I imagine that at some point later in the day, maybe after he woke up from a nap aboard his flight to Texas, someone tentatively explained to George W. Bush that he had been dissed by the following passage in President Obama's inaugural speech:
As for our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals. Our Founding Fathers, faced with perils we can scarcely imagine, drafted a charter to assure the rule of law and the rights of man, a charter expanded by the blood of generations. Those ideals still light the world, and we will not give them up for expedience's sake. And so to all other peoples and governments who are watching today, from the grandest capitals to the small village where my father was born: know that America is a friend of each nation and every man, woman, and child who seeks a future of peace and dignity, and that we are ready to lead once more.
Recall that earlier generations faced down fascism and communism not just with missiles and tanks, but with sturdy alliances and enduring convictions. They understood that our power alone cannot protect us, nor does it entitle us to do as we please. Instead, they knew that our power grows through its prudent use; our security emanates from the justness of our cause, the force of our example, the tempering qualities of humility and restraint.
It was kind of the new President to use a word like "expedience," which was guaranteed to go over the former President's head. It allowed Bush, at least while he sat on stage, to remain blissfully unaware that the major operative principle of his presidency (the Unitary Theory, under which he could do anything he wanted) had just been trashed. Although it must be pointed out that O's hortatory examples are in fact false. During World War II President Roosevelt rounded up, dispossessed, and shipped off to concentration camps thousands of innocent Americans of Japanese ancestry. So American ethnocentrism and unconstitutional oppression of target groups have been around for a long time. There was no "humility and restraint" about jailing the Japanese at Manzanar, Tule Lake and elsewhere, and after their ordeal was over, there was nothing "just" about compounding this disgraceful episode by refusing to return to them their houses, cars, fishing boats, businesses and other stolen property. But it sounded so good to put Bush down by comparing him to an imaginary, idealized tradition. If we want to commend ourselves, it would perhaps be better to argue that our concentration camps, such as Manzanar and Guantanamo have been "nice" (or "first rate," in Wheelchair Dick's description) compared to the Soviet Gulag or Auschwitz, and let it go at that. Our concentration camps are still monstrosities of injustice, they still completely ruin the lives of their inmates, but we're "good," as Bush always argued, and in a sense he's right. We're much better in our injustice than Stalin or Hitler and for that we should commend ourselves.
Just as a general proposition, on the other hand, we might want to introduce the concept of realism as we move forward and give up once and for all the idea of American Exceptionalism because it's only getting in the way. One way of looking at our economic problems, which are huge, is that they reflect that reality. I think there is a lingering feeling that the object of Obama's "recovery" plan is to restore America to that level of wealth and prosperity which it seemed to enjoy at the height of the housing bubble in 2006. This is entirely chimerical. In corporate law the concept of "watered stock," a term which has surprisingly fallen out of general use, refers to common stock where the total worth of such stock is less than the capital investment in the corporation. When the "water" is squeezed out of the nominal value of the stock, it more closely approximates the true financial position of the company.
The national epidemic of upside-down loans, of negative equity, of foreclosures, of plummeting commercial real estate, of ravaged financial statements at all the major banks, the trashed Dow Jones -- these are all signs of that squeezing process. We're about 40% down across the board, and it is futile to attempt to reinflate the bubble which sustained our artificial level of wealth because it relied on conditions which will not be repeated.
I think President O gets all this; unlike the idiot who preceded him, Obama thinks rationally and arrives at consensus reality the way smart people usually do. He's not a "free market" ideologue who worships at the throne of Milton Friedman. I think he'll do what can be done to transform the American economy, but he's going to meet with powerful resistance from the tiny sliver of America's business world who profited from the Bush/Clinton Casino days and the legislators who work for them. But great men are those who meet great challenges and succeed against all odds. You go, O.
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