Way Too Partisan
And Hubris Is The Reason
Posted: January 25, 2013
Barack Obama conspicuously channels Abraham Lincoln, or tries to. But unlike the Honest Abe of 1865, Mr. Obama is not a healer, a unifier, but a divider and a polarizer. He is also liberal, very liberal.
But then we knew that, didn’t we? His second inaugural address merely offered confirmation.
Inaugural speeches, and particularly those prefacing a second term, are, says former presidential speechwriter Peggy Noonan, supposed to be animated by “democratic fellowship and good feeling.” Such addresses are vehicles to eschew partisanship while, at the same time, presenting a thematic vision of what the next four years will be all about. Mr. Obama’s speech realized but one of these aims, the latter one. His was a raw-meat speech, marinated in snake oil, more suited to the campaign stump than the Capitol steps.
We should have realized the tone this address would take, for it was set a week earlier at a press conference when the president accused debt-conscious Republicans of holding “a gun to the head of the American people” (hardly the best use of imagery in these raw post-Newtown days).
“They [Republicans] have suspicions about whether government should make sure that kids in poverty are getting enough to eat, or whether we should be spending money on medical research,” Mr. Obama said that day, further souring the nation’s mood.
And this carried over to the inaugural when the president said, “We reject the belief that America must choose between caring for the generation that built this country and investing in the generation that will build its future.”
This polarizing, me-vs.-them statement should tell Americans of all philosophical stripes that this president cares not a fig for the defining crisis of our day — America’s struggle to remain fiscally solvent and, by extension, internationally viable. It also shows that, on this vital matter, there is no middle ground — that Mr. Obama, as conservative columnist Pete Wehner writes, “is fully at peace with running trillion-dollar deficits as far as the eye can see.” What’s more, not only will this president not “lift a finger to avoid America’s coming debt crisis,” but “will lacerate those who do.”
To be sure, Mr. Obama paid lip service, as he most always does, to the notion that government alone is not panacea, but then hinted at an agenda — “collective action” — heavy on government prescription.
Of course, the speech, characteristically, did have its lyrical moments — particularly when the president waxed eloquent about our national “journey” — but this quality lasts only so long as it takes to actually read the words and fathom their intended meaning.
“The greatest progressive arguments throughout the country’s history,” Mr. Obama intoned, “have been rooted in the language of the Declaration of Independence ... Today we continue a never-ending journey, to bridge the meaning of those words with the realities of our time.”
Therein lies the snake oil, to somehow equate the timeless words of our founding with the “progressive” impulse, whose banality may only be exceeded by its pretension.
Only Barack Obama, it seems, can conflate individual liberty and unalienable rights with “collective action” and moral relativism (“the realities of our time”) — and fully expect to get away with it.
There’s a word for that — hubris.
But then we knew that, didn’t we? His second inaugural address merely offered confirmation.
Inaugural speeches, and particularly those prefacing a second term, are, says former presidential speechwriter Peggy Noonan, supposed to be animated by “democratic fellowship and good feeling.” Such addresses are vehicles to eschew partisanship while, at the same time, presenting a thematic vision of what the next four years will be all about. Mr. Obama’s speech realized but one of these aims, the latter one. His was a raw-meat speech, marinated in snake oil, more suited to the campaign stump than the Capitol steps.
We should have realized the tone this address would take, for it was set a week earlier at a press conference when the president accused debt-conscious Republicans of holding “a gun to the head of the American people” (hardly the best use of imagery in these raw post-Newtown days).
“They [Republicans] have suspicions about whether government should make sure that kids in poverty are getting enough to eat, or whether we should be spending money on medical research,” Mr. Obama said that day, further souring the nation’s mood.
And this carried over to the inaugural when the president said, “We reject the belief that America must choose between caring for the generation that built this country and investing in the generation that will build its future.”
This polarizing, me-vs.-them statement should tell Americans of all philosophical stripes that this president cares not a fig for the defining crisis of our day — America’s struggle to remain fiscally solvent and, by extension, internationally viable. It also shows that, on this vital matter, there is no middle ground — that Mr. Obama, as conservative columnist Pete Wehner writes, “is fully at peace with running trillion-dollar deficits as far as the eye can see.” What’s more, not only will this president not “lift a finger to avoid America’s coming debt crisis,” but “will lacerate those who do.”
To be sure, Mr. Obama paid lip service, as he most always does, to the notion that government alone is not panacea, but then hinted at an agenda — “collective action” — heavy on government prescription.
Of course, the speech, characteristically, did have its lyrical moments — particularly when the president waxed eloquent about our national “journey” — but this quality lasts only so long as it takes to actually read the words and fathom their intended meaning.
“The greatest progressive arguments throughout the country’s history,” Mr. Obama intoned, “have been rooted in the language of the Declaration of Independence ... Today we continue a never-ending journey, to bridge the meaning of those words with the realities of our time.”
Therein lies the snake oil, to somehow equate the timeless words of our founding with the “progressive” impulse, whose banality may only be exceeded by its pretension.
Only Barack Obama, it seems, can conflate individual liberty and unalienable rights with “collective action” and moral relativism (“the realities of our time”) — and fully expect to get away with it.
There’s a word for that — hubris.