Former Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson didn’t care for the tone of President Obama’s Second Inaugural Address:
Those who oppose this agenda, in Obama’s view, are not a very admirable lot. They evidently don’t want our wives, mothers and daughters to “earn a living equal to their efforts.” They would cause some citizens “to wait for hours to exercise the right to vote.” They mistake “absolutism for principle” and “substitute spectacle for politics” and “treat name-calling as reasoned debate.” They would have people’s “twilight years . . . spent in poverty” and ensure that the parents of disabled children have “nowhere to turn.” They would reserve freedom “for the lucky” and believe that Medicare and Social Security “sap our initiative,” and they see this as “a nation of takers.” They “deny the overwhelming judgment of science” on climate change, don’t want love to be “equal” and apparently contemplate “perpetual war.”
For Abraham Lincoln, even the gravest national crimes involved shared fault. For Obama, even the most commonplace policy disagreements indicate the bad faith of his opponents.
Mr. Gerson doesn’t address the accuracy of Obama’s claims. As Jane Mayer points out, the “nation of takers” rhetoric has been increasingly prevalent on the right. The Republicans have consistently opposed equal pay for equal work. Republican governors from Ohio to Virginia to Florida did all they could to assure long lines at the polls. Who could argue against the idea that the Norquist anti-tax pledge puts absolutism over principle or that Fox News and Rush Limbaugh substitute spectacle for politics? What kind of reasoned debate involves questioning the president’s birth certificate and calling him a Muslim or a Stalinist or a Nazi? What does Gerson think happens to the elderly and parents with special needs kids when you slash Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security and other health programs? Three in ten conservative Republicans express a belief in climate change. And the neo-conservatives explicitly call for perpetual war.
The president told the truth. Who cares if the right doesn’t like it?
Gerson thinks that the president created a problem for himself by hurting the Republicans’ feelings. There are two words for that kind of analysis: concern troll.
