It was May 2013 when President Obama first talked about his wish to “go Bulworth.” The reference is to a 1998 film in which a compromised senator, having arranged to have himself killed so that his daughter could collect his insurance, is free for the first time in his sad, shabby lifespan to speak his unfettered and luminous mind. The time came for Obama late in 2014, when having lost all he could — both houses of Congress and many state governments — he had no more to lose by losing his bearings and getting lost in a world all his own.
The first sign that he gave of being unmoored from reality was his insistence that the votes that counted in the midterm elections were those not in fact cast by the people who refrained from voting. He seemed to believe they were all in his corner and that their silence spoke volumes on his and his party’s behalf. He started to swagger on the theory that if he acted like a winner, people would think that he had won and treat him accordingly.
Did this persuade? “Obama and Democratic candidates were walloped in the November elections, a seismic, un-ignorable event that cast his legislative ambitions in doubt and made Tuesday’s pleas for ‘truth’ and ‘better politics’ sound sweetly addled,” Alexis Simendinger of RealClearPolitics reported. Pat Moynihan told us that “everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.” Obama has freed himself from this manner of tyranny. If he dislikes facts, he ignores them and substitutes others, which he finds more attractive.
As he did in the State of the Union last week.
“In Iraq and Syria, American leadership … is stopping ISIL’s advance,” the president told us. “Instead of getting dragged into another ground war in the Middle East, we are leading a broad coalition, including Arab nations, to degrade and ultimately destroy this terrorist group.”
This isn’t true. Two thousand American troops have gone back to the war that Obama claimed he had ended; the Islamic State has extended its hold over Syria; Yemen and Libya, which Obama claimed as showcases for his brand of diplomacy, are going to pieces; Iran is dominant in much of the region (and closer than ever to nuclear status); and Russia is threatening the Soviet Union’s former possessions, in Eastern Europe and in Ukraine.
“There’s a real world out there he didn’t really talk about,” said Christopher Matthews. “His projection of success … is not close to reality,” said Andrea Mitchell. When the choir rebels, you know you’re in trouble.
“It sounds like the president was outlining a world that he wishes we were all living in, but which is very different than the world you described,” Richard Engel informed NBC’s Brian Williams. “So there was a general tone, maybe even suspended disbelief, I think, when he started talking about foreign policy. There’s not a lot of success stories to be talking about in foreign policy right now.”
But nevermind. If the facts don’t exist, Obama will make up some facts he likes better and even invent some supporters who’ll think that they’re real. Only 31 million people tuned in to his speech (out of a country of more than 300 million), but in the spirit of Obama’s take on the 2014 midterms, the people who didn’t might well be the ones who matter. He hears them. He trusts them. And he knows that they’re all on his side.
Noemie Emery, a Washington Examiner columnist, is a contributing editor to The Weekly Standard and author of “Great Expectations: The Troubled Lives of Political Families.”
