Yes, that’s what they’re saying, beginning with the pontifical
George Will: Obama’s a shoo-in this fall, all because he’ll be
running against a Republican no one wants to see in Washington let
alone the White House. The president’s a nice guy, after all-Mitt
Romney says so himself. Meanwhile, the economy’s less dead than it
was, the debt crisis has vanished from sight, unemployment numbers
are no longer being reported, Obamacare is a nonissue, Iran is just
bluffing, and we’re bound to withdraw from Afghanistan, one of
these decades. There are more pressing matters to attend to, such
as the Republicans’ war on the bedroom and distrust of sexual
nirvana, not to mention their distinct contempt for the financial,
emotional, and medical needs of feminist law school activists and
Democratic operatives. Plus the president has a killer new campaign
slogan: Five More Years! After which he promises he’ll buy himself
a shiny new electric Chevy Volt.
Of course, he made that promise just days before the Volt
suspended production. But what do we know. In the old continent of
Europe, where being in the know is a natural right, the Volt has
been named Car of the Year. Now the future former President Obama
will end up driving a fancy European import. Although too late to
vindicate Rick Santorum, the “snob” label will finally stick.
And green business as usual will continue as before in Obamaized
America: cronyish, corrupt (as if anyone still cared about such a
loaded term), and government-sponsored capitalist. For a taste of
how it all will work, sample Jim Antle’s investigative tribute to
“Solyndra Nation” (p. 14). As one of the players, appropriately
named Spinner, put it, everyone was “itchy to get involved.” It’s
nice insider work, in other words, assuming taxpayers will
cheerfully continue to underwrite the president’s spending habits.
That could be asking too much of them, according to someone in a
position to know (see Grover Norquist, p. 42).
If we have become an unabashedly immoral country, then we’re
also a demoralized one. Bill Tucker wants to be optimistic (see p.
32), but it’s hard when confronted by Charles Murray’s latest
findings, which depict an American working class left to its own
devices by a self-absorbed elite that would rather be tooling
around France in a nonpolluting Volt than setting high standards
for all of society. A preference for French methods also lies at
the heart of Obamacare’s war on the Church, though readers of F. H.
Buckley’s “Liberal Imperialism” (p. 38) might prefer a rather
non-French descriptive–Kulturkampf. The initiators of such
campaigns do not intend to lose them.
Most everyone plays dirty now. One exception is Peter Wallison
(p. 20), who had the gall to dissent from the majority report of
the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission. He argues from facts.
Those who disagree with him argue from vitriol. Leading the effort
to remove Wallison from approved society is a New York Times
columnist named Joe Nocera-who really should be attacking himself,
unless he actually didn’t coauthor the recent book in which he and
his coauthor make very similar points that he now won’t allow
Wallison but instead dismisses as Goebbelsian lunacy. Welcome to
the world of the New York Times and the guaranteed
reelection of President Barack Obama.
