There are many things that bug me about Barack Obama -- the insane laundry list speeches, the silly rhetoric, the hostility to the free market -- but these are all talked about. He has another habit that hasn't been talked about so much and, of all the things he does, it makes me the most queasy.
It's pretty subtle, but I think it's worth keeping an eye on because, if it were to become full-blown, it has the potential to be the most socially damaging element of his presidency.
I'm talking about what I'm going to call his Goldstein-ism, his tendency to make veiled, dark allusions to a recently vanquished "other", an evil being (he is never specific) who is, he always implies, the real cause of all our problems.
I've seen it in every speech -- the peevishness, veiled gibes, and rhetoric that distorts the historical record. I commented about Obama's tendency to make vague references to an evil strawman in a 29 Jan. post following Obama's interview on Al-Arabiya. On Monday Karl Rove devoted a column to the president's "troubling" and "persistent use of the [strawman] device." Rove pointed, for example, to a recent speech in which "Obama said that America's economic difficulties resulted when 'regulations were gutted for the sake of a quick profit at the expense of a healthy market.' " But "Who gutted which regulations?," asked Rove.
This is one of those things that a truly free and independent press would stop simply by questioning him about it. "What do you mean, Mr. President? Who gutted which regulations? Who profited?"
Not much chance of that here.
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