Obama: The Great Divider

The Federalist's David Harsanyi hits another one out of the park with his latest editorial, "How Obama Divides America".

As Harsanyi points out:

...people might be put off by Obama’s grating habit of turning every tragedy into a sermon about our supposed collective failings. I doubt the president is substantively more partisan than the average politician, but like most people on the Left these days, he no longer bothers to make a distinction between a policy position and a moral struggle. 

The issue of gun control, for example, isn’t a good-faith disagreement between people of different persuasions, but — like civil rights or suffrage — a struggle waged by the righteous against the evil (and sometimes those poor souls tricked by the NRA). 

Seemingly every political battle waged by the modern Democratic Party — gay rights, immigration, climate change, inequality — is imbued with a kind spiritual certitude that justifies circumventing debate. If a person who opposes the administration’s transgender bathroom policy is just like a Klansman, why even discuss the matter? In this context, the histrionics of Democrats in Congress over guns or the media’s melodramas make all the sense in the world.

Admittedly, the most of the Democratic Party acts this way, but Obama, as president, should be the leader of all of us, and not just some partisan hack who happened to win an election (or two).

Harsanyi even nails it with a quote from fellow editorialist John Podhoretz's article about Obama's speech to memorialize the fallen Dallas police officers:

As usual, Obama made strange use of the word ‘we,’ because when he says ‘we,’ he means ‘you,’ and when he means ‘you,’ he means people who aren’t as enlightened and thoughtful as he and his ideological compatriots are.

To use political phrasing, Obama is using his Leftist dog whistle by saying "we". To those who agree with him politically, they hear this as,"see, I am being open to my political opponents by lumping myself in with them", whereas the opponents hear this and think "here he goes again, talking to us like we're idiots". After eight years of this, nobody who disagrees with him hears him any more, while his "ideological compatriots" hear it and think how wonderful he is for putting himself in a box with his opponents, when exactly the opposite is true. He is using words in an Orwellian style, "doublespeaking" to mean something he doesn't actually believe.

Are Obama's political opponents projecting arrogance on him, or is he actually that arrogant? When a presidential candidate compares his own nomination with the healing of the planet, a strong case can be made that he might be an egotist.

Fortunately, there are realists like Harsanyi, who states a tautology that Obama will never understand:

When speaking about the Dallas shooter, Obama claimed that “None of us are entirely innocent” when it comes to racial discrimination … “and this includes our police departments.” Actually most cops and most people are entirely innocent when it comes to discrimination. Yes, there are racists and bigots in all our institutions and communities, but most Americans don’t need to “open our hearts” on the subject simply because liberals accuse them of harboring ugly thoughts. We need to fix police departments. We need to fix our inner-city schools. And we need to fix the economic prospects of minority populations. People have different ideas about how to go about it. Every day, though, the vast majority of citizens peacefully interact in families, in friendships, and in commerce.

I won't spoil the rest of Harsanyi's masterful editorial for you. But when 14 year old white boys have to apologize for being white, there is something wrong with how race relations are being viewed. I won't say it is Obama's fault, but he certainly hasn't helped the situation, and Harsanyi makes a good case that Obama might have made the situation worse.