The latest attempt at rationalization from our friends on the left is that their devastating electoral rebuke is the result of “bad messaging.” In other words, BHO, the man who evoked hosannas as the most eloquent and effective communicator since FDR, if not Lincoln (if not Jesus Christ and/or Julius Caesar), was a victim of his own unfortunate tongue-tiedness. If only he could have gotten out his message of hope and change, his dwindling admirers lament, we could have kept marching toward the New Jerusalem of social justice and universal entitlement.
The subtext of such remarks, of course, is that we, the lumpen bozos, are too dense to appreciate the brilliance and moral superiority of the vanguard elite who bring us, out of the goodness of their hearts, “progressive” policies. Leaving that problematic idea aside for a moment, it should be noted that the Democrats have actually begun to get a glimmer of a hint of a clue when they say they have a messaging problem. That’s because you really do have a problem when the main thing you communicate is arrogance.
The latest proof of this is soon-to-be-ex-Speaker Pelosi’s act of noblesse oblige: She’s determined to keep leading (and pushing) the congressional Democrats off a cliff, thus helping preserve (to the Republicans’ glee) a constant reminder of the three amigos of the Dempocalypse: Obama, Pelosi, and Reid. How to explain such a comically bone-headed move? Simple: It’s the very essence of arrogance.
It’s the same arrogance that withheld what we wanted (a growth-friendly government) while giving us what we didn’t want — a “stimulus” that mainly transferred money to unionized public workers (and thus back to the Democrats themselves via the dues siphon), a “cap-and-tax” bill, and a government takeover of Detroit, student loans, and health care. And that congratulated itself at every turn. And the same arrogance that sees us as small-minded wretches who can’t understand all this beneficence. Such overweening arrogance is a byproduct of delusion.
And Pelosi actually does see herself as an avatar of progressive enlightenment. For our own good, mind you, she’s determined to drag us, kicking and screaming, toward cradle-to-grave bliss. As she no doubt firmly believes, the work of improving benighted humanity must continue, and she’s just the one to do it. Could there be a better example of deluded arrogance?
Well, how about Barack “The Shining One” Obama? When he said, “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for,” wasn’t he really saying, “I’m the one you’ve been waiting for”? He sold himself as the messiah not only of a weary United States but of a world weary of the United States back in ’08, when so many voters seemed to be guzzling Kool-Aid. And now, his delusions of grandeur having fallen around his ears, he has the epic gall to tell us that we’re the problem! If only we could have put aside our petty fears and focused on his sheer epoch-making magnitude, he’d still have both houses of Congress. (And a virtual lock on creating a more radical federal judiciary to boot.) If there were a Richter scale for self-regard, he’d drive the cursor off the chart.
Compounding their arrogance is the fact that the Democrats have largely become the party of people fundamentally ashamed, in some sense, of being Americans. Affluent tri-coastal Obama-Pelosi liberals, with their high IQs, advanced degrees, and jobs that often seem, at least to them, to owe nothing to the grubby world of commerce, manufacturing, and marketing, are desperate to create an America that won’t embarrass the Harvard faculty. Of course, that would imply that they don’t think very much of the country most Americans are actually quite fond of, a stance that could be expected to have harsh repercussions in a democracy. But they see that as our problem, not theirs.
Just as the ancient Croesus is still associated with unimaginable wealth and Pyrrhus with unaffordable victory, so may Obama be associated, down the ages, with unfathomable arrogance.
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