M2RB: Tech N9ne featuring Liz Suwandi
If you come with me then I can show you
Where we'll take you where you dare not go to
Follow me and let my mind control you
We will rebuild this world that will destroy you
Where we'll take you where you dare not go to
Follow me and let my mind control you
We will rebuild this world that will destroy you
By Abe Greenwald
Barack Obama ushered in America’s first large-scale experiment in personality-cult politics. The experiment continues apace. Obama got reelected because he enjoys a degree of personal popularity disconnected from his record. No modern president has ever been returned to office with employment figures and right-track-wrong-track numbers as poor as those Obama has achieved.
Obama couldn’t run on his record, which proved to be no
problem—Americans didn’t vote on his record. According to exit polls, 77
percent of voters said the economy is bad and only 25 percent said
they’re better off than they were four years ago. But since six in ten
voters claimed the economy as their number one issue, it’s clear this
election wasn’t about issues at all.
The president’s reelection is not
evidence of a new liberal America, but rather of the illogical and
confused experience that is infatuation. For multiple reasons, Americans
continue to have a crush on Barack Obama even after his universally
panned first term. No longer quite head over heels, they’re at the “I
know he’s no good for me, but I can change him” phase. Whatever this
means, it surely doesn’t suggest conservatives would be wise to move
closer to policies that aren’t even popular among Obama supporters.
Why isn’t soul searching underway on the left? When the personality
at the center of the cult leaves the stage in four years, Democrats will
own his results without the benefit of his appeal. We can’t know quite
what a second Obama term will bring, but if his first term is an
indication, there’s little reason to expect his party will be crowing.
The fiscal cliff is here but a whole landscape of steep drops comes
next: the economic cliff (over which lies a possible double-dip
recession), the Obamacare cliff (over which lies an unprecedented
bureaucratic behemoth), the Iran cliff (over which lies a nuclear bomb),
and so on. A precipice in every direction and a president who’s given
us no reason to presume he can steer clear. Have Democrats stopped to
wonder what initiatives they’ll have to defend when the dust settles in
2016?
Already Obama has signaled he’s continuing policies that don’t meet
the moment. There’s the assurance of more taxes, of course. But that’s
not all. On Friday, citing ecological concerns, the administration
closed off 1.6 million acres of federal land in western states from
planned oil shale extraction. An American energy boom lies in wait
underground and Obama is determined to keep it there. Abroad, the
groundwork is being laid to offer Iran a fanciful “grand bargain” in an
effort to halt its work on a nuclear weapon. Think “Russian reset” with
fanatical theocrats.
Perhaps Democrats are confident purely because of their stance on
social issues. But as a tactical matter (principle and ideology are a
different question), is doesn’t make sense for Republicans to fret over
the culture and identity wars that have transfixed the left. Gay
marriage as a presidential issue is off the table. The November election
showed the future of that question lives at the state level, which is
both a popular and conservative approach. Obama himself has said he’ll
do nothing about it nationally. Multiple polls taken this year show
opposition to abortion is at least as high as it’s been in 15 years. By
2016, the new class war will surely have wound down after Americans see
that making the “rich pay their fare share” didn’t solve everyone else’s
problems and in fact created new ones.
On immigration reform, of course conservatives should act. That was
true before Obama’s reelection; it’s now inevitable. In the next four
years, serious Republicans will offer policies aiming to give foreign
workers a path to citizenship. Leaders like Marco Rubio have already
gotten a brilliant head start.
It is in the nature of personality cults to fail at most things
beyond generating and disseminating propaganda. This inability is the
result of two things. First, the personality’s popularity is not
results-driven. Since adoration hasn’t been earned by achievement but by
the advent of charisma, why kill yourself trying to get results.
Second, few people are willing to candidly critique the personality at
the center of the cult, so there is little chance of course correction.
None of this bodes well for Barack Obama. And for the country’s sake,
let’s hope it’s wrong.
To effect a revolution in American politics, you have to set
parameters that successors will be compelled to heed. FDR implemented
programs that at least produced identifiable results before revealing
their unsustainable flaws. Bill Clinton had no problem declaring the age
of big government over because Ronald Reagan had ushered in a
prosperous era in which this was so. What part of the Obama agenda will
resonate when isolated from the Obama phenomenon? It’s too soon to say,
but not too soon wonder.
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