Catastrophe - Dick Morris [6]
Block the repeal of the estate tax
Raise the Social Security payroll tax so everyone (or practically everyone) will have to pay it on his or her whole income
Rebuild our infrastructure regardless of cost
Pour money into alternative energy sources but go slow on nuclear power
Pull out of Iraq
End tough interrogations of terror suspects
Dramatically increase federal spending
Weaken the standards in the No Child Left Behind Act
Push legislation allowing unions to organize without secret ballots
Call for immigration legislation granting amnesty to most illegal immigrants already here
Extend health care benefits to all legal immigrants, even those recently legitimized by his own amnesty plan
Sharply increase aid to states and cities
Change the ownership and rules of talk radio
Shift our stance from support of Israel to greater sympathy for the Palestinian position
Increase regulation of business
Do more to regulate executive pay
Weaken welfare reform
Cut taxes for 95 percent of Americans while raising them sky high on the rest.
Tax hedge fund and real estate partnership earnings as ordinary income
Cap and trade legislation to charge utilities and industries for their carbon output
Revise NAFTA and restrict free trade
This agenda was not new. It was a greatest-hits collection that revived proposals made by the Democratic-union Left for the past thirty years. But since Lyndon Johnson, and especially in the wake of Ronald Reagan, no Democratic president had dared to embrace it. Even with a Democratic Congress, Bill Clinton pursued only a small part of the liberal program. Politics, after all, is the art of the possible—and, in political terms, the labor/left agenda was clearly impossible.
Obama camouflaged his domestic agenda behind the single overshadowing position of opposition to the war in Iraq. His emphasis on this theme—as opposed to the changes he contemplated at home—distracted us from the essential radicalism of his agenda. Obama may not have been another Bill Ayers or Jeremiah Wright, but he was clearly another Walter Mondale, Jimmy Carter, and Michael Dukakis. He just couldn’t let anyone know.
The swelling casualty count in Iraq disenchanted Americans and distracted them from the importance of preserving our national security. Isolationism and obliviousness to the obvious costs of a premature pullout became the order of the day. As public opinion moved to the left, driven by the incompetence of George W. Bush’s war strategy, Obama seemed to offer a reasonable alternative. His antiwar position—once easily dismissed as turning tail—now looked like a rational position.
The war was an issue that would ratify Obama’s liberalism as centrist, and it gave him the opportunity to hide his radical domestic agenda behind his antiwar rhetoric. As Hillary’s more security-minded position stalled in the mud, Obama’s idealistic stance rode a national wave of war fatigue.
But then a funny thing happened: We started to win in Iraq. Guided by the new strategy of General David Petraeus and the surge in troop strength, the issue began to go away. By the late summer of 2008, Obama was left high and dry by the shifting tide—and his radical agenda threatened to attract newfound, and unwelcome, attention.
OBAMA’S CAMPAIGN: SAVED BY THE CRISIS
When the stock market began its long, dismal crash to the bottom on September 29, 2008, it saved the Obama campaign. The Democratic nominee had never really recovered from the loss of the Iraq issue, and for a moment Sarah Palin’s exciting debut seemed to put Obama on the ropes. But when the market fell apart on Bush’s watch, Obama was saved.
From there, the Democrat coasted. He encountered a momentary speed bump when a plumber named Joe did what the rest of the country had failed to do: read Obama’s program. Accused of raising taxes, the Democrat admitted that he was, in fact, trying to redistribute income. But in the trauma of the crisis nobody listened, and Obama scored his massive victory.
There is, however, one consolation: in a democracy, no victory lasts forever.