President Obama’s failure to fully achieve the liberal agenda and remain popular in the process is fueling dangerous radicalization in the oddest of places: the media establishment, which considers itself the guardian of the political center.
I should say “the so-called center,” because one of those most tedious — yet meticulously maintained — fictions is the claim that the establishment is, in fact, “centrist.”
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If you’ve ever met these people and talked to them about how they see the world, heard them give a college commencement address, read their books, or endeavored to find out the political views of their spouses, you’d have all the evidence you need to learn that the establishment’s centrist facade is so much Potemkin poster board.
For example, remember the media obsession with the cockeyed fantasy that Obama was the next FDR? Go back and watch some of those late-2008 and early-2009 episodes of Meet the Press. The guests were so giddy about the prospect they looked like six-year-olds at a birthday party ordered to sit still while the clown got ready to make balloon animals.
But Obama is not an FDR, nor a Lincoln, nor a liberal Reagan. At this point he’s simply hoping not to be a Carter. And that’s fomented establishment despair. Tina Brown, editor of both the Daily Beast and Newsweek, recently let it slip on MSNBC (a trifecta of establishmentarian liberal media outlets!) that she thinks Obama “wasn’t ready” for the job in 2008.
The establishment can’t bring itself to blame liberalism (or themselves). So instead they blame the system. Obama’s own reelection theme of running against “Washington” — a town he had near total control over for two years and in which he is still the most powerful figure — is a variant of the same argument. Obama can’t blame the party he leads, so he blames the “system.”
That idea — that the system itself is to blame — has now gone viral.
New York Times columnist Tom Friedman, who’s been pushing and predicting a “geo-green third party” since 2006, is convinced there will be something like that in 2012. Why? Because his gut tells him so.
Friedman’s gut is a terrifying thing. During the fight over “Obamacare,” he didn’t just think the political system “sucks” (to borrow Democratic wise man Tony Podesta’s term), he found it demonstrably inferior to China’s authoritarian regime.
Just last week, Bev Purdue, Democratic governor of North Carolina, declared, “I think we ought to suspend, perhaps, elections for Congress for two years and just tell them we won’t hold it against them, whatever decisions they make.” She now says she was joking, an interpretation hard to square with the audio recording.
Similarly, former Obama aide Peter Orszag (now of Citibank, of course) also pinpoints democracy as the real problem. In the latest issue of TheNew Republic, he proposes that we empower more “depoliticized commissions” to make the important decisions.
Friedman likes “depoliticized commissions” too, such as the Chinese politburo. That’s why he’s written how he wishes we could be just like “China for a day,” so we could simply impose all the policies he likes.
At least Matt Miller, an avowed radical centrist, doesn’t want to scrap democracy. He just wants to scrap the two-party system. Now, this isn’t undemocratic. It’s not even necessarily a terrible idea (though I don’t endorse it).
But what’s interesting about Miller’s argument is how un-centrist it is. Writing for the Washington Post, Miller explains how he wants a new third party that will reject “the Democrats’ timid half-measures and the Republicans’ mindless anti-government creed.”
The new centrism: No more half-measures, just full-blown liberalism.
The description of the "Meet the Press" crew as "six-year olds at a birthday party" is sheer genius. And the image of Obama as a clown making balloon animals will hopefully appear in cartoon form on NRO soon?
"The guests were so giddy about the prospect they looked like six-year-olds at a birthday party ordered to sit still while the clown got ready to make balloon animals." I can't remember the last time I laughed out loud before 6 a.m. Thanks Jonah.
Kiddies, if you think the Clowns (Tina Brown, Friedman, etc.) are obnoxious, wait until you see the sinister and frightening balloon animals they want to make:
Suspending elections, open borders, voter fraud, making free speech a hate crime, attacking conservative news media, calling black GOP members 'racist,' mobbing conservative speakers and politicians to prevent them from speaking, creating non-elected government boards and regional authorities to do their politically-unpopular dirty work etc.
Just don't call it grass-roots democracy, for it is the opposite.
Let us not forget the "No Labels" crowd from last year. Whenever liberals bump up against a resistant American electorate their solution is always RE-Brand! That's why they went from "progressives" to "liberals" (a nice attempt to tie their policy goals to the founding) in the 20's and 30's, and went back to progressives in the 90's. The idea that the American people just don't want what they have to offer rarely enters their minds, and when it does, well, they start talking like Tom Friedman.
Hey, she said this not too long after The One visited North Carolina for the umpteenth time. I think she has friends in high places. Why does Jonah look foolish? She's the one who said it.
How could Tom Friedman give us a Chinese-style authoritarian government? What's your point? What's important is that she thought suspending elections was a good idea, and thought it would be acceptable to mention it in public.
Just the fact that she was recorded bringing up the idea speaks volumes of the liberal mind. Power and control before all.
How could she do it? The same way liberals always do it; incrementalism. Twenty years ago, who would have believed that the mayor of a city could ban trans-fat?
Twenty years ago, when someone in a pickup truck ran off the road, it was reported that 'Barak Obama, riding with Nancy Pelosi, ran off the road on Route 2008". Now, it's "an SUV with two passengers ran off of Route 2008".
The issue is not that she could do it. Neither Jonah nor any other pundit has suggested otherwise. The issue is that she would say such a thing at all. That not one but three prominent, mainstream progressives would openly express contempt for democracy in the United States of America is troublesome whether they have the power to act or not.
It's the same principle that ensures neither Ron Paul nor Bernie Sanders will ever be President; President Paul could not dismantle the entire federal government, nor could President Sanders nationalize large chunks of the economy, but the mere fact that you know that in their hearts they want to do these things is itself worrisome and renders them unfit to lead a center-right nation (emphasis on CENTER in Paul's case.) Philosophy matters, even if the Constitution would theoretically save us.
Hey, I was with you until your Paul comments -- and I'm not even a Paul fan. If he weren't such a wacko on foreign policy, though, there would be nothing extreme about Paul. Sanders wants to change our form of governmnent. Paul wants to return to constitutional principles. No comparison.
Obama and his administration has ignored and violated the Constitution at every turn, helped by a Press that covers for him. The Constitution cannot save us - it is 'us' who must save the Constitution. Nov 2012 is the Battle of Midway and Normandy Beach rolled into one. Like the Valley Forge and WWII generations moment, it's this generation's "all in" bet.
You are mighty naive if you don't get what's going on with the left. There are 2 representitives who along with this NC governor, said that "democracy is getting in the way". Now, tell us Jprev40, how do you read that? Think that sounds foolish? Me thinks you're on the wrong website.
I'm not sure anything could look more foolish than your comment here, Jprev40. An elected official proposes an idea that they personally cannot accomplish alone, so we cannot criticize it without looking foolish in your eyes? I guess you will have nothing to say the next time a conservative politician espouses a constitutional amendment regarding marriage, abortion, balanced budgets, etc., since they cannot pass an amendment by themselves, right?
Mr. Goldberg merely pointed out what our Governor actually said. It is up to her to figure out how to make it happen. The point is she meant it. She truly would suspend elections if she could, because she knows her days are numbered.
The foolish are folks who do not take politicians literally at their word, when they speak their true feelings, surely not thoughts. Take Joe Bidem. Believe the dozen words that come out of his mouth when he first speaks, not the 500 word rebuttal.
It is up to Gov. Perdue not Mr. Goldberg to figure out how she can govern unelected. She meant what she said(sort of, she really wants to suspend her own re-election bid, not the US congress).
Foolish is not taking a politician at her first words. Foolish is believing the panic driven, staff crafted, clarifying statement read by some aide a half hour later, telling you not to believe the governor's actual words.
Just watch Barney Frank defend Fannie Mae, or Dick Durbin sputter outrage over debit card charges he set in place, or Joe Biden speak on anything, to see stupidity in action. Then believe these fools mean everything they say.
Well, the other clowns at Bloomberg have done a poll and the balloons they twisted was that the majority of investors agree that the O's policies are non campos mentis. A bit slow on the uptake?
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