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The Obama Watch
Driving Against Oncoming Traffic
Obama’s electric car is still headed toward it.
Barack Obama resorted to his tired car-in-the-ditch analogy throughout the campaign season even as he resembled a delusional motorist who barrels towards traffic while insisting to his frightened passengers that the oncoming drivers are on the wrong side of the road.
Now even after the crash, as his electric car appears almost wheel-less, he continues to complain about the poor driving of others. At last week’s press conference, he more or less pledged to keep driving into the oncoming traffic. He renewed his commitment to a “green” economy, a redistributionist federal government, and the boutique causes of the social left.
The level of denial among Democrats about the meaning of the election remains impressively high, even a week later. It is reminiscent of David Axelrod’s astute post-election analysis after the Democrats lost the Virginia governorship in 2009. Axelrod said that Republican Bob McDonnell had won as a “Barack Obama centrist,” and that it would be “politically disastrous” for the Republicans to hew rightward. Axelrod worried about the “purge of moderates” from the party.
It is customary for the Democratic and Republican parties to exchange unsolicited “advice” with each other. The Democrats advise Republicans to move leftward, the Republicans advise Democrats to move rightward. The difference is that the Republican advice—allow pro-lifers to speak at your conventions, don’t ostracize the Zell Millers, etc.—would actually help the Democrats politically. But the acceptance of Democratic advice would prove substantively and politically dumb. Had the Republicans followed it after 2008, they would have sealed their minority status and hung harmful legislation around their necks for years to come.
Country Club California Republicans took the advice of the media and Democrats during the 2003 Recall and parachuted a liberal celebrity into the governorship, who now leaves office with job approval ratings as anemic as Gray Davis’s. Winning with a liberal is always more politically costly to the Republicans over the long term than losing with a conservative. This is why even the relatively few Tea Party losses contain hope. They were at least losses in the right direction. But the “victory” of Schwarzenegger crippled the California GOP for future races.
Obama, meanwhile, thought it prudent to leave the country after the election. But his Ich Bin Indonesian speech this week isn’t likely to help him regain his political footing. “Indonesia is part of me,” he said in Jakarta. So a week after his party suffered historic losses, he is first seen dancing in India, then delivering speeches in Indonesia that re-stimulate doubts about his religion and identification with America. The one nod to his PR problems in this department was to call himself a “Christian visiting a mosque on this visit,” which he also went out of his way to note was “designed by a Christian architect.”
He spoke of Indonesia as a model of well-adjusted Islam, though the fact that a Muslim state political minister in the receiving line says he didn’t want to touch his wife’s hand undercut the message a bit. He congratulated Indonesian Muslims on their progress and tolerance, but that raises a question: How much is he actually doing to help reformist Muslims there?
Last October, the Washington Post ran a story about the U.S. government’s decision to stiff-arm reformist Muslims in Indonesia rather than risk the wrath of hard-line imams: “As Indonesia debates Islam’s role, U.S. Stays Out: Post-9/11 push to boost moderates gives way.”
The story identified Barack Obama’s mother as a kind of pioneer of this policy. In the early 1980s, a scholar seeking funds to promote a discussion about the need to moderate Islam went to the Jakarta office of the Ford Foundation for grant money. He was turned down by Obama’s mom.
“He left empty handed. The United States, he was told, was ‘not interested in getting into Islam,’” said the story. “The rebuff came from President Obama’s mother, Ann Dunham, a U.S. anthropologist who lived in Indonesia for more than a decade.”
The story continued that “U.S. thinking has moved back toward what it was in Dunham’s day: stay out of Islam.”
At the University of Indonesia, Obama repeated the line that America is “not at war with Islam,” which is a swipe at his predecessor. But according to the story mentioned above, George W. Bush did more to help moderate Muslims in Indonesia than Obama ever has. (Those post-9/11 efforts were abandoned after Muslim clerics complained. “Indonesia’s council of clerics, enraged by what it saw as a U.S. campaign to reshape Islam, issued a fatwa denouncing ‘secularism, pluralism and liberalism,’” says the story.)
On this issue, like so many others, Obama is all words and no deeds. But at the same time the great communicator of the Democratic Party continues to say that he lost the House of Representatives due to his inability to communicate.
About the Author
George Neumayr, a contributing editor to The American Spectator, is co-author, with Phyllis Schlafly, of the new book, No Higher Power: Obama’s War on Religious Freedom.
Letter to the Editor View all comments (19) | Leave a comment
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MoeBlotz| 11.11.10 @ 7:44AM
Listening to Mr.Neumayr and Mz.Fabrizio discuss the election results from 2 November would have been worth a couple golden grickles for admission.
Louis Jenkins| 11.11.10 @ 8:36AM
"Axelrod said that Republican Bob McDonnell had won as a "Barack Obama centrist," and that it would be "politically disastrous" for the Republicans to hew rightward. Axelrod worried about the "purge of moderates" from the party."
Moderates should be purged from the GOP. No negoiations, no prisoners, no compromise. You can tell when the Democrats get into trouble. They suddenly speak of compromise, they speak of sit downs with the GOP, they talk of central themes of both parties. It's time to ignore those panty waisted trops.
Redstateboy| 11.11.10 @ 8:48AM
At last week's press conference, he more or less pledged to keep driving into the oncoming traffic. He renewed his commitment to a "green" economy, a redistributionist federal government, and the boutique causes of the social left.
great line..
Trey the Redneck | 11.16.10 @ 12:06AM
Seriously, when will the rest of the country see through Barack's "brilliant orations." It is becoming such white noise. Kinda sounds like the adults from Charlie Brown/Peanuts cartoon.
Eric Peters Reader | 11.11.10 @ 8:56AM
Speaking of cars, it's Thursday morning and no article by Eric Peters. Here's one that got mysteriously omitted. Read on:
Too Much Traffic—Too Many People?
By Eric Peters
*******************************************
Once population gets to a certain density, it's game over—for liberty. I mean, for real-deal, live and let live, do-what-you-want-to (provided you're not physically harming anyone else) liberty.
You know—what most of the founding fathers (Alexander Hamilton and his proto-Republicans excepted) had in mind.
The best analogy I've found is traffic.
You live in a very rural area, let's say. Very few other cars are on the road. So, when you roll up behind some old geezer doing 33 in a 55, it's easy to just pass the old dude—and no hard feelings either way. He's able to trundle along at his pace without cars (and angry drivers) stacking up behind him; you're free to drive around the old coot and continue at your speed.
No tensions; no problems.
There are very few traffic lights—and when you come to a stop sign, you're almost always the only car around and it's just a minor, momentary interruption of your travel.
You can pull right onto the main road from sidestreets, usually—with just a quick glance either way to be sure no one's coming.
Usually, no one is.
If you need to park, you just pull into a spot.
And there is always an open spot.
In winter, you can usually get where you need to be without too much trouble because there's no one else causing wrecks that block the road or interfering with your momentum.
Driving is a joy.
Contrast this scenario with the situation that's become typical in and around every major population zone in the United States circa late 2010:
All it takes is one inept/fearful/reckless driver to gum up the entire works; everyone is stuck behind the old coot up ahead in his '87 Buick doing 33 in a 55—because there's no way you can pass with all that oncoming traffic plus you're 12 cars behind the coot anyhow.
And there's more than just one inept/fearful/reckless driver to deal with now, too.
Itinerant workers—often with no insurance; not infrequently drunk—driving beaten-up old wrecks are a constant peril. Many don't read English, so traffic signals are a mystery to them.
Huge SmooVees with distracted hausfraus chattering away on their sail fawns blast through red lights, turn into your lane or don't notice the light has changed green until it's on the verge of turning red again—just in time for you to get stuck in another cycle of waiting.
You're thwarted (or threatened) at almost every turn—literally. Get by/past one and there's another one 20 yards ahead. The conga line of cars barely moves an inch. At every stop sign, there are scores of cars lined up awaiting their turn. Cars are backed up for blocks at traffic lights. Merge lanes are choked. You have to circle every parking lot like a shark, waiting for a spot to come open—and be ready to fight for it.
It takes forever to get anywhere. No one smiles. Everyone's tense.
Might as well give up and turn on the radio.
Driving has become the equivalent of being a mouse in a Skinner Box. You dread leaving your house.
The same dynamic operates in the political realm.
In a frontier-type, low-density environment, people are independent-minded and self-sufficient. To a great extent they self-police—and are happy. They earn their own keep and expect to be left alone in return.
Because people are not constantly rubbing up against one another, there is much less social friction. People can go around one another. You don't like your neighbor? Well, you almost never see him anyway and it's easy to avoid having to deal with him. He goes his way, you go yours.
Resources abound; useful work is easy to get. People are largely free to do what they want, within reasonable bounds—and to enjoy their lives.
This is how America was—I can remember it like it was yesterday. And it's the reason why America was, for the most part, a great place to live ... until about the late 1960s. At which point the population began to balloon at an almost unimaginable rate.
170 million suddenly—and 40 years is suddenly—became 300-plus million.
An almost doubling of the population it took more than 400 years to achieve in the space of my own short lifetime (I am 44).
Suffocating, omnipresent traffic—formerly an isolated curiosity you experienced on field trips to NYC or LA—was unknown to most Americans when I was a child in the 1970s.
Now it is the rule.
The suburbs were then still pleasant, affordable and peaceful places to live and rear a family.
Now they are disconnected, overpriced—and a torturous drive to and from your place of work.
In the 1970s, one could easily access solitude in the nearby woods, on a forest trail—or local park.
People and cars and noise were not everywhere—yet.
Even air travel was nothing like the hateful, demeaning experience it has become today.
What has changed? What's the common denominator?
Too many people.
Worse, most of these are not even American people. Deliberate policy changes (the Immigration Act of 1965, specifically) have unleashed upon this land a literal tsunami of humanity—most of it Third World humanity. Is it surprising that America is increasingly coming to resemble a Third World country as a result? With the same horrid pathologies—from a seething (and growing in size) permanent underclass to the despoiling of formerly magnificent natural vistas to the relentless lowering of our political discourse to simple-minded catchphrases and childish images marketed to a junior high-level mindset?
This is an obvious, even elementary consequence of adding tens of millions of Mexican peasants and Central-South American stoop laborers, Somalis, Pakistanis and Afghanis—the whole polyglot stew.
But we aren't allowed to notice this—unless of course we "celebrate" it.
Though why such ought to be celebrated is something that's not easy to understand. By every measure save perhaps the profusion of electronic gadgets, Americans are miserable today (note the near-ubiquity of anti-depression meds, the pathological over-eating/obesity and nihilistic consumerism) whereas they were mostly pretty happy in the not-so-distant past.
Yet it is still in our power to halt the bum's rush toward the Third World future our "leaders" are laying the groundwork for. We have it in our power to say, "enough".
We do not need more people.
We certainly do not need more people from the Third World.
And if we can just get a handle on this mess, maybe one day going for a Sunday drive will be enjoyable again.
*******************************************
Eric Peters (email him is a refugee from The Washington Times, where he worked as an editorial writer and columnist during the 1990s. He is currently a freelance car journalist and runs ericpetersautos.com. He is the author of Automotive Atrocities and his next book, Road Hogs, will be published this fall.
Danielle Gleason| 11.12.10 @ 9:18AM
Excellent article. I believe that most Americans share these observations. The time has come to clean our house. We have started the cleaning process with the midterm elections. We can't afford to wait any longer to reform immigration and welfare.
Comrade-Citizen| 11.12.10 @ 9:44AM
Agreed, stop the 3rd world invasion of our shores. Except for those who are educated and pledge to never require public assistance.
But, too many people? Since when? Okay, okay, so how are we to limit population growth? Unrestricted taxpayer funded abortion? Free birth control? Involuntary euthanasia? Homosexuality? Suicide clinics? Drug legalization? Mandatory sterilization?
Just asking.
Eric Peters Reader | 11.12.10 @ 8:53PM
Glad you asked - CC. The US population would be stable RIGHT NOW, if it were not for immigration (counting legal and illegal). You should read the numbersusa website sometime. They are kind of wimps when it comes to arguing their points, but they indeed have a lot of numbers to explain the problem.
No Homosexuality would be required, CC, "not that there's anything wrong with that". Drug legalization, of course, but just for reasons contained in the US Constitution. Leave out the rest of that crap, that's Obama/Chairman Mao stuff.
BTW, I'm not sure why the Spectator didn't include Eric Peter's column that day. I think they have a bug up their ass about American common sense about immigration. They put up a lot of moronic columns that have to do with this particular subject.
Frank Drackman | 11.11.10 @ 9:15AM
If Ted Kennedy had been driving an Electric Car...
umm Mary Jo Kopeckney would still have Asphyxiated(Not Drowned, there's a difference)
but there would have been ZERO Carbon emissions, except for the Coal Fired Plant that supplies the electricity to charge the battery...
tim milner| 11.11.10 @ 7:26PM
Mary Jo did not drown! There was no water in her lungs. She died from lack or air. She was alive until the air in the pocket she was in was used up. If Ted had just gone to the closest house (less than 100 yards away where there was a truck with a winch on it), the car could have been pulled out and all would have been OK. Of course that would have required him to think of someone else besides himself and that wasn't going to happen.
Charles Martel| 11.11.10 @ 9:23PM
I have no desire to see the Democrats move rightward. Run, Nancy, run, and take the Democrats as far left as you can!
Yeah, that ought to do it.
+++
mobil keluarga indonesia | 11.11.10 @ 10:03PM
i'm an indonesian. In his speech, he success managed to cover his (USA) interests over the interests of Indonesia
California70| 11.13.10 @ 5:32PM
Great article!
California70| 11.13.10 @ 5:45PM
I just happen to live in the L.A. Area, and this article is so True of what is going on here.
This is one great article! Thank you very much.
I would have said it myself if only I had the ability to be so eloquent!
Marc Jeric| 11.14.10 @ 12:41PM
"Ich bin ein Indonesian" - how a propos! The little marxist Muslim creep at his best!
John DuBose| 11.14.10 @ 9:35PM
The notion that higher population density reduces freedom is obvious to anyone with eyes and the cahoneys to say so. But it is a natural phenonom. No one can stop it.
To take this depressing thought another step forward. Consider the situation as an open field fills up. There is a succession of plant types. It starts with hardy individualistic little plant, goe4s through bushes and pine treets. Then it ends with a climax forest of oaks. The bushes are pushed out.
Same with people in a new land. Pioneers change the environment to make it nice for more political, more sedentary type people. And then the pioneer type people die out.
bummer.
Not to worry. Eventually there is some sort of polulation crash and the pioneers come back.
olivia | 1.20.11 @ 7:55AM
nice information here