Posted by
Always To The Right on Tuesday, January 27, 2009 12:29:16 PM
Conservative pundits are being suckered by Obama
President Obama is a beguiling but confounding figure. As he has said
of himself: "I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly
different political stripes project their own views.” (”The Audacity of
Hope.”) It is indeed audacious that he should proclaim this consciously
disingenuous attribute. And, as one reads his inaugural address, it is
hard not to conclude that it was shrewdly crafted to perpetuate such
confusion.
Many of my fellow conservative commentators are embarrassingly eager
to search Mr. Obama's words, groveling for hopeful signs that he is not
a radical intent on changing the face and nature of our republic. Some
of our Tory conservatives have clung to his words (”hard work and
honesty, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and
patriotism-these things are old. These things are true”) as evidence of
a deep conservatism.
Other smitten conservative commentators take false comfort from his
reference to George Washington's “small band of patriots huddled by
dying campfires on the shore of an icy river.” Free-market
conservatives point hopefully - pathetically - to the first clauses of
his words: “Nor is the question before us whether the market is a force
for good or ill. Its power to generate wealth and expand freedom is
unmatched, but this crisis has reminded us that without a watchful eye,
the market can spin out of control.” That “watchful eye” he calls for
may be as benign as Teddy Roosevelt's anti-monopoly policies, or it
could be as constricting as French Socialism - or worse. Mr. Obama
offers philosophical hope to all.
And how easily (willingly?) some of our fellow conservative
commentators are seduced to believe the good parts and hope away the
bad bits.
Oddly, my suspicion is confirmed by my liberal friend, scholar and
columnist for The Washington Post E.J. Dionne, who wrote last week that
“President Barack Obama intends to use conservative values for
progressive ends. He will cast extreme individualism as an infantile
approach to politics that must be supplanted by a more adult sense of
personal and collective responsibility … And in trying to do all these
things, he will confuse a lot of people.” Perhaps E.J. hopefully, and I
suspiciously, have both misread Mr. Obama. But one is entitled to be
suspicious of a politician who openly brags that I serve as a blank
screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project
their own views.”That strikes me as a conscious intent to deceive in
order to diffuse opposition to his designs until it is too late to
block them. Ronald Reagan never hid his policy intentions from public
view. Neither, in fairness, did Lyndon Johnson or Walter Mondale or
Barney Frank or Nancy Pelosi.
A politician who will not sail under his own flag, in effect sails
against all flags. Such a strategy may, in time, undercut his support
from increasingly suspicious progressives, liberals, moderates and
conservatives - once they recognize the deception.