President Hamlet

by Victor Davis Hanson - February 2nd, 2009 - National Review

Remember, there is no press now, at least as we have known it since Watergate. Sometime around mid-2007, during its coverage of the Democratic primary, it ceased to be investigatory and chose to become an adulatory megaphone. A news story on the front pages of the New York Times or Washington Post, or a piece aired on NPR, or a feature in Time or Newsweek, is simply a disguised op-ed on yet another under[ ]appreciated moral or intellectual gift of Barack Obama. He has transcended the traditional doctrinaire support for liberal governance and become a sort of talisman that offers exemption to our elite from all sorts of guilt and anguish in matters ranging from race at home to multicultural sensitivity abroad.

Obama, unlike Bush, is an adherent of the therapeutic mindset. The recession was caused by “them”—Wall Street greed mostly—and never “us,” we who borrowed too much for houses we could not afford and things we did not need. The solution will be the European socialist model, in which a few thousand well-trained elites, educated at our best Ivy League law and business schools, will form partnerships with private enterprise. These Guardians will make major economic decisions and redistribute wealth through high taxes and massive entitlements—albeit with the understanding that the managerial class in both business and government will enjoy lifestyles similar to those they led in the past.

I like to call this partnership between government and corporate management of capitalism crony capitalism. Great new word for our vocabulary in the 21st century political world. It is the most accurate denunciation I have heard for Wall Street's sell out to socialism. The press is a part of the new tyranny Obama is installing, and so is Wall Street.

Where does that leave us? Conservatives and libertarians need to wake up fast. Before this one term of Obama is over, freedom could be dead.

As usual with the intellectual giant, Victor Davis Hanson, the Hamlet allusion provides interesting fodder for Obama analysis. Is Alinsky the ghost from Shakespeare's Hamlet? Or is the allusion to Hamlet simply use of the famous quote "to be or not to be". The quote is what Hanson seems to focus on in his article but with Hanson you can never be sure.

I love the use of the tax cheats reference. It seems like every other appointee by Obama has been a tax cheat, even when most of them like Daschle have previously denounced tax cheats. (I especially love the whole new definition to 'limousine liberal' that Tom Daschle provides!) Even a large group of Democrats who are not appointees are getting caught out as tax criminals at this same time, including super liberals such as Charlie Rangel. There is certainly a huge irony in the way that is playing out.

The conclusion of the article suggests Hanson is focusing on the simple question of whether the strategies Obama is currently supporting are "to be or not to be". However I would not bet Hanson's brilliance has not led him to consider the more complex allusions that underlie the Hamlet story as it relates to Obama.