Campaigning on Grievances

[Draggingtree]

The National Review:

 

 

 

 

April 12, 2012 12:00 A.M.

Campaigning on Grievances

Obama’s reelection hinges on uniting the disaffected and ignoring the state of the nation.

By Victor Davis Hanson

 

In 2008, a mostly unknown Barack Obama ran for president on an inclusive agenda of “hope and change.” That upbeat message was supposed to translate into millions of green jobs, fiscal sobriety, universal health care, a resetting of Bush foreign policy, and racial unity.

Four years later, none of those promises will be themes of his 2012 reelection campaign. Gas has more than doubled in price. Billions of dollars have been wasted in insider and subsidized wind and solar projects that have produced little green energy.

Unemployment rates above 8 percent appear the new norm, when 5 percent in the past was dubbed a “jobless recovery.”

From the Middle East to the Korean peninsula, the world seems on the brink. Modern racial relations are at a new low.

If borrowing $4 trillion in eight years was “unpatriotic,” as Obama once labeled George W. Bush, no one quite knows how to term the addition of $5 trillion in new debt in less than four years. Obamacare is unpopular with the public. Its constitutionality now rests with the Supreme Court.

After four years, the claims of “Bush did it”