How You Know Obama’s Winning
Just an addendum to Dave’s insightful post: when you see conservatives lauding President Obama’s Nobel speech or his Afghanistan policy by, say, comparing something to George W. Bush’s speeches, that’s how you know Obama is winning. Appropriation and recontextualization is the tribute political vice plays to political virtue. Democrats did much the same thing with, say, Bush’s education policies or his unsuccessful immigration initiative, except they largely stayed away from saying things like, “Bush gives a speech that Ted Kennedy or Bill Clinton might have given …”
In any event, note another neat trick: when Obama does something conservatives dislike, it’s proof of his out-of-control liberalism. When Obama does something conservatives like, it’s proof of how liberals are pathetically impotent. Conservative punditry may not be very original these days, but at least predictability can be comforting.
