THE RIGHT SITE

We Know Best

Hillary Clinton might as well be Barack Obama in drag and whiteface. They have the same background, same beliefs, and same policies. A vote for Hillary will be a vote for four more years of Barack. Both capitalize on identity politics. They’ve spent most of their working lives in government and have a dripping disdain for the private sector. (Obama: “You didn’t build that!”; Hillary: “I can’t be responsible for every under-capitalized small business in America!” when informed Hillarycare could bankrupt many such businesses.) They champion a government take over of health care. With all their hearts they believe in government: more regulation, taxes, and redistribution to Democratic voters and donors. Their faith has been richly rewarded, in a monetary if not a spiritual sense.

The similarities go deeper. Despite their busy schedules, they find time to write self-justificatory, idea-lite books that many buy and most never read. They see their personas and policies in grandiose terms (“the politics of meaning”; “hope and change”), but on the ground, or what most people call “real life,” they demonstrate deficiencies: surrounding themselves with sycophants, bristling at dissent or criticism, and making remarkably maladroit statements (“... they cling to guns or religion...”;  “We came out of the White House not only dead broke but in debt.”). Fortunately for them, they are shielded by a fawning press that shares their politics, downplays their mistakes, and does not investigate their scandals.

As helpful as the press has been, Hill and The One’s ultimate shield is the 47 percent (give or take a percentage point or two). There is no surer way to doom a presidential campaign than to tell the truth, but Mitt Romney’s infamous remark got it right. Close to a majority of Americans receive sustenance from the government; Democrats are the party of government; people don’t vote against their meal ticket. The Democratic posture is cloyingly condescending, but transparent: we know best and you can’t make it without us. The more recipients believe that, the more inclined they are to vote Democratic. The Republicans adopt a Democrat-lite policy—if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em—never killing government programs (talk of rescinding Obamacare has already died down), settling for “reforming” them by spending a percentage point or two less than the Democrats. Those dependent upon the government prefer to sell their votes to genuine, not “me-too” Democrats.

The Republicans carry their own “we know best” baggage. Vietnam offered a number of lessons for politicians. If you need to lie to the country to gain its support for a war, you’ll eventually lose that support. Keep a tight rein on the intelligence agencies and don’t accept what they say as gospel. If the government you are allied with is corrupt and repressive, it will lose the support of its own people. Invading a country is relatively easy, compared to the political reconstruction, insurgencies, and guerrilla warfare that follow. Foreign war is a dangerous, time-consuming, expensive, and often dirty business, and the American people do not automatically rally around the flag or stay rallied. When we invaded Iraq and Afghanistan, those hard won lessons were ignored; wishful thinking and we-know-best prevailed.

Americans have not rallied around never ending occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq—turning them into garrison states—to secure our tenuous victories, achieved at a cost of trillions of dollars and thousands of lives. Nor have they rallied around our involvement in the rebellion against Bashar al-Assad in Syria, notwithstanding red lines, alleged chemical warfare, and the embarrassment of Putin pulling Obama from the hole he had dug for himself. The dream of a peaceful, democratic Middle East imposed by the US is dead. The most ardent proponents of intervention in Iraq limit their proposals to advisors, bombing, and intelligence, recognizing that as the outer limit of what the American people might support. (Proponents do themselves no favor letting I-know-best Dick Cheney argue their case.)

The war on terrorism’s national security apparatus obliterates personal privacy and constitutes a clear and present danger to our civil liberties. The “trust us” defense offered since Snowden’s revelations has been undermined by the programs’ breathtaking scope and intrusiveness, the failure to demonstrate any terrorist attacks thwarted, past abuses, and the obvious threat of future abuses.

The we-know-best cohort is now trying to convince us that people who have immigrated to this country, violating its laws, should be allowed “a path to citizenship.” It’s a matter of “love,” according to we-know-best Jeb, of the we-know-best Bushes. Open borders are incompatible with welfare states, as the current flood of immigrants from Central America demonstrates. They don’t all dream the same by-the-bootstraps American dream as Emma Lazarus’s “tired,” “poor,” “huddled masses”—many of them are looking for a handout. No secret why the Democrats favor immigration “reform”; Obama might as well be standing at the border handing out checks and Democratic voter registration cards as the 47 percent become the 48, 49, 50, and so on percent.

The Republican leadership, afraid to challenge the welfare state, is trying to bludgeon its members into party immolation. That leadership is now minus pro-reform Eric Cantor. Virginia Republicans didn’t buy the argument that a path to citizenship in exchange for phony promises of better border control would somehow, someday turn the Democrats’ second most reliable voting block into Republican stalwarts.

Nixing Middle East occupation and Syrian involvement, continuing uproars over the surveillance state and Obamacare, Cantor’s defeat...dare we hope that some significant portion of the American populace reject “we know best” and are ready to regain control of their own lives? If all we get in 2016 is a non-choice between a Bush and a Clinton, the answer is no. However, “we know best” will inevitably collapse under the weight of its own hubris.

Robert Gore, straightlinelogic.com, robertgore1@me.com

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