Or do you like the fact that every time something goes wrong with Obama he just "reinvents" himself (I'd prefer the old-fashioned word LIE) and gets to get a do over because he fashions himself as others want to see him?
As long as we don't hold politicians accountable we shouldn't be surprised that they get away with all the stuff they do to us.
"This is the same banal article VDH has been writing about Obama every few days for a year now. We get it, you don't like him."
Someone needs to clearly state the facts behind Obama's duplicity. It seems like every "conservative" pundit from Krauthammer to Noonan feels the need to pull punches about this embarrassment of a President. The man's liberal ideology has failed over and over again, and yet he keeps on reinventing himself so he can impose 4 more years of misery on the American people (see VDH's recent article about California's third world wastelands). It's not that anyone dislikes Obama. We just know an incompetent, arrogant failure when we see one and, unfortunately, he is the President of our country.
A fine article but I wish to make a correction to one point: Obama's goal is not to move wealth down the social ladder, his goal is to move it up that ladder and into the pockets of his union, financial, industrial and political cronies. He is succedding splendidly, thank you very much.
