Squaring the Culture

Hot Air this morning highlights this article from the Economist, which draws attention to the rising populist tone from both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton on the campaign trail (yes, she’s still officially in the race, for what that’s worth). The Brits, from their objective vantage point on the other side of the Big Pond, are seeing somewhat more clearly than American voters. The emphasis in the first paragraph is mine:

The sad thing is that one might reasonably have expected better from Mr Obama. He wants to improve America’s international reputation yet campaigns against NAFTA. He trumpets “the audacity of hope” yet proposes more government intervention. He might have chosen to use his silver tongue to address America’s problems in imaginative ways—for example, by making the case for reforming the distorting tax code. Instead, he wants to throw money at social problems and slap more taxes on the rich, and he is using his oratorical powers to prey on people’s fears.

Mr Obama advertises himself as something fresh, hopeful and new. But on economic matters at least he, like Mrs Clinton, has begun to look a rather ordinary old-style Democrat.

Given Obama’s personal history and training in radical community organizing, using his oratorical skill to prey on peoples’ fears is what we should expect. I’m pleased that observers are noticing the pattern, but will it be enough? The key to defeating Obama in the fall will be to identify him accurately as the cynical radical that he is, and not allow him to paint himself disingenuously as an optimistic centrist, which he is not.

As expected, Obama’s “new tone” amounts to nothing more than the same, tired class warfare rhetoric we’ve come to expect from the Democratic party. Obama’s public policies are nothing new, he just talks more smoothly. But his rhetoric will change rather dramatically in the general election. Let’s be sure to clip and recycle his rhetoric from the primaries, which are more like what we can truly expect from Mr. Obama.