A man of principle—or a leftist zombie?

In an entry the other day, “The unreality that imagines itself to be irresistible,” I wrote:

The only remaining question at this point, then, is how long the Democrats will keep pushing against the immovable object of reality before they acknowledge that they themselves are not an irresistible force. Based on their “Undead” modus operandi so far, it would not be unreasonable to expect that the effort will continue right up until election day, or even up until January 1, 2011, when the House gavel is pried from Nancy Pelosi’s cold, dead fingers.

What I said about Speaker Pelosi, Peggy Noonan is saying about President Obama. Quoting his odd and revealing comment that “I’d rather be a really good one-term president than a mediocre two-term president,” she goes on to recount his equally odd and revealing response to a plea from moderate Democratic senator Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas. When Lincoln asked him to drop his (already stymied) revolutionary legislative program and move to the center, in order, among other things, to help her save her Senate seat, Obama showed no sympathy. Instead, he coldly equated moving to the center with becoming like his despised predecessor George W. Bush, and he utterly rejected the idea. Which Noonan interprets as meaning that even if Obama’s leftist program has zero chance of passage, he will keep fighting for it, to the death:

His reaction to [the country’s total rejection of his legislative agenda] is striking. He doesn’t seem a man at sea who’s flailing and trying to grab any deck chair that floats by. He seems a man who is certain he is right, in the long term if not in the day-to-day. And if the cost of being right is a single term, then so be it.

- end of initial entry -

Steven N. writes:

Not directly related, but regarding Obama’s comment, “I’d rather be a really good one-term president than a mediocre two-term president”: Is there really such a thing as a “really good” one term president. Maybe Polk? Certainly not since. John Adams has been rehabilitated of late, but that took almost 200 years. A really good one term president will get re-elected; either that or not run, and hand pick his successor.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at February 12, 2010 02:10 AM | Send