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VDH shines his keen analytical skills on the Obama meltdown and what caused it. As he writes (and as we have said), Obama had a “perfect storm” of circumstances come together for him in 2008 (including a loser Republican opponent who preferred the purity of losing nobly to winning and probably did not even vote for himself). Hubris always meets Nemesis in the end.
by Victor Davis Hanson
Had the Obamites been sober and circumspect after the 2008 election they would have realized that Obama had pulled off what McGovern, Mondale, Dukakis, and Kerry had not, due to a once-in-a-century perfect storm of about six events:
1) The September 15, 2008 financial meltdown that destroyed John McCain’s small, but steady lead.
2) The fascination with a possible landmark election of an African American candidate.
3) The inept McCain campaign that at times seemed more to wish to lose nobly than to win in a messy fashion.
4) The adroit Obama campaign that stressed centrist, “across the aisle” issues and style.
5) The “tingle in the leg” biased media coverage.
6) The first election without an incumbent or vice president since 1952 in which both candidates ran against the status quo Republican record.
Instead, Obama — egged on by obsequious advisers, an out-of-touch, hard-left base, and a toady media — decided that he had done what other Northern liberals had not, either because (a) the country was at last ready for European-style socialism, or (b) his singular charisma and talents could convince it that it was even when it was clearly not.
The result was that our Oedipus/Pentheus rushed headlong into socialized medicine, mega-deficits, needlessly polarizing appointments of the Van Jones type, and various federal takeovers, coupled with quite unnecessary editorializing about largely local matters — from the Skip Gates mess to the Arizona immigration law and Ground Zero mosque.
[…]
And now? After November, Obama can only hope that he can outsource the messy work of cuts and budget balancing to the congressional Republicans. Chances are he will demagogue them as heartless while taking credit for an economic rebound once investors, businesses, and corporations see an end to Obamism and its gratuitous slurs against the wealthy, and thus start using their stockpiled trillions to rehire and buy equipment in 2011.
In the meantime, an entire generation of Democratic House members and senators are going to pay a heavy price for falling for a clearly inexperienced, untried, and often petulant candidate amid the exuberance of the 2008 hope and change wave.
Read the rest here: Anatomy of the Obama meltdown
As a special weekend treat you are going to get two VDH columns. Professor Hanson points out that a Republican congress, by doing the tough and responsible work that Obama refuses to do, might actually save his presidency. The thing is that Obama is too much the ideologue to stop trying to push his socialist agenda through and cannot remain passive by playing rope-a-dope.
by Victor Davis Hanson
After 2010, will he be Carter or Clinton?
That is the ongoing parlor game now played among pundits over how President Obama will react to a probable shellacking of the Democrats in midterm elections next month.
Jimmy Carter stuck to his liberal agenda after suffering a modest rebuke in the 1978 midterms amid sky-high inflation, interest rates and unemployment. He didn’t take voters’ hint and went on to get clobbered two years later by Ronald Reagan.
In contrast, after his party was slaughtered in the 1994 midterms (losing 51 House and eight Senate seats), a triangulating Bill Clinton moved to the center and handily won re-election in 1996.
So what will Obama do if he loses a Democratic majority in the House and quite possibly the Senate, as his approval ratings tank to 40 percent?
Most likely, he will stick to his liberal orthodoxy — but in a way unlike Carter. Yet, like Clinton, Obama may still have a good chance at re-election.
[…]
But if Republicans take over Congress, they — not Obama — can be blamed for the failure to enact the liberal dream. Obama can nostalgically soar with hope-and-change platitudes about his aborted left-wing vision, with the assurance that there is absolutely no chance he will offend the majority of Americans by seeing any of it passed.
[…]
Read the rest here: The Obama Rope-A-Dope
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Tags: John McCain, Victor Davis Hanson
