President Obama Invokes FDR in His DNC Speech

     It was a fitting end to a rousing convention. I like that he got in a reference to the greatest Democrat ever.

     "It will take more than a few years for us to solve challenges that have built up over decades. It will require common effort, shared responsibility, and the kind of bold, persistent experimentation that Franklin Roosevelt pursued during the only crisis worse than this one."

     http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/316181/obamas-inspiration-fdr-john-fund

     This is fitting as that is what this election is really about. It's a referendum all right, a referendum on FDR himself.

     I've noticed that a lot of conservative writers have been talking about Obama's untoward, sinister, progressive goals-George Will, Charles Krauthammer, John Fund.

     So it's a very good thing for the President to embrace FDR. Here's John Fund:

     "Obama meant his citation of Roosevelt’s 1932 call for “bold, persistent experimentation” as a rallying cry, but investors and economic analysts are likely to be unsettled by his historical invocation. One of the biggest reasons for our current economic malaise is Obama’s embrace of experimental nostrums and dubious bailout programs. The uncertainty such programs have helped keep over $2 trillion of capital on the sidelines of our economy, unavailable for job creation and economic expansion."

    Krauthammer, talks about a sinister "real Obama" who intends to take us down his fiendish path to transform America in a second term. These conservative writers seem to find something untoward in phrases like "transform America."

   If you notice, when conservative pundits discuss the President's speeches, they always get caught on the idea that the President somehow represents a radical departure from what America meant before. Indeed, they even lashed out at Michelle Obama at the beginning of the President's term when she expressed that she was the most proud she'd ever been of America.

  They seized this and snarled, "Oh, well, I guess America was no good before Mr. Hope and Change came out to save it from itself."

   In a piece yesterday, Krauthammer also went after the First Lady.

   "The real job of Clintonizing Obama was left to Mrs. Obama. As she told it in the convention’s most brilliantly cynical speech, her husband is not just profoundly compassionate but near-Gandhiesque in feelings.
Others spoke about what Obama had done. Michelle’s job was to provide the why: because he cares. Her talk was a syllogism: Barack loves his wife, he loves his children, he loves his family — therefore, he loves you."

   "I have no doubt about the first three propositions, but the fourth is a complete non sequitur. We were assured, nonetheless, that the president is a saintly man, dispensing succor — health care (with free contraceptives), auto bailouts, fairness lawsuits — to his people. The flood of tears in the hall testified to the power of this spousal paean. Its brilliance lay in Michelle’s success in draining from Obama any hint of ideological or personal motivation."

   "The problem with swallowing the “he cares, therefore he does” line is that it so plainly contradicts what we’ve seen over the past four years. Barack Obama is a deeply committed social democrat who laid out an unashamedly left-liberal agenda at the very beginning of his presidency and then proceeded to try to enact it.
Obama passed Obamacare, regulated Wall Street, subsidized Solyndra because that fits an ambitious left-wing agenda developed in his youth, now made possible by his power: redistributionist, government-centered, disdainful of success, suspicious of private enterprise, committed to his own vision of social justice."

   "Also missing from the first lady’s speech was any hint of his outsized self-regard and personal ambition. Is he pursuing reelection because he cares? Or because it’s the ultimate vindication of the self-created man who came from nowhere to seize the prize? And whom defeat would turn into a historical parenthesis?"

   "In 2008, Obama tellingly said that Ronald Reagan was historically consequential in a way that Bill Clinton was not. Obama clearly sees himself as the anti-Reagan, the man who reverses the 30-year conservative trajectory that Reagan launched (hence his consequentiality), and returns America to the 50-year liberal ascendancy that FDR began and Reagan terminated."

   "This makes you world-historical. This is what drives the man who kept inserting the phrase “New Foundation” in the major speeches he gave in the early months of his presidency. The slogan was meant to make him the rightful heir to the authors of the “New Deal” and “New Frontier.”

   "The phrase never took. But the ambition was unmistakable."

     http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/charles-krauthammer-the-empathy-gap/2012/09/06/b0ec930a-f85c-11e1-8b93-c4f4ab1c8d13_story.html?hpid=z4

     I don't think anyone else in the world found Michelle's speech "brilliantly cynical" though certainly brilliant. But really Krauthammer's argument has no logic. Because the President is a left-liberal this means he doesn't care about the country?  Only those who aren't liberals care?

    Also note the strange riffs on Obama's "outsize self-regard and ambition." Partly you can't help but wonder if Krauthammer resents the idea of a black man being so uppity as to have a high self regard and deep ambition.

   In another way, I guess it's an obsession of conservatism. Note the sneering about being "world-historical."

   In the conservative world view, there is nothing ever new under the sun. The very suggestion that there could be strikes them as an affront to Natural Law itself. And indeed, George Will also went after the President for his nefarious goal to subvert Natural Law.

   But it gets to the idea that the conservatives see this election as a referendum of the New Deal.

   That is what it is. A Romney victory means the end of the New Deal. So it's good for the President to embrace FDR. Because that's who the Republicans are running against.

    P.S. Let's hope that Krauthammer is right about the President's ambition to reverse the 30 year conservative trend. There are many who still swear he's not a real liberal. I disagree which is why I support him so passionately.

    In some ways though, Obama may have been wrong about Clinton if he said that his Presidency wasn't transformative.

    It has at the least been transformative of Presidential elections. Before Clinton, the Republicans had won 5 of 6 elections, their last 4 victories they had won at least 41 states and 432 electoral votes in each.

    Since Clinton's win, the Republicans have won the popular vote only once and the Repubs seem to be permanently shut out of New York, California, New Jersey, and Massachusetts. Every Democratic candidate is already guaranteed about 240 electoral votes just for passing go.

    P.S.S. The case for Obama as transformative is buttressed by his signature healthcare legislation-the ACA.

    That created a new entitlement and this is what conservatives fight tooth and nail more than anything. Once they are started they never end. As long as Obama wins then, the government will have a permanently more activist role in ensuring health insurance for those who can't afford it.

    This will halt a 30 year trend where government has been consistently rolled back. It will be the first time that the New Deal advanced rather than just played defense-as it did successfully in Bush's second term.