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| Home Front: Politix |
| Obama's Godfather Speech |
| 2011-12-08 |
| Most press accounts of Barack Obama's speech in Osawatomie, Kansas, Tuesday described it as delivered by the "president of the United States." And indeed the person delivering it analogized himself to Presidents Teddy Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower and Bill Clinton. In fact, the Osawatomie speech was not given by the President of the United States. It was given by the leader of the Democratic Party. Most of the time, this distinction isn't a problem in the United States because historically people have tended to think that the office of the presidency represents "all the people." This doesn't mean everyone expects to benefit from a president's policies. What it means is that in some informal way no one has to worry that the presidential motorcade, so to speak, will drive off the road so that it can plow into you. That is no longer the case in the U.S. The Osawatomie speech sounded like what you'd expect to hear in Caracas or Buenos Aires. As in: "The free market has never been a license to take whatever you can from whomever you can." (Applause.) And: "Their philosophy is simple. We are better off when everybody is left to fend for themselves and play by their own rules." Some will say hearing crude Chavista populism in the Obama speech is an overreaction. That once it's understood the Kansas speech was the work of the party leader, not the president of the United States, it becomes easier to think about it without overreacting to its intense and vivid rhetoric: "Millions of working families in this country . . . are now forced to take their children to food banks for a decent meal." Mr. Obama, the bloodless political analysis of the speech runs, was just rallying his base. He needs to. Last month, in an election for state offices in Virginia, which Mr. Obama carried in 2008, Democrats turned out poorly, and Republicans won at every level of government, even in "independent" northern Virginia. |
| Posted by:tipper |