August 2009
On election night, 1980, liberals enjoyed their only pleasure of the evening when President-elect Reagan came close to dropping a cake, presented to him by well-wishers and baked in the shape of the United States. Today, the metaphor for impending national disaster might be that of an incompetent lifeguard threatening to pull under the drowning victim under for good.
A Rasmussen poll taken at the end of June suggests that President Obama’s popularity has plummeted in recent weeks, to the point where he now has a negative approval index. A couple of weeks before Rasmussen, other polls reported that, while the President remains personally popular, a slight majority of the country disapproves of his policies, especially his economic policies. No one, his administration least of all, expected Obama’s approval ratings of 75 percent and upwards in the early months of his presidency to hold. Nevertheless, the signs are plain that the Heldenkandidat of 2007-2008 is diminishing rapidly to the stature of a flesh-and-blood President, with a President’s natural potential to shrink to the paltry dimensions of a Harding, or even a Hoover.
It should never be doubted that Obama has in mind the transformation of the country his wife claimed she could never be proud of until her husband was nominated for the presidency. An American President is like a lion who, having taken over a pride belonging to another lion, killed his cubs, and ravished his lionesses, knows that he himself is living on borrowed time until his own rule is brought to an end by a challenger. Commentators have speculated that Obama’s plan is to pursue a course somewhat to the left of center for the next three-and-a-half years, and veer hard left after his reelection. Perhaps so. It depends, of course, on what Barack Obama undestands by “left of center.” But it is increasingly obvious that this political neophyte is racing to engage his administration on every policy front, including the automotive industry, banking, the Middle East, South America, global warming, health care, and immigration “reform.” He and his handlers cannot see that he is attempting far too much at once and that his various legislative initiatives are bound to get in one another’s way, very likely knocking each other out of the congressional arena.
A case in point is the dreadful Waxman-Markey bill recently passed by the House of Representatives at the behest of the President, with only a few votes to spare. This so-called cap-and-trade bill would authorize the federal government to set a limit to carbon emissions, which would be regulated by credits purchased from the government and bought and sold among carbon-emitting companies. Obama hailed the passage of this bill as “an historic leap” on behalf of “the environment.” In fact, it is nothing of the sort. The idea has been around for years, despite opposition to it by most environmental groups. In order to ram it through the House, the White House had to grant so many concessions to so many interests, and overlook so much pork, that the bill in its final form may end by increasing carbon pollution rather than reducing it. Waxman-Markey is 1200 pages long, including 300 pages added the morning of the vote that, of course, no Congressman could possibly have had the time to read. Even as a revenue-generating plan, the bill is a failure, as the $80 billion the government planned to realize from selling credits will be given away in the form of free credits for the first few years of the program to satisfy industrial lobbyists. A responsible Chief Executive, were he in earnest about such a bill, would have urged Congress to take its time and put together a piece of well-considered legislation that represented a modest step toward its stated goals. Obama did the opposite, despite his professed view that nothing less than the future of the planet is at stake. This, of course, puts in question the sincerity of his commitment to tackle global warming (and, by implication, other issues). Surely the President must understand that Waxman-Markey will accomplish nothing toward that end. But it will certainly extend the federal government’s control over the U.S. economy, and significantly expand the federal bureaucracy—two goals that rank high on the President’s unwritten agenda.
The climate bill is notable for combining in a single piece of legislation law that will eventually affect every aspect of the American economy, American government, and American society. According to Rasmussen’s findings, 42 percent of the public believes that Waxman-Markey would damage the economy (as compared to 19 percent who think it would boost it.) But this and other recent polls have registered substantial disapproval of Obama’s more narrowly targeted initiatives, such as the takeover of General Motors and his proposal to create a federal health care agency that would start by competing with the private sector and end by driving private employers to abandon their own health-care plans. Meanwhile, all but the most damaged banks are getting on line outside the Treasury Building, waiting their turn to beg the government to take back the emergency funds it lent them last fall. Lastly, public support for expending the rest of Obama’s $787 billion stimulus set-aside, which is being disbursed at a snail’s pace under the direction of the Vice President and seems not to be helping much anyway, is eroding.
Before his inauguration, Obama, who chose Abraham Lincoln as his model for a new chief executive coming to power in a time of crisis, was widely compared by his admirers to Franklin Roosevelt. In fact, Obama has failed dramatically to match Roosevelt’s early accomplishments, so-called. Nor has he managed to impress and reassure the nation by force of personality and a sense of optimism, as Roosevelt succeeded in doing. President Obama is exactly like Candidate Obama: cool, aloof, slightly amused, rather boring, attached as by umbilical cord to the teleprompter. Despite his urgent words, Obama conveys no sense of urgency. Establishment politicians and old Washington hands complain that he leaves too much to Congress, that he won’t got down to the Hill to fight for what he wants, that he hesitates to associate himself too closely with any particular bill, lest his support for it should compromise him later. In his demeanor, Obama is not presidential at all. Speaking from the White House above the presidential seal, addressing an audience of more or less adult men and women, he seems the same man who, less than a year ago, appealed largely to crowds of adoring Chrisopher Robinses on college campuses around the country. The plain truth is, this man, as many of us suspected from the start, is not presidential material. As president, he can be expected to accomplish little--on his own terms, at least.
But the looming failure of his long-term program, whatever it may turn out to be, makes him no less of a threat to the nation than would success in implementing it. Should Barack Obama falter in his efforts at transforming the country, the likelihood is that he would nevertheless drag it under in the attempt to save us from ourselves—which appears to be his understanding of his own historical mission. But if the prelude to the play is a reliable indicator, this lion will be chased off his pride by another one, three-and-a-half years from now—an excellent run, admittedly, for any lion. ###
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Chilton Williamson, Jr.