(Centennial Fellow) Fred Barnes’s wrote in today’s Wall Street Journal that the health-care plan, if passed, will be “a paramount issue in the 2012 presidential race, regardless of whether Mr. Obama is on the ballot.” (See full quote and link at the end of this post.)
If Obama is on the ballot? I have said that there is a reasonable chance Barrack Obama will not get the nomination of his party. Why? First, the progressive wing will spin off a candidate or even rend the Democratic party. History is against me as no sitting president has ever been ‘evicted’ by his party; think Gerald Ford, who came close. Second, Hillary is in the wings. Does anyone think she is not plotting to get the big chair? If I were in charge of her campaign for the White House I would show clips of her 2008 campaign when she was attacking Obama, e.g., ‘his need for on the job training,’ etc. the fact is that Hillary had it exactly correct in 2008, Obama was not ready. Lastly, Obama might not even run. I don’t think he likes, enjoys being president.
Why wouldn’t he enjoy being president? Obama is the product of far too may wine and cheese parties with the intellectuals, elites and academics of the left. As a grad student at NYU in the 1980s a fellow student, a reporter, snuck me into two of these parties held on the Upper East Side of the city. These were the most insular people I had ever met; not one had ever mown their own lawn. I was reminded of the, possibly apocryphal, comment of New York Times movie critic Pauline Kael upon the election of Richard Nixon. “I don’t think Nixon was really elected” she supposedly said, “I don’t know a single person who voted for him.” The one thing I do remember was walking by two women who didn’t believe there were any women who were against abortion. If I am correct and this was Obama’s preparation for the presidency, it would make sense that he truly believes he and his friends have solved all the problems and they only need to implement their brilliant policies and opposition would melt away.
But he went to Harvard Law, you might say. This is the most puzzling thing to me. He has taught constitution law and was a U.S. Senator for two years. Yet, when asked in one of the first press conferences, “what has surprised you the most…” his response was how long it takes to get things done. If you understand the Madisonian system of government, the constitution, this is the essence of our system. The assumption is we are a liberal people who have differing opinions, ideas, etc. Thus, there are no ideal policies. For one faction to ‘win’ would be cause political violence. Thus, the main aim of the constitution is to avoid factional violence, not create the best policy. Factional or political violence is avoided by forcing compromise through checks and balances. The end result is that everyone comes away from government equally unhappy but not thinking the other guys got more than me.
My limited imagination can come up with only two possibilities: Obama was never exposed to the Madisonian system of government or, the Constitution is merely an auxiliary precaution which must take a back seat to the enlightened statesmen.
Fred Barnes in WSJ 3/18/10… “Assuming it passes, ObamaCare wouldn’t go into effect fully until 2013. This fact alone would make the health-care plan a paramount issue in the 2012 presidential race, regardless of whether Mr. Obama is on the ballot. As long as he’s president, Mr. Obama would surely veto legislation to repeal or gut ObamaCare. With a Republican in the White House things would be different. Republicans might be successful in dismantling the program.”
