On the right, even across the Pond, somewhat reasonable essays are always ruined by loaded language.
Americans understandably seek to define their president in American terms. But looking across from my side of the Atlantic, there is a much simpler explanation. President Obama wants to Europeanize the U.S. All right, he wouldn’t put it in those terms, partly because the electorate wouldn’t wear it and partly because he sees himself as less Eurocentric than any of his 43 predecessors.
My guess is that if anything, Obama would verbalize his ideology using the same vocabulary that Eurocrats do. He would say he wants a fairer America, a more tolerant America, a less arrogant America, a more engaged America. When you prize away the cliché, what these phrases amount to are higher taxes, less patriotism, a bigger role for state bureaucracies and a transfer of sovereignty to global institutions.
I can debate the finer points of most of those assertions, but why throw “less patriotism” in there? Taxes, regulations, and relations with global institutions are all defined by laws and policies. Patriotism is not. It doesn’t belong on the list, and I think “transfer of sovereignty” probably covers what the author intended.
The rest of the essay isn’t any more concise or well-organized. It is strange to begin from the point of view that seeking fairness, tolerance, humility, and engagement are bad, misguided goals. But to reduce them to some liberal policy wish-list is really trite. Even worse, to make some logical connection between European integration and Obama’s position on high marginal tax rates and health care policy is simply deluded. I don’t think the author proves any of the premises he uses to build his case.
I’m pleased that he reveres our political system and separation of powers, but our system is not defined by its differences from European political institutions. It makes no sense to say this:
[Obama] is not pursuing a set of random initiatives lashed arbitrarily together, but a program of comprehensive Europeanization: European health care, European welfare, European carbon taxes, European day care, European college education, even a European foreign policy, based on engagement with supranational technocracies, nuclear disarmament and a reluctance to deploy forces overseas.
Expanding access to health care can be compared to how Europe operates, I guess, but the actual health care policy is unlike any European health care systems. As for the rest of that list, any comparisons are strained at best, and most are counterfactual. Obama hasn’t changed our welfare system, or how we provide day care, or radically changed how people finance their college education. He has expanded our presence in Afghanistan. And, unless you expected him to invade Libya by now, it’s unclear where he was supposed to deploy our troops overseas.
These kind of empty arguments are so pervasive on the right that we on the left don’t even really have partners for intelligent debate. We’re left pointing out that their entire argument is based on delusion and lies.
For people who actually enjoy a good intellectual debate, it’s very dispiriting.
