An inaugural address of striking liberal ambition and partisanship.
WSJ Editorial, January 22, 2013
President Obama's second inaugural address won't be remembered for stirring
lines, but then its purpose seemed to be more political than inspirational. Mr.
Obama was laying down a marker that he has no intention of letting debt or
deficits or lagging economic growth slow his plans for activist, expansive
government.
Inaugurals usually include calls for national unity and appeals to our
founding principles, which is part of their charm. With the election long over,
swearing in a President is a moment for celebrating larger national purposes.
But Mr. Obama's speech was notable for invoking the founding principles less to
unify than to justify what he called "collective action." The President borrowed
the Constitution's opening words of "we the people" numerous times, but his main
theme was that the people are fundamentally defined through government action,
and his government is here to help you.
On that theme, the speech was especially striking for including a specific
defense of the federal entitlement programs that everyone knows must be
reformed. Mr. Obama cited "Medicare, and Medicaid, and Social Security" by name
as "the commitments we make to each other." Typically, such programmatic
specificity is reserved for State of the Union speeches. Mr. Obama almost seemed
to be elevating them to Constitutional rights.
Typically, too, inaugural addresses avoid overt partisanship. But after
mentioning those entitlements by name, Mr. Obama couldn't resist saying that
those programs "do not make us a nation of takers; they free us to take the
risks that make this country great."
The "takers" line was a clear shot at Mitt Romney's most famous campaign
gaffe. This should have been beneath a Presidential inaugural, but then again it
fits Mr. Obama's post- re-election pattern of continuing to demean and
stigmatize those who disagree with him as if the election campaign is still
on.
If you think this characterization is unfair, White House communications
director Dan Pfeiffer expressed the current mood in the West Wing this way to
the Washington Post on Inauguration Day: "There's a moment of opportunity now
that's important. . . . What's frustrating is that we don't have a political
system or an opposition party worthy of the opportunity."
So neither the checks and balances of U.S. democracy nor the Republican Party
that controls one branch of Congress is worthy of President Obama's grand
aspirations. Presumably they must bow to his superior moral purposes. It's
important to appreciate how much such contemptuous talk deviates from normal
public White House respect for the men and women a President must do political
business with.
All of this suggests a second-term President less interested in bipartisan
accommodation than in aggressively pursuing the progressive goals on behalf of
what he views as a new center-left majority. One of his most passionate moments
was even devoted to addressing "climate change," of all things.
He rarely mentioned the subject in the election campaign. But doing something
about global warming is a commandment in the modern liberal catechism, and now
Mr. Obama says it will be a major priority in the next four years. He even used
the stock liberal description that those who disagree with him on climate change
"deny" scientific fact. It's another example of deliberately stigmatizing his
opposition.
We were also struck by what Mr. Obama didn't say considering the day and its
symbolism. He spoke on Martin Luther King Day, a national holiday, yet apart
from a fleeting reference he barely mentioned the occasion.
This is odd because there could be no greater symbolism that King's dream has
been realized than the second inauguration of our first black President on the
opposite end of the Washington mall on which he gave his most famous speech. It
was a missed opportunity to bind up old wounds, but perhaps an intentional one
lest Mr. Obama understate the need for even more urgent government action.
Americans want their Presidents to succeed, because they naturally assume
that when Presidents do well so will the country. Mr. Obama will thus get a
respectful hearing for his agenda, even if he has never been as candid as he was
Monday in asserting his liberal ambitions. But if his second term does break
down into more partisan gridlock and rancor, let the record show that the
President set the tone with his second inaugural.
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