Welcome To Barack Obama's America

1 of 8

about:reader?url=http://thefederalist.com/2015/12/08/welcome-to-barack-obamas-america/

thefederalist.com

Welcome To Barack Obama's

America
Ben Domenech

09/Dec/2015 11:02 AM

Welcome To Barack Obama's America

2 of 8

about:reader?url=http://thefederalist.com/2015/12/08/welcome-to-barack-obamas-america/

By
December 8, 2015

09/Dec/2015 11:02 AM

Welcome To Barack Obama's America

3 of 8

about:reader?url=http://thefederalist.com/2015/12/08/welcome-to-barack-obamas-america/

In the wake of an Oval Office speech which went over so terribly

that it has Politico openly wondering whether the entire form of
presidential address is dead, yesterdays announcement from
Donald Trump that he believes the U.S. must block all Muslims
from entering the country, until our countries representatives can
figure out whats going on, finally resolves the question about
President Obamas greatest political legacy.
It is no accident that President Obamas America has given rise to
Donald Trump. It is an America that is more tribalist, where people
feel more racially and religiously divided; more politically correct,
where people feel less free to speak their minds; and it is an America
where trust in the nations elites, whose skills are credentialed but
unproven, are at historic lows.
These are the wages of progressivism at the end of the day. Big
government inevitably leads to government incompetence. That
incompetence leads to growing and now dominant distrust both in
governments basic competence, and in the values of the people who
still insist upon it. Our modern elites respond to that rational
distrust by smearing it as vile hatred, which further divides and
toxifies our politics. And Trump is a perfect personality to exploit

09/Dec/2015 11:02 AM

Welcome To Barack Obama's America

4 of 8

about:reader?url=http://thefederalist.com/2015/12/08/welcome-to-barack-obamas-america/

these divides, offering the promise of an authoritarian who

represents the people in place of an authoritarian who represented
the elites.
Consider the news that 965,000 migrants have sought asylum in
Germany over the past year. Are jihadists using these refugee flows?
Walter Russell Mead:
Todays Western elites, in the U.S. as much as in Europe, have
never been so self-confident. Products of meritocratic selection
who hold key positions in the social machine, the bien-pensant
custodians of post-historical ideologyeditorial writers at the NY
Times, staffers in cultural and educational bureaucracies,
Eurocratic functionaries, much of the professoriat, the human
rights priesthood and so onare utterly convinced that they see
farther and deeper than the less credentialed, less educated, less
tolerant and less sophisticated knuckle-dragging also-rans outside
the magic circle of post historical groupthink. And while the
meritocratic priesthood isnt wrong about everythingand the
knuckle-draggers arent right about everythingthere are a few
big issues on which the priests are dead wrong and the knuckledraggers know it.

09/Dec/2015 11:02 AM

Welcome To Barack Obama's America

5 of 8

about:reader?url=http://thefederalist.com/2015/12/08/welcome-to-barack-obamas-america/

In the presidential context here in America, Bill Schneider frames

this as the working class versus the educated elite.
Trumps support for the Republican nomination is not defined by
ideology or age or gender. Its defined by education. Among GOP
voters with a college degree in the latest CNN poll, Trump comes
in fourth with just 18 percent. But he has a huge lead among
non-college voters 46 percent. No other candidate comes close.
Republicans have spent much of the past three years wringing their
hands over how to win the white working class Donald Trump is
showing them how: by confronting and rejecting the values and
authority of the elites, and offering a vision of a presidency for a new
authoritarian era, where the Commander in Chief rules by Tweet.
This latest storm over his promise to block all Muslims will cast him
again as the man who calls the elites on their bull, who promises to
bomb Americas enemies or bend them to knee, to sweep away the
pretensions of the elites who say what you are not allowed to want
with a wave of his hand.
President Obama was supposed to be someone who unified us as a
nation; whose eloquence brought us together in harmony and

09/Dec/2015 11:02 AM

Welcome To Barack Obama's America

6 of 8

about:reader?url=http://thefederalist.com/2015/12/08/welcome-to-barack-obamas-america/

dialogue; he was supposed to be not just smart, but wise and

capable. In all these aspects, the professor in chief has failed and
as his failures have increased, so have his inclinations toward
anti-Constitutional authoritarianism. David Harsanyi:
[I]ts disturbing to witness so many people cheering and
defending the circumventing of due process. On the one hand,
some of this might be frustration liberals feel with the sluggish
state of American politics and we see it often in Obamas
contention that executive power (doing something) is necessary
because the democratic process is moving too slow for his liking. A
more concerning scenario, though, is that protecting progressive
notions of tolerance is beginning to supplant the idea of
protecting basic rights When Donald Trump advocated
banning all Muslim immigration yesterday, most of the
Republican Party rightly condemned the idea. There was no such
reaction to Obamas no-fly list gun ban.
Obama was also supposed to be a historic leader when it came to
reality-based foreign policy and the cause of peace. Instead, he has
proven to be a blinkered strategist undeterred by facts on the
ground.

09/Dec/2015 11:02 AM

Welcome To Barack Obama's America

7 of 8

about:reader?url=http://thefederalist.com/2015/12/08/welcome-to-barack-obamas-america/

Even as the president reassured Americans that he remains

committed to pursuing the strategy for the Middle East that he
outlined more than a year ago, White House officials are quietly
reexamining how to intensify the campaign against an elusive foe
that has inspired homegrown terrorism in the United States. But
the changes under consideration do not stray beyond a set of
limited options, with the president reiterating his opposition to a
large-scale ground force, which he said would only help the
Islamic State recruit new foot soldiers.
Keep in mind, President Obama would not be the president were it
not for the fatigue of the American people for war in the Middle
East. It is his core bias toward avoiding sending any more American
soldiers to the region, at all costs. It is a testament to how much this
approach is now viewed as a failure that a majority of Americans
now say they favor sending ground troops to fight ISIS.
For the first time in CNN/ORC polling, a majority of Americans
(53%) say the U.S. should send ground troops to Iraq or Syria to
fight ISIS. At the same time, 6-in-10 disapprove of the Presidents
handling of terrorism and 68% say Americas military response to
the terrorist group thus far has not been aggressive enough.

09/Dec/2015 11:02 AM

Welcome To Barack Obama's America

8 of 8

about:reader?url=http://thefederalist.com/2015/12/08/welcome-to-barack-obamas-america/

There is a marked frustration in the presidents lectures of the

American people, an undercurrent that has only grown over the
course of his tenure. At first he was frustrated with politicians in
Washington not listening to him. Now he seems more frustrated
with the American people for not listening, either. But they have
taken a lesson from these lectures over the past seven years that is
now very clear, and that is fueling the Trump phenomenon the
lesson that we were wrong about Obama, just as he is wrong about
us.

09/Dec/2015 11:02 AM