The Legend and the Fall, Part III

In October, 2008 I wrote a post entitled "The Legend and the Fall" and then updated it last September, 2009 in "The Legend and the Fall, Redux". The basic thesis was that Obama had mastered the art of the campaign; the crowds were huge and adoring, his message seemed pitch perfect to a public that loved the sound even as it missed the true meaning of his underlying message. The promises flowed easily from his polished lips and phrases, and America (and the world) ate it up. But promises are the things of campaigns. They are rarely the stuff of governing.

And, indeed, from the first day in office, the president began to bleed his astonishing support. With every decision came a reaction from some group that suddenly felt disillusioned or betrayed. This is, of course, a natural process in politics: tradeoffs are part of the deal, and most leaders understand that the approval rating represents a chit to bargain with. George W. Bush used his strasopheric ratings after 9/11 to craft the "war on terror" and invade Iraq, knowing that it would cost him support. Truman did much the same in Korea. By the time Bush left office his approval stood at 30 percent. Was it worth it? Time will tell, but my guess is that if you ask George Bush he will say "yes" with no hesitation.

Sadly, Obama has flitted away his approval rating on a disastrous, unpopular health care bill, cap-and-trade legislation for a global warming problem based on bad science, and "big government" spending that is breaking the bank while doing nothing to improve the economy. Worse still, he's been asleep on national security, and has ceded all of the big programs of his administration to a Congress beset by radical leftists. Obama has shown the nation that he is just another Reid or Pelosi, without any interest in bipartisan leadership and on a mission to redistribute wealth on a grand scale.

Charles Krauthammer has more on this theme today in his piece "One Year Out: Obama's Fall":

A year ago, he was leader of a liberal ascendancy that would last 40 years (James Carville). A year ago, conservatism was dead (Sam Tanenhaus). Now the race to fill Ted Kennedy's Senate seat in bluest of blue Massachusetts is surprisingly close, with a virtually unknown state senator bursting on the scene by turning the election into a mini-referendum on Obama and his agenda, most particularly health-care reform.

A year ago, Obama was the most charismatic politician on Earth. Today the thrill is gone, the doubts growing -- even among erstwhile believers.

Liberals try to attribute Obama's political decline to matters of style. He's too cool, detached, uninvolved. He's not tough, angry or aggressive enough with opponents. He's contracted out too much of his agenda to Congress.

These stylistic and tactical complaints may be true, but they miss the major point: The reason for today's vast discontent, presaged by spontaneous national Tea Party opposition, is not that Obama is too cool or compliant but that he's too left.

Indeed. Too left by far. The nation elected Barack Obama because he was going to fix Washington and its broken polarization. He was going to govern from the center with transparency. Lobbyists would be banned from his administration and he would usher in a new era of bipartisanship. Instead, we got secret backroom deals, bribery, radical "Czars", profligate spending and hardball politics.

The nation feels hoodwinked:

It's not about style; it's about substance. About which Obama has been admirably candid. This out-of-nowhere, least-known of presidents dropped the veil most dramatically in the single most important political event of 2009, his Feb. 24 first address to Congress. With remarkable political honesty and courage, Obama unveiled the most radical (in American terms) ideological agenda since the New Deal: the fundamental restructuring of three pillars of American society -- health care, education and energy.

And here Krauthammer makes again my central thesis: that legislating is tough business, requiring choices that dash the hopes of those who though Obama would pay their mortgage for them.

It's inherently risky for any charismatic politician to legislate. To act is to choose and to choose is to disappoint the expectations of many who had poured their hopes into the empty vessel -- of which candidate Obama was the greatest representative in recent American political history.

Obama did not just act, however. He acted ideologically. To his credit, Obama didn't just come to Washington to be someone. Like Reagan, he came to Washington to do something -- to introduce a powerful social democratic stream into America's deeply and historically individualist polity.

Perhaps Obama thought he'd been sent to the White House to do just that. If so, he vastly over-read his mandate. His own electoral success -- twinned with handy victories and large majorities in both houses of Congress -- was a referendum on his predecessor's governance and the post-Lehman financial collapse. It was not an endorsement of European-style social democracy.

Hence the resistance. Hence the fall. The system may not always work, but it does take its revenge.

And revenge it will be. Look to MA for the first draw of blood. It will be a landslide in 2010.