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- iHaveNet.com: Politics
by Jonah Goldberg
President Obama
In 1964, Barry Goldwater gave an uncompromisingly conservative and liberty-loving speech to the
I had a similar reaction to President Obama's State of the Union address.
For all the talk of how he needed to "pivot" to the center, the Obama we saw was the same Obama who ran for president and the same Obama we've seen over the last year. His
But it's not just that Obama has dug in or "doubled down" on his unpopular agenda that reminded me of the Goldwater story. It's the fact that Obama is running as Obama.
Since taking office, Obama has continued to see the presidency as the perfect perch from which to campaign for a job he already has. The solution to every problem the
In his State of the Union, the president waxed eloquent about the baleful climate of what is commonly called "permanent campaign" mind-set in Washington. This was an interesting line of attack from a man who has never disbanded his campaign operation "Organizing for America" and who responded to the Scott Brown election by bringing his campaign manager into the
"Doubling down" is a popular phrase in Washington these days to describe Obama's insistence to stick to his guns -- on health care, cap-and-trade and incontinent "stimulus" spending. But doubling down is the wrong term. In blackjack, you can only double down once. What Obama is doing is letting it ride. The self-proclaimed pragmatist refuses to adjust a bet he made long before the financial crisis or his presidency even began.
Obama campaigned on an agenda that he believed made sense before the financial crisis and the onset of a steep recession. When circumstances changed, Obama did not. The financial crisis "proved" that we needed the same policy prescriptions. And so, for the last year the president has pushed health-care reform when Americans were interested in jobs and economic growth. He's pushed a Keynesian spending binge that has had little to no effect on economic health but has been a bracing tonic for Democratic constituencies.
Obama came into office with stratospheric poll numbers and nominally unstoppable majorities in both houses of
So what was Obama's bet? He believed that he was elected to usher in a new progressive era, a new New Deal. Unfortunately for his wager, every significant election since November 2008 has refuted the sagacity of this gamble. In New Jersey, in Virginia and even in Massachusetts, voters have said that is not the change they were looking for. The rosy scenario for Democrats is that they will "only" lose 20 to 30 seats in the coming midterm elections. If we were at the dawn of a new New Deal, you would expect voters to be ratifying Obama's actions. That's what they did for FDR. Not so for BHO.
And yet there the president stands, mocking his opponents and the ignorant rubes who don't understand his system as he says in word and deed, "let it ride."
Available at Amazon.com:
I.O.U.: Why Everyone Owes Everyone and No One Can Pay
The Political Fix: Changing the Game of American Democracy, from the Grassroots to the White House
AMERICAN POLITICS
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Obama Letting It Ride on a Bad Bet | Jonah Goldberg
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