The left’s perennial conceptual dilemma: Has America always been terrible, or was America once good, and only now is terrible?

The other day Powerline said:

It was not that long ago (yesterday probably) that Obama was running for president so he could usher in a new day, enabling America to fulfill the unmet promise of a nation that in the past has fallen so short of his, and his wife’s, expectations. Now he wants to restore us to our former glory….

The notion that Obama is running for president because we’re not what we once were is antithetical to this theme—the one that launched Obama and has sustained him.

I wrote to Powerline:

Not entirely. The theme that we are not the good country we once were has been a part of the campaign all along. Michelle’s basic speech always included the idea that when she was a girl, her father could take care of his family on a modest salary, but now all’s changed, changed utterly; now the bar keeps being raised no matter how hard you try.

- end of initial entry—

Adela G. writes:

I got a real laugh out of reading this:

Obama responded: “America is …, uh, is no longer, uh … what it could be, what it once was. And I say to myself, I don’t want that future for my children.”

Obama, for all his much-touted intelligence, doesn’t seem to get that the America he and his wife just can’t stop criticizing has given them all that they have, their wealth, status, education, all out of proportion to their abilities and potential. They wouldn’t have done nearly so well in the older America—not because they’re black but because they’re really not as bright as they think they are.

Though I freely acknowledge Obama is a fine essayist (not so good at impromptu remarks), being able to string together words in pleasing, even meaningful ways only takes a person so far. How many “community organizers” known mainly for cagey maneuvering and meager accomplishments can make a bundle from writing not one but two autobiographies before they’re even 50? Had he been all white, the audacity of hoping that a book about his father’s dreams would sell would have seemed more like insanity.

Don’t even get me started on his Ivy League-educated wife’s abilities and skills….

VHG writes from India (August 9):

You wrote in the title:

“The left’s perennial conceptual dilemma: Has America always been terrible, or was America once good, and only now is terrible? “

This is unimaginable indeed. Does it mean that the Left considers America to be worse than Islam? Since they consider Islam to have always been a religion of peace whose clean record has only recently been besmirched by a small number of misguided extremists who are misinterpreting the benign and peace-loving teachings of Islam.

Huh. God save our souls.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at August 08, 2008 02:59 PM | Send