One of many unfortunate effects of watching these two appalling candidates every day is that their awfulness can obscure the fact that our current president has done so much damage in his two terms in office. Digging out of that hole would be tough enough; digging out of a 12-year Obama-Clinton or Obama-Trump hole will be tougher still.
In any case, our excellent cover story this week, by Steve Hayes and Tom Joscelyn on Obama’s emptying out of Gitmo, and the dissembling that’s accompanied it, offers one count in the indictment of President Obama. Elliott Abrams’s very interesting editorial on Obama’s new aid agreement with Israel provides another.
But for a more thorough account of the damage Obama has wrought, let me recommend last week’s special issue of the Washington Examiner, “The Obama Legacy.” It’s all available online and is all worth reading. But I’d especially mention Philip Klein on the effects of Obama’s big government agenda at home and Reuel Gerecht on Obama’s failure of leadership abroad. Do, however, read the whole thing.
I mentioned the task we’ll face of digging out and repairing the damage of 12 years of Obama-Clinton or Obama-Trump. But it really won’t be a matter of digging out, or repair, or reconstruction. It’s probably better to think of the task ahead as one of new building, because the institutions and habits one wants to reconstruct will have been so damaged they will need to be built (again anew). Which means a more radical approach will be needed if we are to rebuild—there, I’m slipping again into a characteristically conservative formulation; let’s say build—the nation we deserve in the 21st century. I’m sure we’ll spend a lot of time writing about this over the next four years at THE WEEKLY STANDARD, as will our friends at the Washington Free Beacon, National Review, Commentary, National Affairs, and other magazines, websites, and think tanks involved in our common enterprise.
My tentative formulation of a sufficiently bold agenda suggest that we plan for liberal empire abroad; a liberal polity and a free society at home; liberal education for some, and civic education for all. As my intentionally provocative terms suggest, I’m tempted to think that, with the left having embraced “progressivism” and parts of the right “populism,” one could even restore the good name of “liberal” if not “liberalism” over the next few years. But these are all thoughts that will need to be developed, to say the least, and by thinkers deeper and more far-seeing than I.
