Wednesday, May 28, 2014

It's Good to Be King

Victor Davis Hanson on the Leader of the Free World:
Think of the following: the Fast and Furious scandal, the VA mess, the tapping of the communications of the Associated Press reporters, the NSA monitoring, Benghazi in all of its manifestations, the serial lies about Obamacare, the failed stimuli, the chronic zero interest/print money policies, the serial high unemployment, the borrowing of $7 trillion to no stimulatory effect, the spiraling national debt, the customary violations of the Hatch Act by Obama cabinet officials, the alter ego/fake identity of EPA head Lisa Jackson, the sudden departure of Hilda Solis after receiving union freebies, the mendacity of Kathleen Sebelius, the strange atmospherics surrounding the Petraeus resignation, the customary presidential neglect of enforcing the laws from immigration statutes to his own health care rules, the presidential divisiveness (“punish our enemies,” “you didn’t build that,” Trayvon as the son that Obama never had, etc.), and on and on.

So why is there not much public reaction or media investigatory outrage?
Because the media love him, of course. He is The One. Hanson has a lot of other reasons at the link and it's worth your time to read them in full, but for me the key one is this:
The media is not just overwhelmingly hard left, but hard left with a chip on its shoulder that its own views are neither accepted by the majority nor usually implemented by government.

All the above scandals and embarrassments would have ruined a Bush, given that such mishaps would have been headlined daily  in the New York Times (e.g., “VA, Benghazi, AP, NSA, IRS overwhelm sinking Bush administration”) or Washington Post (“Bush Cabinet Paralyzed by Scandal”).

For the media, Obama is not Jimmy Carter or even Bill Clinton whom they overwhelmingly supported. He is quite different — the first gold-plated liberal president since FDR, and probably the last for a while, intent on fundamentally transforming the United States, by redistributing income and accumulated wealth, and recalibrating the American profile abroad.

The media believes that both are socially just and long overdue. Why then nitpick a president on details, when his intentions are noble? 
Yes, sometimes you'll have a little apostasy just for show, which seems to be Ron Fournier's beat as of late, but in the main we'd rather not talk about such things, because, well, we'd rather not. It's a false equivalence, you see, because no matter what The Leader of the Free World does, it's certainly less icky than what some knuckle-dragger from the benighted precincts might attempt. And in the end, oversight is only required for people who require it. Back to Hanson:
The well-off are indifferent to the Obama record, interested only in its symbolic resonance. Doctrinaire liberalism resonates mostly with the very wealthy. We see that by the voting patterns of our bluest counties, or the contributions of the very affluent. In contrast, Republicanism is mostly embedded within the middle class and upper middle class, while liberalism is a coalition of the affluent and the poor.
This has been the case for a very long time now -- I've heard the term "limousine liberal" for my entire life and we have the Ford Foundation and the rest of the old money philanthropic structure bleating for justice that doesn't necessarily extend to the shopkeepers and the entrepreneurs who are grasping for a lifestyle that they aren't qualified to live. It's always amused me when people tell me that Republicans are the party of the rich. That hasn't been true for a long time.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Words of intense disgust at American's deliberate move away from what Old White Guys think is cool by a dried-up-raisin farmer/Classics prof/Hoover Institute/National Review-Donald Rumsfeld-loving-bitter-old-white-guy. I'm shocked-SHOCKED!- that Victor Hanson blames the MEDIA for the country's love-affair with Obama and Jay-Z and Beyonce and being "hip." He all but bleats out loud: "If it weren't for those white-guy race traders telling the unwashed idiots that their tap-dancing-jazz-nonsense-mumbo-jumbo-"culture" was worthy of mentioning anywhere near in the same sentence as the greatest heights of Hellenism then my old-white-guy brand of excellence would still be like classic Coke, relevant. His penultimate paragraph says as much:

Finally, Obama has “cool.” Or what his wife calls “swag.” The very wealthy are with him also because he instructs them how to indulge, to ignore the problems of others, to be narcissistic and self-absorbed with a veneer of hipster cool. Golf, shoot hoops, wear shades, hang with Jay-Z and Beyonce, talk about your rap menu on your iPhone, fluctuate your cadences, do you Final Four predictions — all that means you can be cool and very rich and very self-absorbed while fooling hoi polloi and feeling great about your privilege at the same time. If you are a jean- and T-shirt wearing Silicon magnifico, Obama is your guy. The palatial estate, the imported cars, the indulgent hobbies — they are not really one-percenter excesses (try water skiing for that), but the swag that assures others that outsourcing, offshoring, tax-avoiding, lobbying, and insider cronyism are just part of the hip deal.

With the added bonus of anti-internationalism-nativistic-anti-technological-sunglass-wearing-import-car-driving-un-American-California coastal inhabitant bashing that old-white-guy raisin farmers love to do. This kinda thing happens when central valley farmers need water - they get all pruny in their thoughts and lash out at whatever they can hit with a really short stick.

Gino said...

working in GOP campaigns throughout the 90, i was soon able to notice a few things about money and the donors it came from.

GOPers overwhelming were wealthier people who made their own money through family business success and rising from the working/middle class.

Mr. D said...

Anon, they may not have water in the Central Valley, but they'll eventually have a high-speed rail line. That's pretty darned exciting. I'd also suggest that you might miss the Hellenists a little when they're gone. I understand that the Spartans in particular were big fans of the Delta Smelt.

Gino, that's what I've seen as well. If you're in the middle of making your pile, you want to be a Republican. If you have one or your dad did, you're more likely a Democrat.