As the Left Turns

Our conservative friends have been feeling quite dispirited for the past five years or so, for obvious reasons, but these days we are noticing a growing glumness among our liberal pals as well.

There has been a palpable sense of disappointment with th president among our leftward acquaintances at least as far back the past presidential election, when it was not yet so pronounced that they couldn’t be whipped back into the party line by the frightening prospect of the fascist nightmare of fiscal responsibility and free-market contraception that would have surely followed the election of Mitt Romney, but recent events have clearly exacerbated the gloom. Revelations about the unnecessarily widespread snooping by the National Security Agency prompted some tentative grumbling about the government, the administration’s recent demands for missile strikes against the Syrian regime have prompted unprecedented criticisms of the administration, and there are signs of discontent among the usually reliable constituencies about other policies of the once-infallible President Barack Obama.

The NSA scandal was offensive enough to liberal sensibilities, featuring as it did a heroically unshaven whistle-blower and a George W. Bush-era program that had been expanded beyond even Bushian levels of national security state snoopiness, but the Syrian situation has been an especially bitter betrayal by their former hero. Obama had been the community-organizing peacenik with the courage to lift his chin and sneer at the bloodthirsty cowboy Bush’s unilateral and congressionally-unauthorized war against some harmless and loveable Baathist dictatorship in the Middle East over some unverified and slightly suspect accounts of chemical weapons, which along with the vague promises of hope and change and quasi-socialism were the reasons that liberals so adored him, and when Obama announced his intention to go to war against a Baathist dictatorship in the Middle East based on some slightly more suspicious accounts of chemicals, and without the broad-based coalition or congressional approval that Bush had somehow put together before his war, it was a bit more than the true-believing Obama supporter could bear. Throw in the undeniable ineptness of the entire Obama foreign compared to the supposedly stupid Bushies, on top of the apparent failure of the peace-through-conflict-studies that Obama attempted with such earnestness, and it’s downright infuriating to even the most mellow liberal.

Cravenly political types such as Rep. Nancy Pelosi and former Vermont governor and erstwhile liberal standard-bearer How Dean have remained loyal to Obama, and they’ll no doubt rope in a few more for the upcoming votes on war in Syria, but the liberals whose careers are not so closely connected to the political fortunes of the Democratic party are clearly more skeptical about the president’s war plans. The demonstrations haven’t reached any Bush-era levels, of course, but the grousing from the left has been widespread enough to require a begrudging acknowledgment by right-winters of a sudden intellectual consistency among the left. We are no fans of the Code Pink coalition of crazily anti-war women, but we have to admit to a slight respect for their heckling of Secretary of State John Kerry during testimony before the Senate, where he was also forced to give them some credit for maintaining the principles he had so foolishly endorsed in his long-haired youth, and it’s embarrassing to admit how much we enjoyed the spectacle of Kerry suffering the Alinskyite indignity of the at-home demonstration usually reserved for corporate executives and Republican politicians and other approved villains. Polling indicates the sentiment is widespread among the liberals less inclined to such tactics as home invasions, and the discontent is spreading into other issues.

Conservatives should be heartened to note that 40,000 longshoremen have broken ranks with the AFL- CIO over the union’s support for Obamacare, which they blame for all the costs and problems that conservatives have long warned of. The union movement in general has lately been restive about the president’s signature legislation, and when the equally crucial youth vote figures out they’re expected to sign up for more insurance than they need to pay for some old geezer’s hip replacement yet another loyal constituency will be in revolt. Should African-Americans ever notice their collective unemployment rate has been remained while their collective wealth has declined yet another key group of supporters might be less enthusiastic about voting Democrat come the next election, and even the oh-so-politically-correct arts establishment might been noticing that Obamacare has it out for them. The crucial academic community is suddenly under the administration’s regulatory sights, the press is still smarting from the Justice Department’s nosiness in the phone records of the Associated Press and even the legal threats against a Fox News reporter, and Obama know finds himself in the unusual position of being out of favor with the opinion-making establishment.

This turn of events will likely embolden the president’s conservative opponents, especially those who take a principled stand against his war aims, and it will be good to see some revived spirits among the ranks. Still, one hopes there won’t be any of the predictable overreach, or any unrealistic hope that the lefties have at least com around to the right way of thinking. Liberal opposition to the war has little to do with the conservative’s distrust of half-hearted action, and instead only resents the half of a heart that Obama is putting into it, and the liberal solution to Obamacare’s increasingly obvious flaws is a fully-fledged socialist system. Should the Republicans overplay their hands in the upcoming budget-ceiling debates and its inevitable Obamacare issues they might once again find themselves in the same bogeyman role that Romney wound up playing.

Even so, it’s nice to see the opposition as irked as we are for a change.

— Bud Norman

The Last Weekend

The first weekend of November is usually a good one here in the Riverside neighborhood of Wichita. On Saturday a group of arty older women who call themselves the Heifers hold their annual chili cook-off at their charmingly decrepit studio next to the coffee shop, and Sunday brings the yearly Frostbite Regatta, when rowing crews from colleges and universities and clubs around the region race along the Little Arkansas River where it winds through the picturesque parks and under the elegant old bridges. When the sun is warm and bright, as it was this past weekend, it’s as pleasant a time as one will find on the calendar.

Even with the extra hour of sleep afforded by the switch to daylight saving time, however, a certain anxiety pervaded our weekend’s festivities. There was no shaking a constant mindfulness that on Tuesday our beloved country faces a momentous decision about its path, with one leading to crippling national indebtedness, social disintegration, and international disorder, the other offering a fighting chance. Nor we could we shake a nagging worry that the country might choose badly.

We had reason to be hopeful, at least. The polls indicate a tight race, but they all show Obama below the 50 percent point where a sitting president usually needs to be at this point in an election, they all show a majority of independents breaking for Romney with sampling that assumes a higher Democratic turnout than early voting and other indicators suggest will occur, and newfangled telephony and old-fashioned media bias raise further suspicions. Pictures from Romney’s closing rallies in key states show huge and enthusiastic crowds, the news cycle has allowed a trickle of embarrassing stories about Benghazi and a flood of bad news about storms both economic and meteorological, and some very smart people who are often right and confidently predicting a Republican victory.

Further hopeful signs could even be found at the Heifer’s chili cook-off on Saturday, where the mood was palpably different from what prevailed there four long years ago. Being arty older women, the Heifers are an earnestly liberal lot in the feminist fashion, and four years ago they were giddy with anticipation of the brave new world that would surely emerge after Obama’s imminent election. We remember how they sloughed off our glum predictions of four years of slow economic growth, high unemployment, and mounting debt, confident of the coming hope and change. This time around we found little talk of politics, except with an old newspaper colleague who couldn’t avoid the topic and admitted to being disappointed, but there was a reassuring sense that they’re worried as well.

On the way to church the next morning we took solace in the knowledge that our Catholic friends would be hearing a reminder that their church has been forced into court to protect their ancient faith from the dictates of the administration. The only mention of the election at our own determinedly apolitical church was in a prayer giving thanks for the blessing to determine our nation’s destiny with a vote, and humble request for the wisdom needed to use that power correctly, but in the post-sermon chatting a reliably conservative friend expressed a guarded optimism. He’s also a smart guy who is often right, and it heartened us to hear his theories.

Still, the nagging doubts followed us to the regatta, where it even interfered with the simple pleasure of watching fresh-faced and well-toned college girls rowing by. We ran into an old and cherished pal from the boyhood days who now lives in the neighborhood, and he was also optimistic but a bit more guardedly so. Four years ago he voted early and then headed for the Ozark hills to hide out on election day, spending the whole time listening to the soothing sounds of old Jackie Gleason Orchestra records and knocking back martinis, and we took it as another hopeful sign that he’s planning to stick around this time.

We’ll take that optimism into the week, as best we can, but there’s also a nagging worry that the election is even close. The profligacy, authoritarianism, incompetence, dishonesty, and envious aspects of the past four years should be repudiated by a landslide, and if it isn’t it will be because much of the population prefers the seductive safety of a welfare state to the invigorating uncertainty of freedom, and it’s worrisome that we should still be worried.

— Bud Norman