Obama-Supporting Conservatives Begin to Backpedal

David Brooks, one of my favorite writers, is joining the growing ranks of conservatives that endorsed then-candidate Obama last year and are now having a bit of buyer’s remorse.

 

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Those of us who consider ourselves moderates – moderate-conservative, in my case – are forced to confront the reality that Barack Obama is not who we thought he was. His words are responsible; his character is inspiring. But his actions betray a transformational liberalism that should put every centrist on notice. As Clive Crook, an Obama admirer, wrote in The Financial Times, the Obama budget “contains no trace of compromise. It makes no gesture, however small, however costless to its larger agenda, of a bipartisan approach to the great questions it addresses. It is a liberal’s dream of a new New Deal.”

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It’s interesting that it wasn’t the Stimulus Bill that turned heads, but rather the President’s first  budget, which is sweeping in its partisan changes. I mourn the changes to the DC voucher program, as does Brooks. He includes other complaints as well:

 

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The U.S. has never been a society riven by class resentment. Yet the Obama budget is predicated on a class divide. The president issued a read-my-lips pledge that no new burdens will fall on 95 percent of the American people. All the costs will be borne by the rich and all benefits redistributed downward.

The U.S. has always been a decentralized nation, skeptical of top-down planning. Yet, the current administration concentrates enormous power in Washington, while plan after plan emanates from a small group of understaffed experts.

The U.S. has always had vibrant neighborhood associations. But in its very first budget, the Obama administration raises the cost of charitable giving. It punishes civic activism and expands state intervention.

The U.S. has traditionally had a relatively limited central government. But federal spending as a share of G.D.P. is zooming from its modern norm of 20 percent to an unacknowledged level somewhere far beyond.

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Before he was inaugurated President Obama indicated he had learned from the lessons of  the Clinton years and was determined not to overreach in his first two years. Can we really say that he hasn’t? And we are just 6 weeks into his administration. While on one hand I admire the President’s fearlessness, but one has to wonder if it is a product of the times or a product of liberal arrogance? Liberals were given a country engaged in two wars, a severely damaged economy and a general sense that Washington was bad news. I don’t think that was a green light to try out every liberal idea they have been sitting on for the last 8 years.

I think it’s a safe statement to say that Obama has already sealed the fate of his party in 2010 and maybe 2012. What that fate will be depends on the success of their programs, but there is no turning back now. They are committed and again, the comparisons to Bush on the eve of the war in Iraq are appropriate. The only problem is that there is no solid alternative should Democrats self-destruct.

 

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The only thing more scary than Obama’s experiment is the thought that it might fail and the political power will swing over to a Republican Party that is currently unfit to wield it.

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Brooks goes on to say that in order to fight off this excessive liberalism and also stave off a premature return to power for the Right, the center must hold. He suggests they act as a sort of buffer and suggest compromise positions that will calm the outrage on the Right and prevent a liberal rampage on the Left. On this score he may be right, but recent history shows us that in partisan politics the middle is only important in election years. Can the center organize itself enough to restore calm in the coming days? I don’t know.