"It
is a great advantage to a president, and a major source of safety to the
country, for him to know he is not a great man."-
Calvin Coolidge.
Energetic in body but indolent in mind, Barack Obama in his frenetic
campaigning for a second term is promising to replicate his first term, although
simply apologizing would be appropriate. His long campaign's bilious tone -
scurrilities about Mitt Romney as a monster of, at best, callous indifference;
adolescent japes about "Romnesia" - is
discordant coming from someone who has favorably compared his achievements to
those of "any president" since Lincoln, with the "possible" exceptions of Lincoln, LBJ and FDR. Obama's oceanic self-esteem - no deficit
there - may explain why he seems to smolder with resentment that he must
actually ask for a second term.
Speaking of apologies, Syracuse University's law school should issue one
for having graduated Joe Biden. In the 2008 vice presidential
debate, he condescendingly lectured Sarah Palin
that Article I of the Constitution defines the executive branch. Actually,
Article II does. In this year's debate, he said that overturningRoe v.
Wade would "outlaw" abortion. Actually, this would just restore
abortion as a subject for states to regulate as they choose. Biden, whose legal
education ended well before he was full to the brim, was nominated for his
current high office because Democrats believe compassion should temper the
severities of meritocracy. It is, however, remarkable, and evidence of voters'
dangerous frivolity regarding the vice presidency, that Biden's proximity to the
presidency has not stirred more unease. To forestall that, Biden should
heed Alexis de Tocqueville: "To remain silent is the most useful service that a mediocre speaker
can render to the public good."
Two economic themes of Obama's campaign have been that outsourcing jobs
is sinful and that he saved GM,
which assembles 70 percent of its vehicles on lines outside America. He thinks
that ATMs and airport ticket kiosks cause unemployment but may understand that
buying an iPhone involves outsourcing to China the jobs of assembling it.
Although his campaign slogan is "Forward!" he evidently wants America to compete
with China in the manufacture of T-shirts and toasters. His third economic theme
- that he will "invest in" (spend on) this and that - has been inaudible amid
the clatter of crashing companies he has invested
in.
Much of the Democratic Party's vast reservoir of condescension is
currently focused on women, who are urged not to trouble their pretty little
heads about actual problems but instead to worry that, 52 years after birth
control pills went on the market and 47 years after access to contraception
became a constitutional right, reproductive freedom is at risk. This insult may
explain the shift of women toward Romney.
'Tis said two things not worth running after are a bus or an economic
panacea, because another will come along soon. Obama's panacea is to cure what
he considers government's unconscionable frugality. Nothing in the president's
campaign has betrayed an inkling that anything pertinent to Social Security or
Medicare has changed since they were enacted 77 years and 47 years ago,
respectively.
Four years ago, Obama said that he would slow the oceans' rise but this
year has not sought a mandate to cope with - he has barely mentioned - the
supposedly onrushing calamity of climate change. He says that this emergency
(like everything else) justifies giving government huge new dollops of power,
yet our Demosthenes evidently despairs of persuading the benighted public. (See
above: condescension.)
His only notable new idea in this campaign is to alter the First
Amendment in order to empower government to restrict the amount of permissible
political speech - speech about the composition and conduct of government. Nancy
Pelosi pledges that if Democrats control the House, they will pass this
constriction of the Bill of Rights on the first
day.
All politicians are to some extent salesmen. But Obama, having devalued
the coin of presidential rhetoric by the promiscuous production of it,
increasingly resembles a particular salesman,Arthur Miller's Willy
Loman:
"For a salesman, there is no rock bottom to the life. He don't put a bolt
to a nut, he don't tell you the law or give you medicine. He's a man way out
there in the blue, riding on a smile and a shoeshine. And when they start not
smiling back - that's an earthquake."
Why the empty stridency of the last days of Obama's last
campaign?
Perhaps he feels an earthquake's first
tremors.
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