Barack Obama, It’s Not Christmas Anymore

Am I the only one? Like Christopher Buckley, I am a conservative* voter who voted for Barack Obama. Like Buckley, I too remain an admirer. By the way, read Buckley’s witty reaction to this week’s State of the Union Address.

All presidents are elected after a period of wooing that creates an excitement and tension similar to that that occurs with American children as they wait for Christmas morning. And just as it is with Christmas gifts, so it is in the months after the election; it turns out that neither Christmas gifts nor new presidents are the change agents we seek.**

Yet the media continues to tell us an untrue story about the president’s influence. Each turn in the economy, every international incident, and every change in the social mood is added to the president’s list of accomplishments or failures. So as Obama retains America’s empire, and makes deals with moderates, the left is dispirited. Similarly, the right screams that Obama is not working with them, so has not changed the political climate. The left is earnest, the right is not – they never had the least intention of helping find a new consensus.

* What passes for conservatism is an anti-intellectual set of ideas that have their beginnings in right wing racist radio from the pre-civil rights era. Northern Republicans found it useful to build a majority based on the old Dixie-crat constituency. That they did, and that the more extreme racism has faded, does not alter the ideological underpinnings.

Conservatives who exist outside of America’s peculiar version have historically supported the institutions that sustained political and social stability.  For America, these institutions include Social Security and Medicare (now decades old) as well as bi-cameral legislatures and separation of powers.  It should be no surprise the Whittaker Chambers chided fellow conservatives over their taking issue with Social Security. (Please google Whittaker Chambers!)  The shrub’s failed effort to destroy Social Security should be seen now not only as misguided but as radical, and frankly, at one spiritually with the complaints of slave holders from the early days of our Republic, who constantly inveighed against any federal spending outside of the bare minimum required to keep the edifice of government going.  Oh, they also loved war too!

The Post WW2   American empire is also now a fixed part of our make-up.  It may have been a mistake to create the edifice of empire, but dismantling it abruptly would disturb a host of relationships across the globe, impacting everything from Japan’s national security to commerce and banking.  If we understand what conservatism really is (and separate Northern conservatism from the Dixie-crat version) we can see in Obama (and in Bill Clinton too) a spirit of caution and moderation that should be applauded by cautious spirits everywhere, sadly, the cautious spirits have been silenced by noisy rabble rousers, and the empty calories of 24/7 news.

**Ok , maybe FDR was transformational, but the crisis was deep, and his strong majority allowed him to pass an aggressive program. Even still, the South remained the backward sewer of bigotry that only now is ending. JFK too may have been a change agent, but if we consider the decade as a whole, we can see a host of big changes that had little to do with the swoon that occurred after Kennedy’s exciting inaugural.