Magical thinking has returned to Obamaland and Democrats are lining up for their unicorn rides.
Listening to the analysis of Democrats and the swooning press corps suggests that between Sunday night and Tuesday afternoon all of the realities of American politics had been wiped away.
Passing an unaffordable health bill over strong public objections on a straight party-line vote: a political masterstroke.
Signing the bill into law with the concentrated rascality of the Democratic Congress cheering and chanting like college kids at a campaign rally: a historic moment for all Americans to celebrate.
Having Vice President Joe “F***ing” Biden welcome President Obama into the embrace of history with the quotidian profanity of our time: a charming bit of earthiness.
Republicans used to engage in this kind of fantasizing.
Iraq in chaos? Americans love an underdog. An appalling string of ethical failings in Congress? Security moms and NASCAR dads won’t care about Jack Abramoff and Mark Foley. The vice president shot a guy in the face? It shows his toughness and outdoorsy side.
The difference, of course, was that every Republican strategist worth his salt went into the 2006 and 2008 election cycles knowing that the highs of the post-9/11 years were over and that there would be a heavy price for the mistakes their party had made.
While the Republican faithful could cling to magical thinking and hope that somehow negatives would miraculously become positives and that politics in the age of terrorism had a different set of rules than all of history, the leaders of the elephant herd knew that a bitter wind was heading their way.
It would have been hard for them to forget, as the front pages of every newspaper and the top stories on television news repeated the same daily message of doom from the moment Hurricane Katrina made landfall to the day Barack Obama was elected president.
Republican pessimism became so pronounced that leaders in the party started thinking about politics the way labor unions think about the economy — do what you can to protect your shrinking slice of the pie. Survivalism makes you think small.
But as Democrats are building their own sluiceway to electoral catastrophe, the media is cheering them on. There was nary a note of warning from the big press in the afterglow of the House Obamacare vote. Even as Baghdad fell to the 3rd Infantry Division — a huge success for President George W. Bush — the April 4, 2003, New York Times warned of anger in the Arab world of Iraqi civilian deaths and the difficult task of securing the peace.
The Times was prescient in some of its concerns, while others proved unfounded. But by raising every possible problem, they were bound to pick some of the right ones.
There were no such warnings when Obama reached his own Baghdad at this week’s signing ceremony. There was no Times story about the phony budget cuts that would lead to an exploding deficit or any pieces about the long legal struggle ahead to impose the most controversial parts of the plan.
Most conspicuously, there was no coverage of the withering political costs the president and his party might pay for overriding public opinion.
The press was right, if not always fair, in testing the strategic assumptions of the Bush administration. The failure to do the same with Obama is a dangerous dereliction.
Obama’s claim is that he is a transformational figure to whom the old rules of politics do not apply. The word “transformational” has become a mantra for the whole administration and many of the reporters who cover it.
When it seemed that Obama would fail in his health care gambit, some members of the press became more skeptical of his transformational claims. They covered his candidacy and election as an apotheosis rather than a campaign story. But in January, Scott Brown ascended to the Senate and Obama fell to Earth.
Now, though, Obama has jammed through his legislation in a shockingly partisan power play that will alienate moderates and steel the resolve of the Right. That risky course has convinced Democrats and the press that Obama retains his transformational powers.
Obamacare is the third miracle attributed to The One — the destruction of Hillary, the vanquishing of McCain and Palin, and now, government health care.
The thrill has come back to the Left and the press, but Democrats should prepare to pay dearly for this vacation from reality.
Chris Stirewalt is the political editor of The Washington Examiner. He can be reached at [email protected].
