Why the Right Went Wrong: ConservatismFrom Goldwater to the Tea Party and Beyond by E. J. Dionne Jr

Author:E. J. Dionne Jr. [Dionne, E. J. Jr.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781476763798
Amazon: 1476763798
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2016-01-19T05:00:00+00:00

11

THE LOGIC OF OBSTRUCTION

Why Conservative Opposition to Obama Was Inevitable

“I want to know: why are you people ignoring his birth certificate?”

The popular assumption about our democracy is that when a new president is elected, he gets a “honeymoon” during which the country, including the political opposition, gives him (and, someday, her) a chance to make proposals and even enact them. In this rationalist view of self-government, a new chief executive’s program is given a chance to work. The opposition’s job is, after a decent interval, to point out where the president’s program has failed and propose alternatives. Voters then get a chance to judge an incumbent’s performance, the opposition’s response, and cast ballots accordingly.

This highly idealized view has never been fully accurate, since a party that has lost an election turns immediately—which is to say, twenty-four hours after the ballots are cast—to figuring out why it was defeated and how to win the next time. Many of the warm words opposition leaders pronounce on their newly elected adversary are typically, and mostly rightly, written off by voters as hollow niceties. Politics in a democracy never really stops.

Nonetheless, Barack Hussein Obama may be the first president in American history who never got a single day of honeymoon time.

It’s true that there was cheering (and self-congratulation) across party lines over the election of the first African-American president in the country’s history. The campaign’s rough moments when Obama’s race did seem to be a problem for many voters were forgotten. Obama himself encouraged the country to give itself a pat on the back. “If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible,” he declared in his election night victory speech before a throng of 250,000 in Chicago’s Grant Park, “who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time, who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer.” When they spoke with pollsters, Americans seemed inclined to share in the celebration. Obama’s 68 percent approval rating coming into office was much higher than that of nearly all other recent presidents. Only John F. Kennedy at 72 percent approval in 1961, topped him, only Eisenhower tied him, and only Jimmy Carter, at 66 percent in 1977, came close. By contrast, Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush took office with the barest majority of public approval at 51 percent. Even Republicans seemed ready to give Obama the benefit of the doubt: 43 percent of them said they approved of Obama, 30 percent disapproved, and 27 percent expressed no opinion.

Yet from the very beginning of his presidency, Obama would be vexed by the peculiar political circumstances of a deeply divided country. To give the invocation at his inauguration, Obama chose Rick Warren, the popular evangelical pastor whose conservative politics had not gotten in the way of his inviting Obama to his mega-congregation at the Saddleback Church in California. Warren had endured much denunciation from the religious right because of Obama’s views on abortion, so Obama’s invitation was an expression of appreciation.

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