Streetwise Professor

Harry Jaffa argues that Lincoln was different from his political peers in that he believed the Declaration of Independence, rather than the Constitution, to be the seminal document of the American Founding.  Lincoln believed, and fervently so, that the Declaration literally meant what it said: that all men are created equal.  He further believed that it was his solemn duty as a statesman to ensure that the nation realized that ideal.

Obama has been compared to Lincoln, largely on the basis of some superficial similarities.  (Very superficial.  Like: “tall guys from Illinois.”)  But it is clear on the substance, and on the belief in the truth and relevance of the Declaration, that the comparison is decidedly inapt.  Indeed, laughable.  Lincoln’s commitment to the Declaration, and the belief that the United States was indeed the “last, best hope of earth” was fervent, undeniable, and repeatedly expressed.  Lincoln did believe that America was exceptional, and that it although it was flawed, it embodied an ideal that was an example for all of humanity.

In contrast, Obama’s views on those propositions are, at best, ambivalent.  As Charles Kessler of the Claremont Review of Books writes:

The second new element in President Obama’s liberalism is even more striking than its postmodernism. It is how uncomfortable he is with American exceptionalism—and thus with America itself. President Obama considers this country deeply flawed from its very beginnings. He means not simply that slavery and other kinds of fundamental injustice existed, which everyone would admit. He means that the Declaration of Independence, when it said that all men are created equal, did not mean to include blacks or anyone else who is not a property-holding, white, European male—an argument put forward infamously by Chief Justice Roger Taney in the Dred Scott decision, and one that was powerfully refuted by Abraham Lincoln.

In short, President Obama agrees with his former minister, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, much more than he let on as a presidential candidate. Read closely, his famous speech on that subject in March 2008 doesn’t hide his conclusion that Wright was correct—that America is a racist and ungodly country (hence, not “God Bless America,” but “God Damn America!”). Obama agrees with Wright that in its origin, and for most of its history, America was racist, sexist, and in various ways vicious. Wright’s mistake, Obama said, was underestimating America’s capacity for change—a change strikingly illustrated by Obama’s own advances and his later election. For Obama, Wright’s mistake turned on not what America was, but what America could become—especially after the growth of liberalism in our politics in the course of the 20th century. It was only liberalism that finally made America into a decent country, whereas for most of its history it was detestable.

Unlike most Americans, President Obama still bristles at any suggestion that our nation is better or even luckier than other nations. To be blunt, he despises the notion that Americans consider themselves special among the peoples of the world. This strikes him as the worst sort of ignorance and ethnocentrism, which is why it was so difficult for him to decide to wear an American flag lapel pin when he started running for president, even though he knew it was political suicide to refuse wearing it.

As President Obama hinted in his Berlin speech during the campaign, he really thinks of himself as a multiculturalist, as a citizen of the world, first, and only incidentally as an American. To put it differently, he regards patriotism as morally and intellectually inferior to cosmopolitanism. And, of course, he is never so much a citizen of the world as when defending the world’s environment against mankind’s depredations, and perhaps especially America’s depredations. In general, the emotionalist defense of the earth—think of Al Gore—is now a vital part of the liberalism of our day. It’s a kind of substitute for earlier liberals’ belief in progress. Although his own election—and secondarily liberalism’s achievements over the past century or so—help to redeem America in his view, Obama remains, in many ways, profoundly disconnected from his own land.

This is a very different state of mind and character from that of Franklin Roosevelt, who was the kind of progressive who thought that America was precisely the vanguard of moral progress in the world. This was the way Woodrow Wilson, Lyndon Johnson, and every great liberal captain before Obama thought about his country—as a profoundly moral force in the world, leading the nations of the world toward a better and more moral end point. Obama doesn’t think that way, and therefore his mantle as an American popular leader—despite his flights of oratorical prowess—doesn’t quite fit him in the way that FDR’s fit him. One can see this in the tinges of irony that creep into Obama’s rhetoric now and then—the sense that even he doesn’t quite believe what he’s saying; and he knows that but hopes that you don’t.

Obama’s ambivalence is, in many ways, the perfect symbol of the dilemma of the contemporary liberal.

As people have become increasingly aware of this ambivalence, Obama’s popularity has plunged.  And there is a growing realization that “ambivalence” might actually understate the matter.  Obama’s associations of a lifetime, of whom the aforementioned Reverend Wright is just one, are anything but ambivalent in their views of America.  If they believe that America is exceptional, it is only because they believe that America is exceptionally malign, evil even.  There is a suspicion that political caginess leads Obama to conceal his true sympathies for these views.  The habitual apologies, the routine criticism of his country while abroad, the notable imbalance between criticism and praise of the country’s past and legacy, all contribute to a palpable fear that Obama is actually the anti-Lincoln.

This unease–to put it mildly–that many people have with Obama is much more visceral, and much more important, than disagreements about this health care policy or that, or the handling of the Gulf oil spill.  Indeed, for many people the significance of these things is not the policy specifics themselves, but what these policies reveal about Obama’s heartfelt beliefs about the nation and its meaning.  A fear that he does not share their beliefs about the country, its ethos, and its values.

I think this helps explain the tremendous anxiety in the country.  Yes, dreary economic news and the steady bubbling of oil from the Gulf contribute to that anxiety.  But it is more than that.  More basic.  An anxiety rooted in a fear that they are being governed by a foreigner.  Not a foreigner in the birther “he was born in [state country of choice here]” (non-)sense.  But a foreigner in the sense of someone alien to, or at the very least alienated from, their beliefs about America and what it means.

Divides over belief are much more intractable than divides over policies.  The latter are amenable to compromise, and can be influenced by facts and data.  The former, cannot.  Which means that the next two plus years will be as tumultuous politically as any period in recent American history.  Obama and his ilk are notable for their Europhilia, and we are on the brink of descending into a European-style political conflict that America has largely avoided in large part because of a shared belief in some fundamental tenets about the country’s political meaning and heritage that is typically lacking in Europe.  The fear that the president, and a large fraction of his political allies, do not share those beliefs will make the coming political conflicts and campaigns of a like not seen in this country in living memory.