Victim-Victors make lousy winners, lousy policy

CLEANING OUT DRAFTS. Here's another post I started, but didn't get back to punctually. Began January 30, 2009. Updated at posting.


Gone are the crowds of adoring supporters, some of them fainting from the sheer euphoria of being in His presence. That was then, this is now. The Oval office is a much lonelier place than the campaign trail, especially when not everyone agrees with you, when not everyone jumps on the bandwagon. Having little real experience governing, and no experience as an executive, perhaps Barack Obama can be forgiven for not knowing the difference between campaigning and governing.

We shouldn't really be surprised that class warfare continues from Democrats, even though they won the election and now control everything in Washington. But the derisive attitude they continue to express should be avoided by the White House, at least, and one hopes that an air of graciousness would start to permeate the President's public pronouncements.

Some would characterize him as still being in campaign mode, with allusions to "the last eight years", etc, because Barack Obama does seem to have difficulty expressing his ambitions for our country without the context of contrasting them with Bush or that old straw man, "some people". He imfamously chided, (according to reports) Republican John Kyl, "I won", when asked about his seeming disinterest in hearing views from the other side of the aisle. That's a tad too similar to the playground kid demanding the game be played "his way" because he brought the ball.

In his inaugural address, Obama gloated “On this day, we gather because we have chosen hope over fear, unity of purpose over conflict and discord." He assigned "petty grievances and false promises...recriminations and worn out dogmas" to those who preceded him, and referred to their legitimate policy differences as "childish things".

He accused his predecessors of "protecting narrow interests and putting off unpleasant decisions", and self righteously promised "We will restore science to its rightful place…".

Perhaps his hubris revealed itself most when he charged us all to "...begin again the work of remaking America". Remaking America?! He makes it sound as if the entire country, how it operates and what it stands for, is broken down, dysfunctional, and in need of a complete overhaul.

He dismisses honest policy disagreements between parties as "...the stale political arguments that have consumed us for so long" and declares that they "no longer apply…". Is he signaling an end to free speech within the halls of Congress (and without?), that he'll not tolerate any dissent from his stated goals and agendas? The kind of dissent he and other Dems claimed was "the highest form of patriotism", when it came to opposing the Bush Administration, especially on the war in Iraq?

A line from his speech that he probably thinks is right up there with "Ask not, what your country can do for you..." and "With malice toward none...", is one that his VP, Joe Biden, liked so much that he repeated it today at the announcement of the T.F.M.C.W.F. I suspect, however, that the line, "...a nation cannot prosper long when it favors only the prosperous", will not, despite it's poetic ring, be chiseled into the marble of the future Obama Monument, because it's premised on a false accusation about our nation: that we favor only the prosperous. The prosperous are favored by prosperity itself. Our economic system (capitalism, as of 3:00pm CST 6/9/2009- Check back in a week to see if we're still capitalists...) does, by design, favor success. Successful ventures prosper. Favoring the prosperous does not mean that we neglect the unprosperous individuals in our midst, but they can't be "favored" more than successful, productive ventures and people now can they?

The use of the unnamed straw man "some people" is a popular one for Obama and Biden (and some journalists), as well as vague allusions to past affronts by others. Proclamations of "we will restore" and "we are ready to lead once more", with references to "starting today" and "once again", and "the time has come" crop up frequently in the president's speeches.


"The measure of our success will be whether the middle class once again shares in the economic success and prosperity of the nation," pontificated VP Joe Biden. When our nation is economically successful and posperous, so IS the middle class. I suppose regrettably from the progressive perspective, many in the middle class cease to be middle class when there's shared prosperity, and those folks move into the upper class. By definition, the middle class remain as prosperous as at any time- that's what put's them in the middle.