Democrats had their third Jacksonian moment of the Great War on Terror at 11:30 p.m., May 1, 2011, when President Obama went on national television to tell us all that under his instructions Navy SEALs had invaded a mansion in Pakistan and dispatched the author of the Sept. 11 attacks to a permanent hangout in hell. It was a rare kick-ass moment for the academic-in-chief, who was not used to having flag-wavers pump fists and shout “USA!” over his doings, or getting the warm praise of Karl Rove and Dick Cheney.
In the 2008 primaries, he lost Jacksonian voters to Hillary Clinton, and was losing them to Republican presidential nominee Sen. John McCain in the general, until the financial implosion swamped everything. Does he have a chance now to win some of their hearts?
Well, let’s review the Democrats’ first two Jacksonian moments in this struggle:
Moment One occurred in 2004, when John Forbes Kerry (JFK, providentially) reported for duty, trying to parlay four months in Vietnam 40 years earlier into presidential credentials, an effort that foundered when he windsurfed in flowered shorts near his wife’s house in Nantucket; and other vets, annoyed for years at his self-promotional posings, reminded everyone that for the four months he spent overseas as a warrior, he spent four years back home as an anti-war advocate, accusing his former comrades of hair-raising crimes.
Moment Two took place two years later, when President Reagan’s former Navy secretary, James Webb, (unlike John Kerry, the genuine article), turned Democrat and ran against incumbent Sen. George Allen, R-Va. Even though it was the Democrats’ wave year of 2006, Webb and his new party were an uneasy postelection fit.
In The Weekly Standard, Andrew Ferguson watched the liberals of Arlington County gag ever so slightly as they tried to choke down Webb, a self-described redneck, gun nut who hated affirmative action, and Scots-Irish war hawk.
Webb, who in his own words was “Born Fighting,” said he was a) the kind of Democrat who could win in Virginia; and b) despite all his machismo and medals, a passionate foe of the war in Iraq.
This made him ideal. “Democrats are so sick of being labeled the peace party — mostly because they are the peace party — that they grow faint at the first flash of a battle ribbon,” as Ferguson put it, trying to prove they, just like Republicans, are blood-thirsty monsters at heart.
If Webb was the ideal warrior-Democrat — the war hero who votes with the anti-war party — Obama is surely his opposite, the nuanced and urbane soft-power proponent who pulls off a surgical strike.
In fact, it was only a nuanced and urbane soft-power proponent who could pull off a surgical strike of this magnitude without making Democrats cringe. “Obama’s aides were stunned Sunday night when the chants of ‘USA!’ began wafting into the West Wing,” as Politico tells us.
They were surprised, being unused to cheers being raised in their favor by flag-waving crowds still clinging to God and to guns out of bitterness. Some part of them must be privately spooked by the fervor. Isn’t this the sort of mock-Rambo hubris they wanted Obama to stop?
Still, Obama can hardly be blind to the fact that this is the first popular thing he’s done since he took office; that while the things that he pushed — his health care reform, for instance — made him very unpopular, he won back some cred as a popular leader by playing the blood-and-guts tough guy he and his party liked to mock and deride.
Where will he move as the election draws closer? We do live in interesting times.
Examiner Columnist Noemie Emery is contributing editor to The Weekly Standard and author of “Great Expectations: The Troubled Lives of Political Families.”
