Nonetheless, until now we had not in the postwar era seen a true man of the Left who was committed to changing America into a truly liberal state. Indeed, had Barack Obama run on the agenda he actually implemented during his first year in office — “Elect me and I shall appoint worthies like Craig Becker, Anita Dunn, and Van Jones; stimulate the economy through a $1.7-trillion annual deficit; take over health care, the auto industry, student loans, and insurance; push for amnesty for illegal aliens and cap-and-trade; and reach out to Iran, Russia, Syria, and Venezuela” — he would have been laughed out of Iowa.
It was not his agenda but his carefully crafted pseudo-centrism that got Obama elected — that, and a dismal McCain campaign, weariness over the Iraq War, a rare orphaned election without any incumbent candidate, the September 2008 meltdown, and the novelty of the nation’s first serious African-American presidential candidacy.
Now, however, for the first time in my memory, the United States has an authentic leftist as president — one who unabashedly believes that the role of the U.S. government at home is to redistribute income in order to ensure equality of results through high taxes on a few and increased entitlements for many, while redefining America abroad as a sort of revolutionary state that sees nothing much exceptional in either its past role or its present alliances — other than something that should be “reset” to the norms embraced by the United Nations.
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