How to think about the upcoming Obama presidency? Nick Gillespie of Reason offers three predictions here. They can be summed up as: more of the same with different branding.
In fact, I will make explicit the hypothesis that Nick leaves implicit: you can make a very strong argument that Obama is really out third democrat president in a row. Other than stem cells, abortion and, maybe (or maybe not, the more I think about it), aggrandizing the executive, everything he did is standard issue democrat presidential behavior: profligate domestic spending (he channels LBJ - is it something about Texas?), moralistic foreign wars (channeling Woodrow Wilson, JFK and LBJ - WMD are the Gulf of Tonkin of the 21st century), moral scolding (channeling JFK on what you can do for your country and Tipper Gore on popular culture), more drug war insanity (channeling the Clintons and also, of course, for the children) and federalizing government primary and secondary education (channeling every president at least since LBJ).
Indeed, and quite seriously, it has always puzzled me why the democrats disliked Bush so much when all he did was expand government size and power, just as they would have done but with a different color of paint. I recognize that there are segments of the democrat coalition who do not like individual aspects of this policy portfolio, but they are minority segments, soon to be very disappointed when, as Nick predicts, Obama does just what the generals tell him to do in Iraq, just what the FBI tells him to do on domestic surveillance and so on.
Addendum: In response to the last paragraph, a reader writes "Envy: people always resent those who show them up by doing a better job than they can at their self regarded specialty."
Whew.
7 years ago
