PrintApril 13, 2009
Obama, Obushma, hey, what's the difference?
OK, conservatives, here's a plan.
Big deal, we lost the election. (Twice -- once for the GOP nomination, and once for the presidency).
The solution? Coopt the Obamunistas.
How? We've got the biggest ally in the world, called Reality. It's a place conservatives know well, because we live there. What's scary about Obamunismo is that its followers talk as if they don't live in Reality. Sometimes they even act that way. But nobody can act against Reality for long without getting a lot of bloody noses.
With the rescue of Captain Phillips, Barack Obama met Reality. The US Navy shot three pirates even though they were Politically Correct pirates: Muslim, Black, African, probably sad sack desperadoes. It didn't matter, because they held a gun to our national head -- in the person of Captain Richard Phillips.
Obama reacted the way a US president should, by letting the Navy and FBI act. In this single moment, Obama became Obushma. Because that's how George W. Bush would have acted. That's how the British Navy would have acted in its heyday. It's how freedom of the seas has been protected for two centuries.
It's up to the New Media to keep asking the question: Are we seeing Obamunism or Obushmanism?
It's the crucial question. We know that crises will keep coming up. "Events, dear boy, events," as Harold MacMillan reportedly said.
So far, Obama flunked the test by bowing to King Abdullah. It was a huge, dumb move, and Axelrod has been trying to dance away from it ever since.
But Obama flunked much worse in firing Rick Wagoner, the President of GM. That was a violation of the letter and the spirit of the Constitution.
The US Constitution is a supremely Reality-based document. It assumes that people are power-hungry, as they are in Reality.
The job of the New Media is to make Obama's failing grades stick, as well as to celebrate a passing grade in the rescue of Captain Philips.
That's the power of media, to tell the public narrative, to be the Greek Chorus in the drama of state. The New Media can do it at least as well as the decrepit old ones.
If Obama is praised for acting like a conservative, Reality-based president, that's fine. He should equally well be criticized, without fear or favor, when he acts like a Marxist.
If the Obama administration drifts over time into acting more conservatively, even against its fantasies, well, bully for them. But if they swing the other way, Obama should be a one-term president, like Jimmy Carter.
(Remember, Jimmy is still totally enraged by his defeat by Ronald Reagan in 1980. If Obama is defeated in 2012 he'll keep the Left on the broil for years to come, trying to make a comeback. Hillary and every other ambitious Democrat will fight him. It could easily shatter the Democrats for decades to come.)
In the end it's the conservative principles that count, because those principles help us to survive and be a healthy nation in the real world.
There will be a lot more tests for this administration. They will flunk some, and hopefully pass others.
If they flunk most of the tests, they should be defeated in the Congressional elections in 2010, and -- just like Jimmy Carter -- they should be tossed out of the White House in 2012.
If they mend their ways -- a giant IF -- maybe they can bring the Democrats back to the center.
If they really try Marxist-Leninism, they should be publicly exposed and defeated.
Our job remains the same, to remind Obama and everybody else about Reality, time and time and time again.
In the end, it's the best interests of the country that matter. That's all that matters.
