Victor Davis Hanson: Make Haste Slowly, President Obama? - Your win over Sen. McCain was not a...

National Review Online ^ | November 06, 2008 | Victor Davis Hanson

[neverdem]

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November 06, 2008, 0:00 a.m.

Make Haste Slowly, President Obama?
Your win over Sen. McCain was not a mandate for radical change.

By Victor Davis Hanson

Festina lente. Make haste slowly. That was the motto of the revolutionary minded young Augustus who soon grasped that he needed to build upon Rome’s past, rather than dismantle it.

Amid the celebration of the historic victory of Barack Obama, the country should now quit the bickering, appreciate a fair and peaceful transference of power, and unite behind its new commander-in-chief.

But in turn, our new President Obama would do well to heed that ancient Roman wisdom, appreciating that the real world after November 4 is not exactly the same as its frequent caricature during the hard-fought campaign.

John McCain promised to cut taxes on all. Sen. Obama promised to raise them on some. But neither plan fully appreciated that we are now buried deep under trillions of dollars of debt — and need both more revenue and less expenditure.

An Obama administration, like it or not, must cede to the laws of physics: America will have to pay down debt while not raising taxes too high at a time of recession. That balancing act will make it hard to borrow additional billions for more promised federal spending.

“Hope and change” may have implied an easy transition to our clean, cool solar and wind future. But for a while longer, America’s envisioned new electric cars will still require old-fashioned natural gas, coal, and nuclear power to generate electricity to charge them.

Economic slowdown, conservation and public promises to drill more oil and natural gas have already helped to collapse world oil prices and saved us billions. And before we talk of ending the coal industry, we should thank our lucky stars that America has the world’s most plentiful supply of coal to transition us to alternate sources of energy.

We need more regulation of both Wall Street and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which all went feral and turned on us during both the Clinton and Bush administrations. Yet European leaders are faced with far worse financial meltdowns than we are — and their problems have nothing to do with American excess or George W. Bush.

The dollar is climbing against the Euro because market analysts realize that for all our sins, American financial institutions are still far less exposed than those elsewhere in the world, and our free-market system far more flexible to recover from excess and grow the economy.

Some have called for the Wall Street bailout to be just the first, rather than the last, large federal takeover of American finance. But again, we should remember that despite a looming recession, Americans are still collectively the most affluent and free citizens in the world — precisely because our unique free-market system creates enormous wealth and draws in more capital and talent than elsewhere on promises of commensurate individual rewards. President Obama need not give radical chemotherapy to an ill economy that does not have a fatal cancer.

The shooting war in Iraq is ending. President Obama can continue to withdraw American troops slowly on the basis of a growing victory, rather than rashly and harnessed to an artificial timetable. In time, a Democratic administration could assert that a constitutional government in Iraq and an unprecedented defeat of al-Qaeda in the heart of the ancient caliphate enhanced U.S. security at home and abroad — and are achievements to be claimed rather than simply reckless acts to be abruptly abandoned.

For all the campaign charges of unfairness, America currently has the most progressive tax system in the world, in which the top 5 percent of wage earners pay over 60 percent of all federal income taxes. President Obama will raise rates, as promised. Yet he might consider that Americans in the past came to accept the Clinton income tax hike to 40 percent on the top bracket — but may well balk at adding unprecedented increases in payroll taxes on top of all that. That combination could mean a sizable tax raise on many of those self-employed who already pay nearly half their income in various taxes — and gut rather than just shear the sheep.

Obama himself ran a shrewd campaign that largely repudiated his hard-left past by severing ties with dubious former associates while reassuring voters by moving to the center on issues from NAFTA to offshore drilling. Like the young emperor Augustus, Obama may well have sensed that a country eager for change was still a largely traditional and centrist society — as this election’s relatively close popular vote reflected.

If a President Obama remembers all that now in the beginning of his presidency, later on he won’t have to scramble to recapture lost popular support with a new Dick Morris and the old Clintonian playbook of triangulation.

— Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and a recipient of the 2007 National Humanities Medal and the 2008 Bradley Prize.

© 2008 TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES, INC.

[neverdem]

Ping

[yldstrk]

I didn’t see him sever any ties with anybody dubious.

[perfect_rovian_storm]

VDH, you just secured your place in the re-education camp. I’ll see ya there. :)

[jonrick46]

I would be satisfied if the ZerObama train lived up to its name and went 0 mph. In fact, I hope it never leaves the station. For the sake of this republic.

[TalBlack]

“That was the motto of the revolutionary minded young Augustus who soon grasped that he needed to build upon Rome’s past, rather than dismantle it.”

It cracks me up how many people think Obozo loves America, her history and who think Obozo is a serious adult. In eighteen months he is standing in the smokeing wreckage of his presidency.

[ilgipper]

Hanson over estimates Obama’s move to the center. They will play this as center moves, but make drastic moves to help build a permanent majority, card check, immigration, building a larger non-paying tax base. All the while the media will talk about the ‘new centrism’.

[SkyDancer]

He’s going to read this, right?

[Republic of Texas]

Obama. Don’t listen to the genius, VDH, overreach. Please. Hurry. It’s the best way to get you out in one term.

[pabianice]

Is he kidding? His chief of staff is Rahm Emanuel, as rabid a hate-monger as the Left has.

[Alberta's Child]

But Hanson correctly notes that the financial instability in the U.S. will effectively limit any leftist dreams Obama harbors in his new capacity.

One of the great things about conservatism is that it doesn't get bogged down by liberalism's delusional ignorance about the limitations of physical and economic realities.

[i_dont_chat]

Obama always has been and always will be a slacker.

Don’t look for him to do ANYTHING. He will cruise around, looking cool, getting attention.

But he will leave the WORK to others.

Watch and see.

[doc1019]

But the Democrat wins in the Senate and House definitely give Obama an undeserved political mandate (of sorts) or at least he can act as if he has a mandate, with their support.

[Republic of Texas]

Oh, so he’s like Clinton.

[CyberSpartacus]

You can eliminate the deficit and the debt overnight. Eliminate all welfare to the able bodied, and yes, that includes unemployment. Fire 90% of all Federal employees except Military personnel. With our current enormous tax confiscation that would pretty much do it.

[roses of sharon]

Let’s review:

Nancy spent the last four years saying nothing but “failure, failure, failure.” It got to the point where Ring Around The Collar was Bush’s fault. She and Harry Reid declared the Iraq war LOST and tried their damnedest to lose it, all to score political points and turn Iraq into another Vietnam that the Democrats could run against for another 30 years.

The entire Valerie Plame “scandal” was made up out of whole cloth by the Kerry campaign, in conjunction with David Corn. It planted the “Bush lied” meme that Democrats rode all the way through the 2006 elections. Then they pulled the Dan Rather bull with the fake TANG memos to try to nail George W. Bush. Only thanks to Buckhead and Charles Johnson did they not get away with it.

Ray Nagin refused to call a mandatory evacuation of New Orleans, left 200 school buses unsused, and made no contingency plans for getting people out of the Superdoem or the Convention Center after Katrina. But Dingy Harry were right there to blame Bush.

No terrorist attacks on U.S. soil since 9/11. But all the Dems says is “we are not safer” and the media laps it up.

They started websites, made movies, wore T-shirts, ran protests with hanging effigies and Hitler photoshops constantly in order to destroy the President and the Vice President of the United States.

Now they have foisted the biggest empty suit in history on us as President. For all we know, he may have lived with Bill Ayers in New York for four years and helped him build bombs.

These mfers proved they will lie, publish forged documents, and try to lose a war in order to gain power.

And NOW I’m supposed to take the high road and go all National Review?

Not on your life.

[scory]

Hussein does not like America as it was or is. He has said so rather openly. It may be that the reality of circumstances that he will face once in office will constrain him. But I don’t count on it. He is an ideologue and academic and unused to dealing with reality. Abstractions are what he talks about because abstractions are what he knows and it is in abstractions that he places his faith. When people get in the way of his abstractions he will most likely use whatever force is available to him to try to reform the people to fit the abstractions rather than rethink the abstractions themselves.

Once again I really, really hope I am wrong about this.

[tpanther]

Already watched and seen:

call me if you need me,

gotta play with the blackberry and make fun of McCain’s disability.

[redhead]

Something I haven’t heard one peep about since the election, and that’s the RAMPANT, widespread, brazen FRAUD. What the hell?

[bvw]

Hanson places too much faith in rational actions. Radicalism, is by definition -- irrational.

Nor was Obama's campaign shrewd. It was chock full of mistakes -- FAR more than McCain's.

But it a massive draft from the zeitgeists, and a large part of that zeitgeist was in money. Obama's campaign was over billion dollars in spending, allowing for the likely fraudulent accounting, and perhaps over six billion if one allows for the constant pro-Obama and anti-Bush, anti-Obama media barrage of the past two years. Also throw in the value of the support of sinecured (tenured) Academia and of Unions.

McCain went up against a ballparkian of 20 to 1 to maybe 100 to 1 odds, marketing dollar equivalent, and still nearly won.

Obama's campaign was downright idiotic, value for dollar-wise. But the zeitgeist gifted a mighty windfall.