John H. Richardson of Esquire spent some quality time with the Birthers. What he has to say about them is not comforting.
Others argue that the whole thing is getting overblown because it’s August — the “silly season” for news — and because the more reasonable and mainstream Republicans don’t want to take a stand that will further alienate part of their base. This is probably true. But it also obscures a troubling truth: By focusing on the “news hook” about our president’s birth certificate, we are ignoring the broader mixture of paranoid apocalyptic fantasies that feed this troubling — and growing, perhaps into the tens of millions — group of people. People who told me they’re not just looking for the president’s birth certificate. They’re looking for his death certificate.
Richardson describes the phenomenon as the pus exploding from a wound. But everyone I know is struggling to identify the cause of the wound. As better than half of our Establishment journalists continue to believe and report that this is a Center-Right country, it seems to just be dawning on people that the Right has turned rancid. That the economy has been shedding jobs for more than a year must be a contributing factor. That Barack Obama is black and somewhat exotic is a big part of what people are trying to adjust to. What’s confounding is figuring out just how much of this is new, and how much of it is always with us, lurking beneath the surface.
Looking back on the first two years of the Clinton administration, there was a lot more legitimate cause for alarm on the Right. Clinton really did sign the Brady Law and the Assault Weapons Ban. Clinton really did try to allow gays to serve openly in the military. Clinton really did sign NAFTA into law. Federal agents really did kill seventy-six people during the siege of Waco. It wasn’t just HillaryCare that upset the Right during the early years of the Clinton administration. And, in spite of all the vicious rumors that were spread about the Clintons, there were tangible government-led changes for the Right to oppose.
Then, as now, there was a lot of talk about the Democrats wanting to do away with our national sovereignty and lead us towards a world government. We began to hear the black helicopter talk and saw the rise of the militia-movement. But, back then, it was a lot easier to see some evidence that the government in Washington was getting leftward of where the country was politically. The opinions polls showed the country moving towards the Republicans. There was plenty of advanced warning that the Gingrich Revolution was coming.
Today, while Obama’s polling numbers have returned to Earth, the president and his party remain popular, and certainly much more popular than the Republicans. The fringiness we’re seeing is both more mainstream (in that it is embraced by more Republican leaders and has broader purchase in the GOP’s base) and more uncoupled to any hint of reality. But, despite these differences, there is a certain disconcerting commonality. In both cases, a significant portion of the Right responded to the election of a Democratic president with revolutionary and secessionary rhetoric and actions.
Ever since Kennedy replaced Eisenhower, it seems that the default position of the Right (when they do not control the White House) is revolutionary and secessionist. There is a longer pattern here that cannot be explained by Obama’s hue and Muslim-sounding middle name. Yet, the Crazy does seem somewhat amplified by racial anxieties at the moment, and we cannot dismiss this new component.
Looking back at the arc of history, it’s hard to overestimate how lucky we were to have Dwight Eisenhower as president instead of somebody like Joe McCarthy. Eisenhower Republicanism put some restraints on the more virulent and unhinged elements of the Right in this country. But Ike was an accident of history, not a true representative of the Right. Once he left the scene, the conservatives took over the party and we’ve been in mortal danger as a country ever since. After eight years of Bush, the GOP has never been more unified in their conservatism, and more like the party of McCarthy. We’re witnessing the emergence of a Nationalist Front-style party. And all that is standing between us and them taking over is a Democratic Party that has yet to demonstrate the ability to endure in power the way that FDR’s New Deal Coalition was able to.
The next time the Democrats get punished for getting us bogged down in a land war in Asia, there may be no Eisenhower on the Right to steer the ship. Next time, we may get a truly fascistic response. In the meantime, Obama needs this health care bill and he needs a New New Deal to cement the Democrats as the majority party for a generation. Maybe by then the demographic changes will have eliminated the threat we now face.