Talk about tone deaf.<\/p>\n
A week ago, President Obama traveled to Kansas, to deliver his updating of Theodore Roosevelt\u2019s \u201cNew Nationalism\u201d speech. \u00a0His key word was \u201cfairness,\u201d and his message was that only the big government could deliver it. \u00a0\u201cGreed\u201d was his term for anyone who has done well in the private economy. But, as a poll released just yesterday found, this frame \u2013 big government good; private economy bad — is exactly the opposite of what the American people and nearly a majority of the president\u2019s own party currently believe.<\/p>\n
Yesterday the Gallup organization reported that American concern about excessively large government had soared to an all time record high. \u00a0Sixty-four percent of respondents to a national sampling told Gallup that big government \u201cwill be the biggest threat to the country in the future,\u201d as opposed to big business (26 percent) or big labor (with its diminished heft everywhere but in government employment an unsurprising 8 percent).<\/p>\n
Gallup has been asking this question since the mid-60s. \u00a0Only once before has concern about government got to this level. \u00a0That was the 2000-2001 period, when despite a strong economy and global peace, the American people turned away from New Democrat incumbent Bill Clinton\u2019s heir \u2013 the old-line liberal, big government advocate Al Gore — for the (by comparison) limited government appeal of George W. Bush. \u00a0Gore\u2019s slogan could just as well be Mr. Obama\u2019s, \u201cThe People versus the Powerful.\u201d \u00a0And it helped propel the vice president from what should have been a slam-dunk sure win into a near tie in the popular vote and a loss in the Electoral College.<\/p>\n
But from the White House\u2019s point of view, that\u2019s not the poll\u2019s worst news.<\/p>\n
Predictably, Republicans feel most wary of big government, with 82 percent finding it the major threat. \u00a0And almost as predictably, Independents answered very much like GOP voters, with 64 percent fingering big government, too. \u00a0This finding follows an established pattern. \u00a0In their attitudes and preferences, Independents have long looked very much like Republicans but without quite as much clarity and fervor on issues and, of course, without the institutional loyalty to a party.<\/p>\n
What is new now is that 48 percent of Democrats also now name big government as the greatest threat. \u00a0When their nemesis George W. Bush occupied the White House, Democrats \u2013 who otherwise favored an expansive federal establishment \u2013 were similarly fearful of government. But once their own man was inaugurated, they reverted to form and concern about excessive government fell (32 percent in 2009 v 52 percent who named big business as the prime worry). \u00a0Now, a near majority again puts fear of government first.<\/p>\n
Why has the president\u2019s golden oldie Democratic Party class warfare theme turned out to be so out of touch?<\/p>\n
Just as did Vice President Gore in 2000, the president and his team fundamentally misunderstand how America has changed over the past three decades. \u00a0In 1980, when Ronald Reagan was elected president, the nation and the economy were not that different from when Dwight Eisenhower first took the oath of office nearly three decades before. \u00a0In the 1980s as in the early \u201850s, it made sense to talk about American employment and opportunity in big-government-business-labor terms.<\/p>\n
But Reagan himself had picked up that a new \u2013 or at least long dormant — force was stirring — the now-familiar force of entrepreneurship. \u00a0Reagan was the first major political figure to cite MIT professor David Birch\u2019s landmark study of job creation. \u00a0Birch had mined previously untapped data sources and, to the astonishment of academics of many stripes, found that a majority of the net new jobs in the United States in the 1970s had been created by small companies. \u00a0This was a long way from the conventional wisdom of the time, reflected in the writing of the far more famous John Kenneth Galbraith — that in the private economy only big companies really mattered.<\/p>\n
We are now three decades later. \u00a0According the Kauffman Foundation, which is dedicated to the study of entrepreneurship, ALL of the net new jobs in the United States since 1980 came in companies \u2013 note, companies, not government \u2013 that were five years old or less.<\/p>\n
In political terms, this new fact means that most Americans now work as part of — or in close proximity to — entrepreneurial teams. \u00a0They live in an economy that is fundamentally different than the one of which TR spoke in 1910 (the year he delivered his \u201cNew Nationalism\u201d address) or that FDR (Mr. Obama\u2019s other avatar) confronted in 1932 or even that JFK talked about in 1960. \u00a0In the most immediate and personal sense, our view of the economic world is entirely different than that of our parents and grandparents. \u00a0Appeals born of those other times do not speak to our experience today.<\/p>\n
The tragedy of Barack Obama is that under the banner of \u201cprogressive,\u201d he is the most backward looking political leader in memory. \u00a0His policies have been out of another time. \u00a0His political strategy is just as antiquated.<\/p>\n
We\u2019re not in Kansas anymore.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Talk about tone deaf. A week ago, President Obama traveled to Kansas, to deliver his updating of Theodore Roosevelt\u2019s \u201cNew Nationalism\u201d speech. \u00a0His key word was \u201cfairness,\u201d and his message was that only the big government could deliver it. \u00a0\u201cGreed\u201d was his term for anyone who has done well in the private economy. But, as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[12],"class_list":["post-1068","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-political-commentary-general","tag-hugh-hewitt"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1068","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1068"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1068\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1071,"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1068\/revisions\/1071"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1068"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1068"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clarkjudge.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1068"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}