There's been no shortage of right wing pundits saying really dumb things since the election, but the opening of Michael Gerson's latest column is so insanely delusional that it nearly sent coffee out my nose:
Barack Obama was elected, in part, as the antidote to ambition. Unlike John F. Kennedy, who campaigned against the golf-playing complacency of the Eisenhower era, Obama appealed to a nation weary of large national exertions -- a nation longing for a normality beyond the wars, hurricanes, floods and assorted plagues of the Bush years.
Right. Because there's nothing like enormous crowds chanting "Yes, We Can!" when it comes to demonstrating an appeal to the weary and apathetic. Seriously, did Gerson spend the entire campaign in a coma or something?
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Although there is something amusing about rightwing pundits characterising the last 8 years of right wing rule as a stretch of "wars, hurricanes, floods and assorted plagues".
I'm guessing thats not the message he's trying to spread but it is the one he's putting out there all the same.
To the extent that the Bush administration has been "not normal" relative to past administrations ("assorted plagues," is, indeed, a good description) then, yes, we would like a return to normalcy, including, for instance, the rule of Constitutional law and a functional economy. We've had those things in the past, at least more so than the last 8 years.
Obama did not appeal "to a nation weary of large national exertions", he appealed to a nation weary of incompetent national exertions. Despite the predilections of Randroids and Neocons, the two are not necessarily identical.
The mention of plagues reminded me of the delusional cranks who wrote the so-called holy books.
Michael Gerson is:
..." a [person] weary of large national exertions -- a [man] longing for a normality beyond the wars, hurricanes, floods and assorted plagues of the Bush years."
In other words he is projecting his own exhaustion after eight years of hanging fig leaves and producing smoke screens to cover the gross incompetence of the administration under W and the general vacuity of the right's ideology.
Just the effort required to haul the quantity of rhetorical lipstick, fig leaves, smoke and whitewash necessary to obscure their inadequacy would qualify as one of the labors of Hercules.
The real message here is that Michael Gerson is tired and needs a rest.
I don't necessarily disagree with him... I'm not crazy about that phrase "antidote to ambition," but that sense of "maybe if we elect this guy, our lives will calm down from the fever pitch we're at now" has been palpable in a great deal of voters - not necessarily the ones at the rallies, but the rank-and-file, as it were...
Remember, most Americans are apathetic and don't GO to rallies.
I dont think Gerson is totally off base here. I think America is exhausted of the Bush Administration and all the miserable exertions it thrust us into.