[Bill,
February 26, 2008]
Spengler on Obama
Spengler works for the Asian Times, and has a portentous style. But in this case, his assessment of Barack Obama is close to my own -- that the Democratic Party and the United States may be on the verge of a horrible mistake (i.e., electing Obama) that goes far beyond normal partisan politics, and one that may take a generation to fix.
Barack Obama is a clever fellow who imbibed hatred of America with his mother's milk, but worked his way up the elite ladder of education and career. He shares the resentment of Muslims against the encroachment of American culture, although not their religion. He has the empathetic skill set of an anthropologist who lives with his subjects, learns their language, and elicits their hopes and fears while remaining at emotional distance. That is, he is the political equivalent of a sociopath. The difference is that he is practicing not on a primitive tribe but on the population of the United States.
There is nothing mysterious about Obama's methods. "A demagogue tries to sound as stupid as his audience so that they will think they are as clever as he is," wrote Karl Krauss. Americans are the world's biggest suckers, and laugh at this weakness in their popular culture. Listening to Obama speak, Sinclair Lewis' cynical tent-revivalist Elmer Gantry comes to mind, or, even better, Tyrone Power's portrayal of a carnival mentalist in the 1947 film noire Nightmare Alley. The latter is available for instant viewing at Netflix, and highly recommended as an antidote to having felt uplifted by an Obama speech.
America has the great misfortune to have encountered Obama at the peak of his powers at its worst moment of vulnerability in a generation. With malice aforethought, he has sought out their sore point.
But, alas, I may be proven wrong. I'm not sure Obama can beat McCain, but he could be as bad as you're making him out to be.
Actually, I think Gore would have done substantially the same things Bush has done. He'd have had to, to keep the Democrats from simply being thrown out of office in 2002 and 2004.
Hell, I can see a scenario where Gore actually reinstitutes a draft.
1. A tendency to return to Keynesian economics -- and duh, we're starting to have stagflation, exactly what happened in the 70s when we did this.
2. Spending in his first term, particularly the No Child Left Behind Act and the Prescription Drug Plan.
3. Sarbanes-Oxley, and the failure to regulate the credit and mortgage markets when it was clear cheap money was inflating housing costs.
4. He's a terrible communicator, and it's an essential part of the job.
However, Bush has also done a lot of good. He's had to be president under extremely difficult circumstances, and he's been a fair, middlin' president. But we needed a great one.
Gore, on the other hand, probably would NOT have tried to increase spending like Bush did. In a way, only a Republican could've undone the Reagan/Clinton mandate that the "era of big government is over."
SuperG: I don't know that Obama will be terrible ... at this point, I'm just asking the question -- just how committed to leftist politics is he? And: Is he really dangerous -- or not? Spengler, who I like sometimes but read skeptically, is an extremely pessimistic fellow, and is one of a lot of commentators who love to predict the demise of the United States. I haven't seen them taken quite so seriously since the 70s.
Maybe Obama, if he wins, will end up being fairly moderate. We don't know. I'm just right now, he scares the crap out of me. But you should know that I am asking myself whether I am over-reacting here -- or is there some kind of legitimate worry? And at this point, it's really hard to say.
I have been worried about the sentimentality of our culture, and that can lead to a candidate such as a Ferdinand Marcos or Juan Peron here. However, I could just be too sensitive because I've been waiting for someone like them to show up. That is, my question is -- Am I projecting my own narrative onto Obama? Or is it really there? I don't want to be a lemming either way.
I've been on the road with nothing but bad luck.
Obama really could suck, no doubt about it. Outside of his Iraq policy, he doesn't seem any more leftist than Hillary to me. My feeling about Hillary is that she's really just a first term senator too. She's done a lot, but really she hasn't been elected to any other office. So her "experience" claim doesn't overwhelm me.
My belief is that McCain would have been vastly superior to Bush in at least three ways: he would have maintained a balanced budget (or closer to it - as post-9/11 any President would likely have run a deficit for a year or two) and he wouldn't have followed Rumsfeld-ian policies on the use of the military. He probably wouldn't have been as cavalier as Bush about the use of torture, which has set back the reputation of the US around the world - particularly in Muslim countries.
I have no idea if you are projecting your own narrative onto Obama. That must be yours to answer. If I want to fan the flames, however, I would note that there is the potential for a perfect storm on this issue: Democrats in control of the House, the Senate, and the White House. I don't believe that Democrats will be any better about countering Obama or Hillary than Republicans were about countering the policies of Bush.
I believe the two-party system has failed.