Some high-profile columnists at major dailies become kind of obsessed. They’re given a great platform, but become so consumed with one aspect of the political world, they tend to write about nothing else. The NYT’s Maureen Dowd, for example, seems to write about little other than her disdain for Hillary Clinton. The NYT’s Bill Kristol has an inordinate fondness for John McCain.
But Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson, best known for having been George W. Bush’s chief speechwriter, has devoted an enormous amount of ink to hitting Barack Obama from just about every angle. Given that most of the columns are unimpressive, the attacks are starting to get tiresome.
In February, Gerson told us Obama is “too liberal.” In March, Gerson predicted that Obama’s foreign policy vision would be catastrophic, which is why he believes Obama would abandon his campaign promises once elected. Two weeks later, Gerson bashed Obama’s Iraq vision again. A few days later, Gerson dismissed Obama’s heralded speech on race relations, saying it “did little to address his strange tolerance for the anti-Americanism of his spiritual mentor.”
In April, Gerson said Obama’s pro-choice position represents “extremism.” A few days later, it was back to bashing Obama’s position on Iraq. A week later, Gerson hammered Obama on his “bitter” remarks. Two weeks later, Gerson went after Obama for being “patronizing.”
And today, Gerson talks about flag pins and elitism.
The Obama narrative is intellectual and ideological (not social) elitism. Humble roots have never been a guarantee of intellectual humility, especially when a mind comes to flower at Columbia and Harvard. Obama’s dismissal of small-town views and values as “bitterness,” “fear” and “anger” — his dismissal of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright as a relic of an angry generation — comes across as, well, dismissive. His first instinct — the academic instinct — is to explain and analyze, which is impressive to political writers who share that particular vocation. But this approach always places the explainer in a position of superiority. The arrogance of the aristocrat is nothing compared to the arrogance of the academic.
Got that? If a candidate analyzes a situation, and then explains his beliefs, he thinks he’s better than you.
Wait, it gets worse.
The issue of the lapel flag pin is a good illustration. Obama’s explanation for its absence — that it had become a “substitute” for “true patriotism” in the aftermath of Sept. 11 — is perfectly rational. For a professor at the University of Chicago. Members of the knowledge class generally find his stand against sartorial symbolism to be subtle, even courageous. Most Americans, I’m willing to bet, will find it incomprehensible after 20 additional explanations, which are bound to be required. A president is expected to be a patriotic symbol himself, not the arbiter of patriotic symbols. He is supposed to be the face-painted superfan at every home game; to wear red, white and blue boxers on special marital occasions; to get misty-eyed during the most obscure patriotic hymns.
The problem here is not that Obama is unpatriotic — a foolish, unfair, destructive charge — but that Obama has declared himself superior to an almost universal form of popular patriotism. And this sense of superiority, revealed in case after case, has political consequences, because the Obama narrative reinforces the Democratic narrative. It is now possible to imagine Obama at a cocktail party with Kerry, Al Gore and Michael Dukakis, sharing a laugh about gun-toting, Bible-thumping, flag-pin-wearing, small-town Americans.
Seriously? Is this what “respectable” Republican thought has come to? Obama laughing at religious people in small towns with Michael Dukakis?
This is not only transparent hackery, it’s embarrassing hackery. Worse, Gerson seems to have effectively turned over his column to all Obama attacks, all the time, meaning we’ll likely see similar criticism once (or twice) a week for the next six months.
