A version of today’s column on Obama’s fear-mongering appeared yesterday in the LA Times. It was the second most-viewed article of the day and the most emailed. There was an enormous reaction from readers. About one-third was very positive (“about time!” “thank you!” “amen!” etc) and another third was blind fury (“you a-hole!” “moron” etc). The chief rebuttal from the very angry was: Bush did too exploit a crisis! What seemed lost on these people is that even if that were true, that doesn’t make what Obama’s doing any better or any less hypocritical. Anyway, here’s the open:
Imagine a child falls down a well. Now imagine I offer to lend the parents my ladder to save her, but only if they promise to paint my house. Would you applaud me for not letting a crisis go to waste? Or would you think I’m a jerk, for want of a harsher word not printable in this space?
I ask because I’m trying to come to terms with Rule No. 1 of the Obama administration.
“Rule 1: Never allow a crisis to go to waste,” White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel told the New York Times right after the election. “They are opportunities to do big things.” Over the weekend, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton told an audience at the European Parliament, “Never waste a good crisis.” Then President Obama explained in his Saturday radio and Internet address that there is “great opportunity in the midst of” the “great crisis” befalling America.
Numerous commentators, including me, have pointed to this never-waste-a-crisis mantra as evidence that Obama’s budget priorities are a great ideological bait-and-switch. He says he wants to fix the financial crisis, but he’s focusing on selling his longstanding liberal agenda on health care, energy, and education as the way to do it, even though his proposals have absolutely nothing to do with addressing the housing and toxic-debt problems that are the direct causes of our predicament. Indeed, some — particularly on Wall Street — would argue that his policies are making the crisis worse.
But those policies aren’t the real scandal, even though they’re bad enough. The real scandal is that this administration thinks crises are opportunities for governmental power grabs. (It seems writer Randolph Bourne was wrong. It is not war, but crisis, that is the health of the state.)
Michael Kinsley famously said that a gaffe in Washington is when a politician accidentally tells the truth. As they say, it’s funny because it’s true.
But the White House tactic isn’t funny at all. It’s scary. Its amorality is outweighed only by the grotesque and astoundingly naked cynicism of it all.