What’s Going On?

You know we've got to find a way
To bring some lovin' here today – Ya

--Marvin Gaye, “What’s Going On”


1.

Camille Paglia, a noted anti-feminist, is unhappy with how Obama is handling health care specifically and domestic policy in general. But she writes in the liberal “Salon,” and she wants to keep elite readers listening to her views. So here’s how she establishes her bona fides:

Buyer's remorse? Not me. . . President Obama. . .representing the U.S. with dignity and authority abroad. This is why I, for one, voted for Obama and continue to support him. The damage done to U.S. prestige by the feckless, buffoonish George W. Bush will take years to repair.

Comment: So what if “old Europe” elites attacked their American friends for letting cowboys into the White House? It’s embarrassing we still cater to that prejudice. Bush correctly backed Eastern European countries against Russian bullying, removed al Qaeda from Afghanistan, liberated Iraq from Saddam and stayed until American-led forces defeated both al Qaeda Iraq and the Iran-backed al Sadr militia, dealt effectively with China and India, skillfully with Pakistan, and did his best to isolate Iran. Today, the U.S. stands taller in the eyes of all who care about those accomplishments. But in Paglia’s world (a large one), Bush remains a “feckless buffoon”. No wonder liberals and conservatives don’t get along.

2.

Dorothy Rabinowitz of the Wall Street Journal editorial board has found the White House’s only real war. It’s on fellow Americans:

former ABC reporter Linda Douglass [launched the] White House effort to set Americans against one another—the good Americans protecting the president’s health-care program [against] the bad Americans fighting it and undermining truth and goodness. . .[White House operatives] are . . . concerned with just one message. Which is that the Obama adminis- tration is in possession of vital answers to ills and inequities that have long afflicted American society (whether Americans know it or not), and that those opposed . . . are cynics, or operatives of the powerful vested interests responsible for the plight Americans find themselves in (whether they know it or not), or political enemies bent on destroying the Obama administration.

Comment: America has real enemies. They are overseas, not at home.

3.

Fred Hiatt, Washington Post editorial page editor, writes that Obama has lined up:

key players who in the past would have opposed reform: insurers, the drug industry, hospitals, the American Medical Association.

Comment: OK, so the key industry leadership—insurers, the drug makers, the hospitals—and the key union (the American Medical Association) are all on board. Game over. Isn’t America just labor plus management chiefs, and when they agree, it’s settled?

Hiatt, you’re not serious! As I said, Obama’s problem with health care reform is that most people are happy with what they have, and feel threatened by change. That’s the main show. What a strange view to think of the politics of health care reform as just buying off the leadership of industry and labor. Honestly, wake up. Smell the unwashed masses.

4.

Andrew Breitbart at breitbart.com writes:

The mainstream media and the Democratic Party are working in concert to make sure that what happened to President Bush -- sustained organized grass-roots protests ("mobs," if you will), relentless media criticism and permanent opposition- party obstructionism -- does not happen to their guy.

Comment: Breitbart is onto something. The media know that though there were many, they needed just a few anti-Bush folks to build the story America was fed up with our president. Now all of a sudden, a few people are on TV attacking Obama. Don’t people know how easy it is to find folks who share the reporter’s view? Media folks are saying, “We did it, so we’re qualified to expose any such effort as false. We’ll make sure they don’t do to us what we did to them.”

Can’t we instead just listen to the people’s various voices?