The New Hampshire results have solidified the reigning
cliche that the 2016 campaign is an anti-establishment revolt of both the left
and the right. Largely overlooked, however, is the role played in setting the
national mood by the seven-year legacy of the Obama presidency.
Yes, you hear
constant denunciations of institutions, parties, leaders, donors, lobbyists,
influence peddlers. But the starting point of the bipartisan critique is the
social, economic and geopolitical wreckage all around us. Bernie Sanders is
careful never to blame President Obama directly, but his description of the
America Obama leaves behind is devastating — a wasteland of stagnant wages,
rising inequality, a sinking middle class, young people crushed by debt, the
American Dream dying.
Take away the Brooklyn accent and the Larry David
mannerisms and you would have thought you were listening to a Republican
candidate. After all, who’s been in charge for the last seven years?
Donald Trump
is even more
colorful in
describing the current “mess” and more direct in attributing it to the
country’s leadership — most pungently, its stupidity and incompetence. Both
candidates are not just anti-establishment but anti-status quo. The revolt is
as much about the Obama legacy as it is about institutions.
Look at New
Hampshire. Hillary Clinton had made a strategic decision, as highlighted in the
debates, to wrap herself in the mantle of the Obama presidency. She lost
New Hampshire by
three touchdowns.
Beyond railing
against the wreckage, the other commonality between the two big New Hampshire
winners is in the nature of the cure they offer. Let the others propose
carefully budgeted five-point plans. Sanders and Trump offer magic.
Take Sanders’
New Hampshire victory
speech. It promised the moon: college education, free; universal
health care, free; world peace, also free because we won’t be “the policeman of
the world” (mythical Sunni armies will presumably be doing that for us). Plus a
guaranteed $15 minimum wage. All to be achieved by taxing the rich. Who can be
against a “speculation” tax (whatever that means)?
So with
Trump. Leave it to him. Jobs will flow back in a rush from China,
from Japan, from Mexico, from everywhere. Universal health care, with Obamacare
replaced by “something
terrific.” Veterans finally taken care of. Drugs stopped cold at the
border. Indeed, an end to drug addiction itself. Victory upon victory of every
kind.
How? That question never comes up anymore. No one expects
an answer. His will be done, on Earth if not yet in heaven. Yes, people love
Trump’s contempt for the “establishment” — which as far as I can tell means
anything not Trump — but what is truly thrilling is the promise of a
near-biblical restoration. As painless as Sanders’.
In truth,
Trump and Sanders are soaring not just by defying the establishment, but by
defying logic and history. Sanders’ magic potion is socialism; Trump’s is
Trump.
The young
Democrats swooning for Sanders appear unfamiliar with socialism’s century-long
career, a dismal tale of ruination from Russia to Cuba to Venezuela. Indeed,
are they even aware that China’s greatest reduction in poverty in human history
correlates precisely with the degree to which it has given up socialism?
Trump’s magic
is toughness — toughness in a world of losers. The power and will of the
caudillo will make everything right.
Apart from the
fact that strongman rule contradicts the American constitutional tradition of
limited and constrained government, caudillo populism simply doesn’t work. For
example, it accounts in large part for the relative backwardness of Africa and
Latin America. In 1900, Argentina had a per capita income fully 70 percent of
ours. After a 20th century wallowing in Peronism and its imitators,
Argentina is a basket case, its per capita income now 23
percent of ours.
There
certainly is a crisis of confidence in our country’s institutions. But that’s
hardly new. The current run of endemic distrust began with Vietnam and
Watergate. Yet not in our lifetimes have the left and right populism of the
Sanders and Trump variety enjoyed such massive support.
The added
factor is the Obama effect, the depressed and anxious mood of a nation
experiencing its worst
economic recovery since
World War II and watching its power and influence abroad decline amid a willed
global retreat.
The result is
a politics of high fantasy. Things can’t get any worse, we hear, so why not
shake things to their foundation? Anyone who thinks things can’t get any worse
knows nothing. And risks everything.
***
***
‘The dismal
tale of ruination from Russia to Cuba to Venezuela.”
It would be interesting to find out how much these young
Democrats know about the Kronstadt rebellion, the collectivization, the
Ukrainian famine, the Kirov murder, the great Purge of the thirties, the
Gulags, the Katyn massacre, the Doctors’ Plot, the Great Leap Forward, the
Cultural Revolution and how many people Che Guevara executed as Castro’s
executioner?
