Flight from Trantor

What kind of Oath of Office would Obama take?

Re:  2001 NPR interview:  If Obama believes either that our Founding and the Consittution were mistakes or flawed, how could he take an oath to uphold and defend that Constitution from all enemies, foreign and domestic and actually mean it?

Barack Obama is the most dishonest politician to come along in my 60 year lifetime (including Nixon).

Apostates and Apostles

It is hard t keep up with news at this juncture because just as you think you have figured something out, another story pops up.  I was thinking about Christopher Buckley's recent proclamation of support for Obama and ready to write something when along came Colin Powell.  I think I see a common theme.

A contemporary of mine recently told me that he was voting for Obama because Obama was young and smart; maybe he will have "better ideas."  My thirty-something neighbor says pretty much the same thing, unrelated to any particular issue.  He also gets most of his "news" from the New York Times, Saturday Night Live and The Daily Show.  It strikes me that Obama's bid to promote himself as post-ideological has been successful, not because it is true in the least, but because that is what people want to believe.  Obama has not been forthcoming with much detail on any of his grandiose schemes, but then again his supporters are not demanding detail.  If you are young, smart and well spoken, you do not need detail (or substance for that matter).

Christopher Buckley (reading whose books regularly convulses me with laughter) is voting for Obama because he thinks Obama is too smart to actually do any of the things he promises to do.  And because he is not that mean old McCain.  And because of that first class temperament.  Powell is voting for Obama because he is "transformational", oh and he has that first class temperament. And he is smart, too smart, hopefully, to do half the things he talks about doing. (Is this the Hope component of the Hope and Change candidacy?).

Call this what you will but do not call it the "Conservative Case for Obama."  It is just the "Silly and Self-Interested Elite Case for Obama for People Who Think They are Just as Smart as Obama - Oh, and Who Hate Palin, Too."

And them comes Sen. Joe Biden warning us that the brilliant young Pres. Obama will be tested by an international crisis, and that we will not like the way Obama handles it.  Anyone with half a brain should have already known this, but it took goofy Biden to say it out loud.  It reminded me of a quote attributed to Gen. George Patton:  "There are a host of people who have to squat to piss who will say that this will be the last war and that from now on we will only need world 'clubs'. They are the ones who will be responsible for the deaths of millions of people."

Edmund Burke made me do it

When all is said and done, elites, left and right, are still elites.  I have been thinking about this for the past couple of months as I checked the web frequently for fresh commentary on political events as they unfolded.  My usual stops are National Review Online, PajamasMedia (VDH, Roger Kimball and Belmont Club) , Reason, and Instapundit, sometimes TownHall.  What I found myself doing was mentally segregating NRO from the rest; I go to NRO to see what the wet blankets are up to.

To be sure, NRO is not monolithic.  There is always some internecine battle in progress over this or that, and it is interesting and chanllenging.  It is this kind of intellectual back and forth that distinquishes conservatives from the dogmatism of liberal/leftists, and for every Ramesh Ponnuru there is a Jonah Goldberg (not afraid to use the vernacular, and does so without thinking he is talking down to his readership) and a Mark Steyn. There are those among the right-wing punditocracy that seem to be as clueless about ordinary (non-coastal/non-ivy league/non-beltway insider/non-NYDC corridor) Americans as are liberals in general and Obama in particular.  The cluelessness of which I speak is an unspoken assumption that many Americans who would describe themselves as conservative ("the base") are not quite up to snuff, intellectually and culturally.  That most Americans are not policy wonks is not, I contend, a bad thing.

I really do not mean to pick on NRO, and I have nothing but great respect for everyone who contributes there and National Review in general.  In fact, it is not anything I read on NRO that prompted me to finally collect these thoughts.  It was, rather, Peggy Noonan's recent WSJ column (which, I should add, also has been criticized on NRO).

Sarah Palin's candidacy has proven to be a bellwether, and she has become an irresistible target of elitist conservative commentators.  Peggy Noonan, for example, has spent the last seven weeks "...trying to understand if [Palin] is Bushian or Reaganite...."   (Maybe this was Charlie Gibson's problem, too).  "She doesn't think aloud. She just . . . says things. [...] She does not speak seriously but attempts to excite sensation—'palling around with terrorists.'"  Unless the advantage Peggy Noonan has over the rest of us is that she can read minds, I would ask her:  Just how would you frame Obama's socialist agenda and its roots in relationships with the likes of Ayers?  If you have tried, you haven't succeeded in doing so in any way that got the message across.  And since you can read minds, can you tell me please which of Sarah Palin's "shortcomings" are hers, and which are constraints imposed on her by the McCain campaign?

There is more:  "This is not a leader, this is a follower, and she follows what she imagines is the base, which is in fact a vast and broken-hearted thing whose pain she cannot, actually, imagine."  Really?  Prove it.  I think she follows what McCain tells her to follow, unfortunately, but as far as empathy for the broken-heartedness of "the base" goes, I have much more faith that Sarah Palin understands it than you do.  I base that judgment solely on comparing how the two of you differ in origins and circumstances. 

Ms. Noonan, do you really think you know what "the base" thinks or feels?  I am not much a "salt of the earth" type myself.  Connecticut Yankee WASP all the way.  Somehow I found myself living and working among "the base" for 20 years. I knew I never quite fit in and I accepted that.  But I never regarded myself as their "better."  I counseled them as they struggled with unfaithful spouses, unruly children, running their businesses, losing their farms, providing for their families, atoning for their legal and moral transgressions, and governing themselves at the Town and Village level.  There were boors and there were saints and many in between.  There was also a common sense and clarity of understanding about life that might surprise Ms. Noonan.  It was something of a revelation to me over the years.  It is that basic clarity that Sarah Palin can tap into better than any columnist.

So when I read a Peggy Noonan lamenting "a new vulgarization in American politics" my reaction is that what an eastern Beltway elitist thinks is vulgar probably isn't what Joe the Plumber thinks is vulgar. There is a certain vulgarity to life that, outside elitist circles, defines much of life.  "The base" understands this and it recognizes it, and "the base" knows how to accord that vulgarity appropriate weight. " The base" is not cheapened by it, it is not defeated by it.  It often rises above it.

After a year of being assaulted by the priggishness of Obama and his minions, I am no doubt more weary of and sensitive to being condescended to or seeing others similarly treated.  I certainly don't like it any better when it comes from a conservative whom I admire rather than a leftist from whom I expect it.  Picking on Sarah Palin is only part of this.  I'll continue to read Peggy Noonan and others, and I will continue to take away value and substance from the gifts of their intellects.  I will put their hand-wringing and whining in perspective.  All of them write far better than I do and have far more time to think about and develop ideas. I have tried it and I know how hard it really is.  I will also remember that they see things through a certain prism that is not mine. 

The prism through which I understand the world affects my assessment of the "need" to criticize Sarah Palin and the policy wonk failures of the McCain campaign in general as follows:  Edmund Burke notwithstanding, So What?  I want to win, and this does not help.

UPDATE:  As I was writing this I saw that similar thoughts  have been posted by Mark Steyn on NRO, albeit much more eloquently than mine.  The take away:

So, when a conservative pundit mocks Wasilla, he's mocking conservatism as it's actually lived, as opposed to conservatism as a theoretical fantasy playground for the purposes of cocktail-party banter.

Wave the Bloody Shirt

From Mark Krikorian at NRO this morning, agreeing with David Frum:

[J]ustly or not, we've reached the point where waving the bloody shirt of 60s radicalism just doesn't work any more.

With respect (lots of it) I think he and David Frum are wrong.

Socialism has been the pet project of the comfortable, affluent, tenured American Left for decades.  The roots of this project pre-date the 60’s, but it certainly blossomed in that decade.  The fact that socialist experiments all around the world have failed hasn’t deterred our own Left one bit.  This election, for them, is a Marxist watershed (most voters don’t pay much attention to this, or don’t care, having been taught that socialism is either benign or an improvement over capitalism).  When the American Left and its socialist agenda have been discredited, then we can stop talking about its roots.  The radicalism of the past still defines the agenda of present day leftists.

We do need a contemporary face on this issue, but in the process of developing same, the dots still need to be connected to the past, because that past is not only still with us, but poised to take control.

UPDATE: I had emailed the content of this post to Mark Krikorian, and he was gracious enough to reply (I am always pleasantly surprised when they do that). The gist was that the more sophisticated point that Ayers is a symptom of Obama's radicalism is not being articulated. No disagreement there. Unfortunately not many of McCain's points are articulated well.

Who Dares to Question the Great & Powerful Oz?

Well, maybe I won't fall asleep just yet.

When I first saw the "Joe the Plumber" video on YouTube, I literally could not believe my ears; I had to watch it again.  And there again was Obama using the word "punish" in relation to taxes, and muttering about "spreading the wealth around".  I thought that this must truly be Obama's "Mondale moment".  But then I thought that, no, it depends on how many people actually see the video and whether or not they care that Obama is all about a socialist agenda.  I thought that on both scores Obama would skate.

That was before the debate last night and the resultant media storm.  The Obama team surely thinks that the exchange with "Joe" is potentially harmful to the Dali Bama's cultivated general election image as a centrist, becuase they have loosed the dogs of the fever swamps on poor Joe.  As Glenn Reynolds commented, there has been more inquiry into Joe Wurzelbacher's life in 48 hours than was spent on Obama in the last two years.  Just like they did with Palin, the left's character assassination machine jumped into high gear to punish Joe Everyman for having the audacity to ask a question of the Enlightened One when invited to do so. Kos has his home address posted online.  We know about his tax lien, and his lack of a license.  And even today Obama is on the stump making fun of Joe much to the delight and laughter of his audience. 

It is becoming more and more clear that many people are voting for the Obama concept, not the man.  That is why any substantive information to chose against Obama is such a threat.  One simple unguarded moment on a rope line threatens to shatter the facade that Obama has carefully built over the months.  Is it any wonder why Obama will not take questions from the press?  Is it any wonder why a fawning press doesn't dare ask Obama any substantive questions?

We must ask ourselves, if this is how dissenting views are attacked during what is supposed to be an open contest of ideas, how the heck do you think dissent in the ObamaNation will be tolerated?

As for Joe Wurzelbacher, thanks for sticking your neck out.  Hang in there.  One of you is worth 10 thousand sneering Obamas.  Your simple unassuming courage is in stark contrast to a man who would assume the presidency of the United States without the courage to clearly state and defend his own convictions (assuming he has any conviction greater than getting elected).

Wake me when it is over

The Obamanation, that is.  In retrospect, I "slept" through pretty much all the Reagan years.  I was not a fan of Reagan's and after years of leftist student political 'activism', I was tired and disengaged.   I remember snippets of "start wars", the Evil Empire speech, and the fall of The Wall  (which caught me surprise). I derided trickle-down, voodoo economics with the rest of the the cognoscenti.  I was young, trying to make a career, raise a family, and pay my bills.  I had plenty to do without worrying about what the government was up to. Amazingly, the republic survived my inattention. I am tempted to revert to this posture for the next four or eight years.

John Hood has a great post at NRO today.  He counsels both sides against glee and angst, respectively, and it is a sober view I would like to believe in. He concludes, "Politics has no ultimate victor. It has no final, decisive battle. It just goes on and on, like soap operas and Law and Order." 

No doubt.  The question this time is, will the election of Obama be the advent of fascism by the velvet glove, as Jonah Goldberg warns?  The big difference between now and 1982 is that Reagan ran a government which purposely left me alone to pursue my life.

Turn the other cheek?

An interesting exchange started over on Instapundit with an email from reader Donald Gately .  In part, Mr. Gately said "This is surely small of me, but if Obama wins, I plan on giving him as much of a chance as the Democrats gave George Bush."  He goes on to catalog a list of fairly benign activities he might engage in, analogous to what the left has pulled on George Bush.  He concludes by saying "If the Democrats think that a President Obama is going to get some sort of honeymoon from the folks who didn't vote for him, as a wise man once said: heh."

This brought a response from Rick Moran at RightWingNuthouse entitled If Elected, Obama will be my president .  From that post:

The constitution gives the minority certain protections against getting steamrolled by the majority. But it doesn’t give the minority the right to torpedo the legitimacy of the winner.

This is more than a question of “fair play” or being a “sore loser.” The Constitution says we have only one president at a time. Given the importance of that office, it is stark raving lunacy to seek to destroy the man occupying it.

I didn't read Mr. Gately's email as suggesting that he would try to 'destroy' a president Obama.  But what if the man occupying the presidency seeks to destroy, if not the founding principles of the country, his opposition?  This is not a rhetorical question.  If a majority of the country selects a steamroller for a president, what should the minority do? Wish him well?  I am all for dignity in defeat.  But don't expect graciousness from the victors.  As quoted at NRO , per KOS, the left is waiting to pounce:

I've been making the case the last couple of weeks that we can't just focus on winning in November, but that we have an imperative to take advantage of a historic opportunity to break the conservative movement's backs and crush their spirits.

They don't want a loyal opposition.  They want no opposition.  Who will stop them, and how?  Is this what America will be voting for?  Hope, Change, and Despotism?  Is it hyperbolic to think of this election as a referendum on the survival of the America of 1776?  I do not think so.  This election is a Marxist watershed.

American TASS

Remember TASS, the "official Soviet news agency?" With the election of Barack Obama, the American media will have completed its transformation into an unapologetic propaganda machine.  In August, Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell called the press coverage of Obama "embarrassing".   It has also been counter-productive and destructive.  Counter-productive because even a little more attempt at objectivity might have defused many of the McCain-Palin talking points that depend on Obama's secretiveness.  And dangerous because there is no surer recipe for tyranny than the unexamined exercise of power.  All other policy disasters that may come of an Obama presidency aside, the biggest threat to the Republic and challenge to our freedom will be the uncritical expansion of his arrogance to fill the out-sized power of the Presidency.