The Significance of Obama’s Inaugural Address. By Peter Wehner. Commentary, January 21, 2013.
Wehner:
President
Obama’s inaugural address was eloquent and moving in parts. It was also deeply
partisan and polarizing, something that is unusual for a day normally devoted
to unity and common purpose.
But not
in Barack Obama’s America. In his inaugural speech he did what he seemingly
cannot keep himself from doing: portraying himself and his followers as
Children of Light and portraying his opponents as Children of Darkness.
You are
either with Obama–or you are with the forces of cruelty and bigotry. In Obama’s
world, there is no middle ground. He is the Voice of Reason; those who oppose
him are the voice of the mob. They are the ones who (to cite just one passage
from his speech) mistake absolutism for principle, substitute spectacle for
politics, and treat name-calling as reasoned debate.
In that
sense, Obama is the perfect president for our current political culture. And
for all of his self-perceived similarities with Abraham Lincoln, he is the
antithesis of Lincoln when it comes to grace, a charitable spirit and a
commitment to genuine reconciliation. Mr. Obama is, at his core, a divider. He
seems to relish it, even when the moment calls for a temporary truce in our
political wars.
Which
leads me to my second point.
Mr.
Obama’s speech was not a call to unity; it was a summons to his liberal base to
fight–on global warming, for gay rights, for gun control, for renewable energy,
and for a diminished American role in world affairs. And the president’s speech
also signaled that he will oppose, with passion and demagoguery, anyone who
attempts to reform our entitlement programs. He is fully at peace with running
trillion dollar deficits as far as the eye can see. He not only won’t lift a
finger to avoid America’s coming debt crisis; he will lacerate those who do.
A final
point: Mr. Obama’s speech was a highly ambitious one intellectually. What he
was attempting to do was to link progressivism to the American political
tradition, to the vision of the founders and the Declaration of Independence.
“The greatest progressive arguments throughout the country’s history have been
rooted in the language of the Declaration of Independence,” Michael Waldman,
who was chief speechwriter for former President Bill Clinton, told the Washington Post’s Greg Sargent. “This
speech was really rooted in that tradition.”
The key
to understanding the president’s inaugural address, then, was this line: “Today
we continue a never-ending journey, to bridge the meaning of those words [from
the Declaration] with the realities of our time.”
Mr.
Obama views himself as America’s bridge, the modern-day interpreter of
Washington, Madison, and Jefferson. Mr. Obama’s agenda is their agenda. Or so
says Obama.
Mr.
Obama is a Man of Zeal. He believes the currents of history are swift,
powerful, and on his side.
What we
are seeing is the authentic Obama, a liberated and fiercely committed
progressive who believes he is an agent for social justice and fairness. He
feels the election completely vindicated him and his agenda. He has sheer
contempt for his opponents. And in his second term he will crush them if they
stand in his way.
Call it
the transmogrification of Hope and Change.
