I
am not a student of electoral trends and I am not good at predicting the
results of elections.
For
example, earlier on in 2008, I believed that Obama would suffer a loss of
McGovernesque (RIP) proportions. I lived
in Chicago. I knew about Obama. I knew him to be an
impressive-appearing-and-sounding pol. I
knew him to be far left of the American mainstream. I knew him to be a poorly-regarded state
legislator and an undistinguished Representative. I knew he had never accomplished much of
anything else in his life, nor could I describe a single community
organizational initiative with which he had been associated. I believed that these things would become
known to the electorate.
Obviously,
there were some things I did not know. I
did not know John McCain would be such a weak, old, candidate, or that he would
make the Palin misstep. I knew of the
electorate’s deep dissatisfaction with George Bush (I shared it), but did not
know how profound that revulsion was. I
assumed Obama would disguise his leftism, but I did not foresee the mainstream
media’s wholesale abdication of its duty to report what it knew, or should have
known, or should have discovered about the man if it cared to stand back from
its lover’s blindly protective embrace.
By the time the election rolled around, I was not under any illusions as
to its outcome.
This
time around, the auspices were not much more comforting. With the exception of Fox News and The Drudge
Report – formidable exceptions, to be sure – the media’s coverage of the
Administration and the campaign has run true to their 2008 form. The layout of the electoral college appeared
to be seriously tilted against Romney.
The polls in the swing states didn’t look good for the GOP.
And
then there’s that immovable 47%. Saw a
great article on who is supporting the President that I thought hit the nail on
the head – of course, I’ve lost track of it and I’m not going to remember all
of its points. It’s blacks; Hispanics to
a somewhat lesser extent; people who rely on the government for welfare or
employment or contracts, a truly frightening slice of the electorate; and college
graduates steeped in “social justice” theory and socialist/collectivist economic
and political dogma. And, of course,
there are those people who cannot shake off the romance of a skinny black "cool"
president. Others, of course.
These
people are not insincere or dumb (at least, not in numbers any greater than
those on the other side) – they may really think that the socialization of
medicine and cheap doctors is a good idea, and are happy to support and defend everything
the President has done. I’m not arguing
with them here. The point is, there’s
nothing Republicans can do about those people (just like there’s nothing the
Democrats can do with the Tea Party folks), and Romney needs pretty much
everyone else, in addition to a major change in the prospects in the swing
states.
So
post-conventions, things did not look good for Romney. And I'm hearing that early voting in some
swing states is favoring POTUS. On this
Election Eve, the polls still give Obama a decided edge in the Electoral
College.
But
for awhile now, I have had a feeling that Romney was going to win. I felt
that yeah, there’s a good chance Romney is going to get a lot of those
undecideds and things were going to tighten up in enough of those swing states
to give him the victory. I see the
Electoral College polls that continue to give Obama the swing states and the
election. But I just get a feeling that the President is going to be defeated,
possibly decisively.
I
think the President believes it too.
In
the closing days of the campaign, he has become increasingly angry. He is
astounded that the electorate no longer perceives his magnificence and inevitability. His remark the other day that "voting is
the best revenge" perfectly portrays his smallness, his bitterness, and
his conviction that the American system is an oppressive one against which
"revenge" must be taken through his policies attacking it.
I'm
prepared to be wrong about that prediction.
But I think I'm right about a larger point this election is likely to
prove:
In important respects, even if he
secures another term, Barack Obama has already lost.
Because
as this dreary administration stumbled through its term, certain things were
becoming clear about this President to a whole lot of people who voted for him
in 2008. An administration that began
with such excitement over its historical grooviness has grown pouty, angry, and
even smutty. Many people who didn't vote
for the man, like me, were willing to see whether his administration would
usher in an era of bipartisanship, improved race relations and international
harmony.
But
the promise was false, the man himself not what he pretended to be. And the media could not possibly cover it up
over the course of a campaign where people really had to think had about who
they’d put in the White House. Even if
he wins, it will be the victory of a hack, the baleful legacy of the New Deal
and the Great Society spawning a host of hands-out Democratic client
constituencies -- not a glorious affirmation of the wisdom of inclusion.
I
started ticking off the reasons this election is even close after Barack Obama’s extraordinary electoral achievement
of 2008, and each time I return to this draft I think of a couple more. But I'll stop with an even dozen:
(1) His Policies Don’t Work and Will Damage the
Country Even More as Time Goes By. I’ll pass this – too big a topic for this entry,
and others have done a more thorough job on any one of them than I could.
(2) When It Comes to His Job, He's Lazy and
Disengaged. He makes George Bush
look like a paragon of concentration and a dervish of productivity. Historic levels of golf. Many parties – Michelle especially loves
them, and vacations. Can't be bothered
to attend national security briefings. And did you read that article by Obama fan Ryan Lizza in Obama fanmag The New Yorker? His style of decisionmaking is to examine
checklists created by aids that he writes little comments on or checks off
("OK"). He doesn't like to
meet with people. He really doesn't like
to do press conferences. I was not at
all surprised at his game-changing performance in the first debate – stories of
his loathing of studying up for it had been circulating for some time.
(3) In Fact, He Doesn't Like to Be Questioned
At All and Is Discomfited and Angry When Challenged. Because a guy who's gotten promoted on a
record of near-zero accomplishments in private or public life is not going to
be able to answer those questions or bat back those challenges. And because he is not, in fact, “eloquent.”
(4) Now That We See that He's Not All That
Capable, that Shadowy Personal History Starts to Matter. He can't help it that his parents were who
they were or that his father was unreliable and gone. But he could have done a whole lot more to
put the Kenya/Hawaii business to bed, and he behaved badly about it even when
that somewhat peculiar birth certificate finally emerged (and was peculiarly
exposed to a friendly press) –I wrote about it here, my point being that Obama
does not think where he was born should matter, the Constitution
notwithstanding. I think he was born in
Hawaii, but does anyone really believe that the 1991 book promotion blurb
saying he was born in Kenya was an error deliberately introduced solely by his
agent or anyone else? Wouldn’t you like
to see what he put on his college application?
It is now pretty widely accepted
that he did not compose Dreams from My
Father, but that it was written by radical professor William Ayres. And that much of that book is (1) put
generously, a composite of experiences and people (including women) Obama
claims to have experienced and known and not a reliable autobiography, and (2)
put ungenerously, false. His academic
career? Extraordinarily opaque. Evidence of self-composed “eloquence”? Similarly missing. His mysterious world travels, his contacts,
his ties to radicals, his ties to race hustlers like Rev. Wright, his financial
support – smoke/fire. There remains much
about this man that is unknown, and that is going to come out sometime, whether
or not he is elected. Like the Kennedys’
incredible womanizing while in office, there will come a time when we will be
staggered at the character of the man we elected, and some of us loved.
(5) If Anything, His Policies and Attitudes
Have Exacerbated Racial Tensions. Even though his 2008 campaign repudiation of
Jeremiah Wright was half-hearted, it was a step in the right direction. I thought we would hear more about the value
of education and other critical steps to continued improvement of race
relations and the economic circumstances of urban blacks. We did not.
The message continued to be the standard Democratic line of continued
dependence. He has been entirely
content to let his supporters accuse his critics of racism. His economic and labor policies have
discouraged employment. On balance,
resentment over Democratic celebration of his mediocre tenure has fueled
interracial suspicion – yep, contrary to the hagiography, his story is one of
affirmative action writ large.
(6) It's Really True – He Believes in the
Forced Redistribution of Wealth. And
I don't mean "wealth" in the sense of "a whole lot of money
owned by people we would all agree are 'rich,' whatever that really means,"
I mean "assets owned by a person who has more than another person,
irrespective of talent, industry, judgment, family, and other circumstances not
controllable by the state." His
morality – in fact, the morality of much of the left – is that forcibly
leveling prosperity is “right,” irrespective of the tendency of that policy to
retard economic progress.
(7) It's Really True – He Believes that the
United States Has Been a Force for Ill in the World, and that the Principles of
Freedom and Capitalism Should Not Be Promoted.
No doubt the U.S. has made mistakes as a world leader, and has
proceeded clumsily and sometimes corruptly.
On balance, though, the United States has been and remains (so far) a
beacon of freedom, opportunity, and progress.
This President believes in the same leveling of countries that he
promotes among persons of unequal wealth in the country he runs.
(8) He's
Actually Rather Unpleasant. Mitt Romney suggested in his (disappointingly
bland and shallow) convention speech that Obama is a nice guy. I don’t think he’s a nice guy. I think he’s motivated by jealousy and
insecurity and this campaign is Exhibit 1.
He believes that wealth and merit should be punished, is an adversary to
be defeated. His campaign has been angry
and negative. He has refused to lend his
personal charm to Democratic candidates.
His bus can’t move, there are so many corpses stacked under it. The buck always stops well short of him.
Every president must have a
healthy-self regard, but he is singular in is inability to disguise an ego
bordering on megalomania. The
comparative frequency of his use of “I” in his public addresses is well-documented.
 |
| Can you imagine any other campaign releasing a formal photo like this? |
(9) It
Matters that He's Never Accomplished Anything, Other than Electorally. The public was aware of his lack of work
experience and his relative lack of legislative experience, and that experience
was decidedly lackluster (and notably unindustrious). This was deemed not to matter with his
personal charm and exciting message on the other side of the scale. But now that that charm and message are in
tatters, voters are recalling that this guy is pretty much just a guy, nothing
more.
(10) His
2008 Posture of Moderate Bipartisanship Was a Fraud. No
one, not even the 47%, is any longer claiming that he is a moderate or
interested in bipartisanship. I’m not a
big fan of bipartisanship myself where principles are at stake, but the point
is that this is how he held himself out, and how the media portrayed him, and
why the center voted for him.
(11) He Is
Protected by a Biased and Dishonest Media Establishment. Speaking of which, his coddling by the
mainstream media is undeniable. You can
howl about Drudge and Fox News all you want, but they are the exception and do
not self-righteously deny their opposition to POTUS. For the purposes of this list, the point is
not whether either of the sides is right or wrong, it’s that the public can see
that the MSM is steadfastly refusing to report carefully on this
administration, and they resent it.
(12) He
Believes that He is Historically Inevitable.
And believes as well that that is a substitute for positive
governing results.
Many of the moderates and undecideds who were caught up in the historic
possibility of our first black president – and one with undeniable charisma
when his fury over opposition isn’t bubbling to the surface – now perceive that
the drama of his election was just that, a drama, a story, show biz. They suspended disbelief and went with that
story, but the second act has been a bust.
The President, however, has the sand to make “Forward” his campaign
theme, and Mrs. Obama was caught the other day exhorting a crowd to think ahead
to the wonders that can be accomplished if her man is awarded four more years. But he has not proven to be an inspirational
leader, or, in the solitude he’s most comfortable with, any other kind of a
leader. The mythology constructed for
his 2008 campaign was brilliant – but, in the end, only a myth. His presidency is no more a natural result of
historical forces than is the administration on Mt. Olympus.
* *
*
The reader
will have noticed I didn’t say anything positive about Mitt Romney. It is true that among the reasons I have
voted for him is that he is not Barack Obama.
But he has run a strong campaign, he has a strong record of public and
private achievement, he supports American capitalism, and he believes in
American exceptionalism in the world.
Lots of reasons to vote for the man.
I’m caught up
in his momentum and I am not going to deny that I believe the momentum will
carry him to victory because I want to believe it. Even if he loses, though, Barack Obama will
be governing a country where more and more people have found him out.
The textbooks
of the future will dutifully report his historical significance. The illusion of transcendence, however, has
evaporated. The promise of competence, a
murky half-remembered dream. For many of
us – including those of us who did not vote for him but who were ready for a
fresh breeze blowing through the White House – his defeat is already assured.
