The
Democrats
Not long ago, like Napoleon Bonaparte,
Hillary Clinton took charge of her own coronation. Unfortunately, it turned
out to be premature. The Democrats in Iowa and New Hampshire had their
own ideas and withheld the crown from her.
 They
seem to have felt that
shed been a bit too smug a bit too long. In the Iowa caucuses she took
a stunning defeat from Barack Obama, who is no longer confused with Osama
bin Laden, not even by the president of the United States. She won in the
New Hampshire primary, but not by the decisive margin she had hoped for:
her margin of victory there was a measly, meaningless 3 per
cent.
The day
before the New Hampshire primary Hillary already seemed to realize that the
end of her imperial dream was imminent. We should have seen it coming long
ago, shouldnt we? The midnight comics have been making Hillary jokes
for ages, a notorious omen; after a year of intense exposure, I cant
think of a single Obama joke. He just hasnt done anything to make
himself risible.
Experience?
Well, if sleeping with Bill Clinton counts as experience, Hillary obviously has a
lot more of it than Obama.
Meanwhile,
Obama has conducted himself with what I can only call a durable dignity. He
makes no enemies, inspires no wisecracks, and seems not even to have any
eccentricities. His mistakes have been so few and so minor that you can
hardly remember them. His views are orthodox liberal, rigidly so, but he
comes across as so genially moderate in his manner that nobody resents
him. He avoids all the more overt mannerisms of the Left.
The
Democrats have been obsessively chanting the word change. After
his Iowa victory and elsewhere Obama spoke ecstatically of changing the
world. The whole thing, I guess. They dont feel it necessary to define
what needs changing, or from what into what, which makes their whole
debate absurd, though nobody seems to notice. I think of G.K.
Chestertons words: It is futile to discuss reform
without reference to form.
![[Breaker quote for The Democrats: Horrors]](2008breakers/080115.gif) If
we really want change, we could start by observing
the U.S. Constitution, as only one candidate, Congressman Ron Paul, has
proposed to do, thereby making himself a pariah to other Republicans. That
way impeachment lies: a president who actually kept his oath of office would
outrage nearly everyone in Washington.
A less
ambitious change that would cause nearly as much consternation in both
political and media circles would be to pull all U.S. military forces out of the
Middle East. Paul would like to do this too, and it is hardly deniable that
American involvement in that region has been extremely costly, disastrous,
catastrophic, ruinous, unconstitutional, and really, really dumb.
Only Paul has
kept his head and a sense of proportion during this mad political season. No
matter who becomes president, the lawless superstate, which is just about
everything the Framers of the Constitution meant to make impossible, will
remain. (The less said about the other Republican presidential candidates,
the better.)
Imagine
trying to explain to George Washington or Thomas Jefferson how this
country adopted such monstrous deformations as the income tax, the
welfare state, nuclear weapons, and legal abortion, to name only four of the
once-unthinkable evils we have come to take for granted. Would they
congratulate us on having made progress, or on having improved on the
original (and simple) political system they bequeathed to us?
Much has
been said and written, most of it silly and quite irrelevant, about
Obamas African genes, as if they make him black,
when of course they dont. His speech, manners, polish, intelligence,
and so on these are the things that count, not his crude
demographic profile, which is no more than a curiosity. As Joe Biden once
observed (so explosively!), he is clean. Yes, he may be literally
African-American, as I suppose a man born in Cairo, Tunis, or
Capetown would be, but why make a big deal of that?
Has everyone
forgotten the most basic things? In this country the government is supposed
to be confined to the few powers and functions specified in its Constitution
such concrete things as coining (not printing) money and punishing
counterfeiters.
The
hysterical democratic flattery with which the news media constantly assure
hoi polloi that you decide (as if the individual vote could make
any difference now) can only demoralize anyone who grasps what is really
going on. Despite the plausibility of his surface, Obama is no more genuine
than the others. He believes in the falsehoods as gullibly as anyone. Pitiful
fact!
Joseph Sobran
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