Barack Obama has been on the public stage for well over three years. By now it might be assumed his modus operundum would be universally recognized. Whatever else our president is, he has been consistent in how he has approached his job. It should, therefore, be easy to identify his style.
Many have indeed done so. His critics routinely call him a demagogue; which he certainly is. This is a man who habitually seeks to mislead the public. Thus, he regularly declares that he wishes to reduce the budget deficit, but never offers a plan for doing so. Or he tells the voters Republicans want to reduce Medicare benefits to seniors, when he knows full well their proposals exempt current recipients from any changes. Or he claims that the rich do not pay their fair share of taxes when they, in fact, pay the lion’s share.
The president is also man who likes to transfer blame. For a long time his favorite whipping boy was George W. Bush. But recently, he has blamed the Japanese tsunami, the Greek budget crisis, and the Gulf oil spill for our economic woes. Nothing, it seems, is ever his fault. Perhaps it was Rush Limbaugh’s doing all along.
Which reminds me, George W. Bush used to be criticized for his stubbornness. It was said that he refused to make changes. So where are the parallel commentaries on Obama? He is someone who has relentlessly pursued the same policies despite changes in social conditions. Only his words have changed. His deeds have not.
All this is beyond question. No disinterested observer could deny it. Yet denied it is by the president’s partisans. They have managed to keep his approval numbers in the high forties despite his presiding over the longest sustained period of unemployment since the Great Depression.
Here then is the problem: Why do so many people believe Obama when he continues to propagate falsehoods with reckless abandon? Why when he implies that he can reduce the budget deficit by raising taxes on private jet owners do they not realize this is pocket change when the bank itself is going bust?
I submit that there are several reasons, and that Barack himself has identified one of the most important. To begin with, few people are prepared to admit their mistakes. They surely do not want to advertise these to others, but neither do they wish to acknowledge their weaknesses to themselves. This is part of the reason many Jews have taken so long to realize Obama’s policies are anti-Israel.
But there is something of greater significance. One of the president’s books was entitled “The Audacity of Hope.” In this, he struck a chord. People want hope; they need hope. And hope is what he has been selling. In undelivered promise after promise he has played on our nearly universal longing for a better world.
Does it matter that Obama promises to provide benefits for which the necessary resources are unavailable? Apparently not. And what’s wrong with a free lunch or with Medicare subsidies that eventually cost more than the gross national product? After all, don’t we, as Americans, have a right to these? Some would answer yes.
It seems that hope, even when it is unfounded, is difficult to relinquish. People have dreams, and if these are pandered to, they readily believe. They want what they want and hence they persist in believing that it will somehow be available to them.
Yet what is their alternative? The answer is that they would have to give up on their dreams and this is unacceptable. They therefore keep believing what in their heart-of-hearts they must know is untrue because otherwise they would lose hope and sink into a depression they secretly fear might be fatal.
Too many people live empty lives that are only sustained by fooling themselves into believing someday they will be rich, or famous, or, dare I say it, happy. They do not have the courage to face the limitations with which we must all deal and so they convince themselves that these are chimeras the appropriate government program will banish.
Obama feeds on this impulse to self-delusion. One of his central skills is using language to persuade susceptible people that he is their savior. And so they continue to hope no matter how dire their actual circumstances or false his blandishments.
Melvyn L. Fein. Ph.D.
Professor of Sociology
Kennesaw State University
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