Thread: Hanson chronicles multi-layered flame-out of president

COLUMN DU JOUR

O: From 'centrist' to suave extremist

Victor Davis Hanson chronicles multi-layered flame-out of president
--National Review

Once Upon a Time . . . Whatever happened to the old Barack Obama?

By Victor Davis Hanson

Once upon a time, a fresh new politician, Barack Obama — black, young, eloquent, and hip — soared with rhetoric about hope and change. The people were mesmerized. What a contrast with the tongue-tied outgoing president, George W. Bush, and his unpopular wars in Iraq and Afghanistan!

Presidential Candidate Obama sensed their ecstasy, and so he made two great promises: 1. Whatever Bush was, he would not be, and 2. despite the right-wing slander about his former intimacy with Bill Ayers, the Reverend Wright, Father Pfleger, Rashid Khalidi, and all his other old Chicago radical friends, Obama would be a centrist, a cooler version of Bill Clinton. There were to be no more red/blue state divides. The most partisan politician in the Senate promised a new era of bipartisanship. He who had profited from identity politics would suddenly be beyond race.

The people were considering voting for this unknown, fresh, hope-and-change candidate — a decision made easier after the financial meltdown of mid-September 2008. They decided then that they wanted a new-frontier moderate, a JFK for the 21st century, who would put competence and style over ideology — and clean up the financial mess left by Wall Street and the greedy Republicans.

Obama also promised that he would craft a foreign policy from the bipartisan center, while making us liked abroad once more. During the campaign, to reassure the doubtful, he name-dropped at length Republicans with whom he would consult: old centrist pros like Dick Lugar and Bob Gates, as well as four-star generals.

But having been elected, President Obama sensed that, just maybe, the United States was part of the problem rather than the solution. So he shunned Israel and warmed up to Syria and the Palestinians. He cut off relations with Honduras. He ignored our ally Colombia while reaching out to Castro, Chavez, and Ortega. Putin’s Russia received more deference than did most of Russia’s old vassals in Eastern Europe. The British were snubbed in gratuitous fashion.

When hundreds of thousands of Iranian dissidents went out in the streets to protest their theocracy’s rigged voting, Obama voted present — or perhaps accepted beforehand that the reformers would fail. After all, dealing with a lunatic revolutionary Iranian government would showcase far better his own singular multicultural finesse.

Meanwhile, Obama went on an apology tour abroad. He inflated the accomplishments of the Islamic world, magnified his own country’s sins, and once again blamed Bush for America’s global unpopularity. In short, it was not intrinsic differences in ideology and objectives, but the prior president, that explained the tension with Europe, Iran, North Korea, and Russia.

A common theme was that the new president, Barack Obama — suddenly referencing his family’s Muslim roots and his African lineage in a way that others dared not during the campaign — was as skeptical of America’s history as were its critics, who likewise doubted there was anything “exceptionalâ€

a decision made easier after the financial meltdown of mid-September 2008.

Now there was an accident just looking for a place to happen, amazing it just happened to find a place five weeks prior to the election.

The future generations will talk of such fools of the past.

We can't go back in time we just have to figure out what we are going to do about it now.

The past is over, now what?

If you do not learn from the past your bound to stumble into the future.

What is so hard about being a conservitive?

I want more from my party of three decades. We did not get to where we are by accident. There are only two parties, both led us to this point in time as both have held the reigns of power alternating many times!

I have always expected oppression and tyranny from the Democrats, I did not expect the same from the Republicans. Silly me.

Amnesty during the eighties was a Republican doing. Where was the fortitude and brilliance? The base did not want it, remember?

Gun control, the Brady Bill, Republican, remember?

Czars?

ELE, I admire your steadfast defense of conservitive values, I share them with you, however I want more from my elected officials who wish to state that they too hold the same conservitive values.

The mid term elections will be here before you know it, dollars to doughnuts we end up with a continuance of the same old circle jerk. Shiny and invigorating on the outside, same old stench on the inside.

We can't go back in time we just have to figure out what we are going to do about it now.

Well if we are honest about our past and those who participated in it, then we can demand from our medias, which I am hoping will start soon to look at the options and begin to present them. Fresh new faces that the people have a chance to look at and question as oppossed to the same old faces that the media being complicite in acting like this is all there is at the last minute. Air time for third party canidates would start to make a believer out of me, afterall I am not affraid of genuine competition. Conservitive talk radio did a lousy job,.... a lousy job, last time around in my opinion, Ron Paul was treated like a red headed step child and so was the third party canidates. Why the fear? Why the fear? If it quacks like a conservitive, and walks like a conservitive, then why the fear? If competition is good in the market place, then why not politics?

Another thing that would help IMO would be to quite making heroes out of politicians. It looks like people are trying to a make silk purse out of a sow's ear.

Perhaps eliminating party politics would be a benefit also. This two party system stinks. You get one or the other, thats it? I go to buy a beer and I get hundreds to choose from, the same with a car, a boat, my clothes, yet politics and the corrupt system gives me two choices. The rules are written in a manner to exclude other possible choices.

Sorry, what a rant.