
 |
|
May 24, 2013
May 22, 2013
John Thorne:
They launched the 'Arab Spring' but now yearn for the good old days of a strongman
May 20, 2013
Richard A. Serrano: Is Meir Kahane's assassin now a changed man?
Melissa Healy: Genetic copies of living people from embryos no longer science fiction
Jewz in the Newz by Nate Bloom : Jews Inducted into Rock Hall of Fame; Anton Yelchin co-stars in New "Trek" film; Kutcher (but not Kunis) visits Israel; Jewish TV Star Praises Jewish Rap Star
The Kosher Gourmet by Cathy Pollak: WARNING: This WALNUT CAKE WITH PRALINE FROSTING, perfect for afternoon coffee, is addicting
May 13, 2013
Rabbi Nathan Lopes Cardozo: Why the giving of the document that would permanently change the world could only be done in desolation
David G. Savage: Church-state, literally? Supreme Court weighing public school graduation in a church
May 10, 2013
Rabbi Berel Wein: Be all that you should be
May 8, 2013
Peter Ford: Why China is welcoming both Israel's Netanyahu and Palestinians' Abbas
Warren Richey: Obama administration quietly backs out of appeal over new contraceptive mandate
Fred Weir: At Kerry-Putin meeting, US-Russia relations thaw --- a tad
The Kosher Gourmet by Leela Cyd Ross : Almost too pretty to eat, this colorful salad with Sicilian inspiration will tickle the taste buds and delight your visual sensibility
May 6, 2013
May 3, 2013
Kids, kittens the Same? With employee perks at struggling Internet pioneer Yahoo! it's hard to tell
Sandy Kleffman: Artificial kidney offers hope to patients tethered to a dialysis machine
April 29, 2013
Roy Gutman: Poland's new Jewish museum celebrates life, doesn't revisit Holocaust
Mark Clayton: Terrorism in America: Is US missing a chance to learn from failed plots?
Kim Murphy: Boston Bomber's 'Svengali' Revealed
Pete Spotts: Tiny satellites + cellphones = cheaper 'eyes in the sky' for NASA
April 26, 2013
Clifford D. May: Defense in the Age of Jihadist Terrorism
Sharon Palmer, R.D.: How to feel your best -- with plenty of energy, a healthy weight and optimal mental and physical function -- without driving yourself batty
April 24, 2013
|
| |
Jewish World Review
January 23, 2009
/ 27 Teves 5769
Obama's soaring pragmatism
By
Rich Lowry
| 
|
|
|
|
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
Barack Obama's inaugural prose has justly been panned. As Obama took the oath of office "amidst gathering clouds and raging storms," recalled the country's past of drinking "the bitter swill of civil war" and urged the country to brave "the icy currents," one wondered whether his presidency might founder on the treacherous shoals of overwrought cliches.
The poor writing was overwhelmed by Obama's masterly delivery, the glorious spectacle of the flag-waving multitudes and the overarching ambition of Obama's address. In 2008, Democrats were faced with a choice to go "safe" with Hillary Clinton, a known quantity who promised to hold Democratic states and add just enough electoral votes for victory, or go "audacious" with Barack Obama. At this juncture, it's hard to believe the choice was ever a close one.
Since the election, Obama has only strengthened his political position with a widely praised transition. He has appropriated the country's first Republican president, Abraham Lincoln, in a historical body-snatching reminiscent of what Ronald Reagan did with Franklin Roosevelt. In his inaugural address, he grounded his vision in the Founding Fathers, sounded a significant conservative note in calling for a return to "old" and "true" values, and defined opposition to him as a stale remnant of bygone ideological debates.
Barack Obama imagines himself a colossus standing bestride the political world subsuming all the disagreements of the past 30 years in himself. William Herndon said of his friend Lincoln, "his ambition was the little engine that knew no rest." Obama's is the engine that knows no bounds.
Taking office amid economic turmoil in 1981, Reagan famously said, "In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem." Obama's rejoinder was that "the question is not whether our government is too big or too small, but whether it works." He thus wipes away a defining dispute of recent American politics with a wave of the hand and a declarative sentence. Obama portrayed the debate over the size of government, the efficacy of the market and how to protect the country as consisting of a series of false choices resolvable by a pragmatic commitment to pursuing what works.
This is a central contradiction of Obama's speech: He praised "hard choices" in theory as all politicians do while presenting the actual choices that have bedeviled us for decades as a mirage. George W. Bush's second inaugural speech had a whiff of utopianism in its confidence in the universal march of liberty. Obama's utopianism is in positing that legitimate tensions between desirable things American leadership and warm relations with allies, etc. don't exist.
There's a presumption in Obama's soaring pragmatism. Does he believe that he considered every major issue in our national life from a stance of pure ideological neutrality and the answers just happened to coincide with what the Senate Democratic caucus believes 96 percent of the time? One hopes not. Obama the pragmatist said he will end government programs that don't work, but he has been in public office since 1997 and never notably crusaded against wasteful and inefficient government.
This raises the larger question: Does Obama mean his rhetoric? If he were to follow through on his inaugural oratory he'd run a "kadima" government, a centrist one holding as many frustrations for partisan Democrats as gratifications. If he doesn't, he'll simply toss nonideological drapery over the usual Democratic agenda.
So far, the evidence points to the latter. Obama's reaction to the recession has been to propose an enormous spending bill that throws money at every typical Democratic priority. The research is decidedly mixed on whether this kind of fiscal stimulus works, and the Congressional Budget Office says that only $135 billion of the $355 billion in discretionary spending in the House stimulus bill would be spent by October 2010.
If this is Obama's idea of an empiricism in public policy that will sweep all before it, watch for the currents to get icy and storm clouds to gather.
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.
Comment by clicking here.
Rich Lowry Archives
© 2009 King Features Syndicate
|
|

Arnold Ahlert
Mitch Albom
Jay Ambrose
Michael Barone
Barrywood
Lori Borgman
Stratfor Briefing
Mona Charen
Linda Chavez
Richard Z. Chesnoff
Ann Coulter
Greg Crosby
Larry Elder
Suzanne Fields
Christine Flowers
Frank J. Gaffney
Bernie Goldberg
Jonah Goldberg
Julia Gorin
Jonathan Gurwitz
Paul Greenberg
Argus Hamilton
Victor Davis Hanson
Betsy Hart
Ron Hart
Nat Hentoff
A. Barton Hinkle
Jeff Jacoby
Paul Johnson
Jack Kelly
Ch. Krauthammer
David Limbaugh
Kathryn Lopez
Rich Lowry
Michelle Malkin
Jackie Mason
Ann McFeatters
Dale McFeatters
Dana Milbank
Jeanne Moos
Dick Morris
Jim Mullen
Deroy Murdock
Judge A. Napolitano
Bill O'Reilly
Clarence Page
Kathleen Parker
Star Parker
Dennis Prager
Wesley Pruden
Tom Purcell
Sharon Randall
Robert Robb
Cokie & Steve Roberts
Heather Robinson
Debra J. Saunders
Martin Schram
Greg Schwem
Culture Shlock
David Shribman
Roger Simon
Lenore Skenazy
Michael Smerconish
Thomas Sowell
Ben Stein
Mark Steyn
John Stossel
Cal Thomas
Dan Thomasson
Bob Tyrrell
Diana West
Dave Weinbaum
George Will
Walter Williams
Byron York
ZeitGeist
Mort Zuckerman

Robert Arial
Chuck Asay
Baloo
Lisa Benson
Chip Bok
Dry Bones
John Branch
John Cole
J. D. Crowe
Matt Davies
John Deering
Brian Duffy
Everything's Relative
Mallard Fillmore
Glenn Foden
Jake Fuller
Bob Gorrel
Walt Handelsman
Joe Heller
David Hitch
Jerry Holbert
David Horsey
Lee Judge
Steve Kelley
Jeff Koterba
Dick Locher
Chan Lowe
Jimmy Margulies
Jack Ohman
Michael Ramirez
Rob Rogers
Drew Sheneman
Kevin Siers
Jeff Stahler
Scott Stantis
Danna Summers
Gary Varvel
Kirk Walters
Dan Wasserman

Tech Q&A
Mr. Know-It-All
Ask Doctor K
Richard Lederer
Frugal Living
On Nutrition
Bookmark These
Bruce Williams
|