Obama and his team rode into office banking on the recession to help shift the country leftward. The private sector would be discredited, they figured. The public would turn to government. And they and their hyper-liberal agenda would be the beneficiaries. But they missed the mark on two counts.
First, the essential center-right political orientation of Americans was not altered by the downturn. Voters were in fact wary after eight years of Republican rule and some significant mismanagement. They might have been prepared for some corrective regulatory action, but they hadn’t given up on the free market or their suspicion of big government, and candidate Obama was more than anxious to assure them that he, too, was a fan of the private sector and had no desire to reorient the relationship between the private and public sectors. Had Obama not appealed to that political sentiment throughout the campaign (going line by line through the budget, for example) and not vigorously disputed critics who spied him as a extreme liberal, it is unclear whether he would have won. The election would certainly have been closer had he revealed just how radical a domestic agenda he was considering.
Second, if you’re going to push big government, you’d better be prepared to show that you are up for the task. As Ross Douthat writes:
Recessions, it seems, only benefit liberals when an activist government is perceived to have answers to the crisis. When liberal interventions seem to be effective, a downturn can help midwife an enduring Democratic majority. But if they don’t seem to be working — or worse, if they seem to be working for insiders and favored constituencies, rather than for the common man — then suspicion of state power can trump disillusionment with free markets.
All the Obami have to show for their hopey/changey revolution is a failed stimulus plan and a load of debt. It inspires only queasiness, not faith in empowering government to do more and more. Independents are moving rightward, concerned about massive spending and debt. The signature piece of legislation, a takeover of health care, is now in doubt and will pass only if lawmakers ignore public opinion.
The result of the Obami’s misreading of the public and gross underperformance has been a revitalization of their opponents and a renewed interest in a message of fiscal conservatism. The Obami may yet recalibrate their vision or improve their execution. But if they don’t do both, the Obama era may ironically mark the rebirth of a conservative agenda that had grown increasingly stale and muddled. There is, after all, nothing like liberal excess to make low taxes, spending restraint, and regulatory moderation seem like the basis for a refreshing new agenda.
belicosity has only resulted in these types of regimes being strengthened. I don’t see this visit as any sort of acceptence of theway kom jong il treats his people. it’s a way of getting them to open up to the world. war and sanctions aren’t any good for helping people under tyrannies
Our years of patty-cake with the Soviets were not nearly as fruitful as a stiff jolt from Reagan.
An unexpected side effect of the Philharmonic’s visit is that the insane viciousness of the Kim Dynasty has been getting a great deal of publicity. Viewers who saw the concert on television in the United States also got a brief history of North Korea, as well as shots of thousands of people dancing in honor of the Dear Leader.
Now that our interest in this crazy Marxist regime has been awakened, we should all go and read Gordon Chang’s book NUCLEAR SHOWDOWN: NORTH KOREA TAKES ON THE WORLD.
bob miller- what jolt?
If we stopped doing business, cultural and otherwise, with regimes that murdered millions of their citizens, we’d have to slam the door on China. And then what would Walmart do?
Gee lester, you must have been a baby during the 80s. How about this for a jolt: increasing the overall military budget; or the 500 ship blue water navy; or ballistic missiles in Europe; or El Salvador; or Nicaragua; or Grenada; or Afghanistan; or the “evil empire” speech; or……
none of those were wars or sanctions. reagan got red baited for his peaceful approach to the USSR.
more to the point, the USSR was doomed because of it’s ridiculous economic system. it was just a matter of time. Remeber David Hasselhof singing on the Berlin wall. i’d certainly like to forget it, but the point is the more western stuff gets in to these countries the quicker they reject the socialism.