President Barack Obama is a beguiling but confounding figure. As he said of himself in "The Audacity of Hope," "I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views."
It is indeed audacious that he should proclaim this consciously disingenuous attribute. And as one reads his inaugural address, it is hard not to conclude that it was crafted shrewdly to perpetuate such confusion.
Run-of-the-mill politicians try to hide their duplicity. Only the most gifted brag that they intend to confound and confuse the public. Such an effort is beyond ingenious; it is brazenly ingenuous.
And it is working. Many of my fellow conservative commentators are embarrassingly eager to search Obama's words, groveling for hopeful signs that he is not a radical intent on changing the face and nature of our republic.
Free market conservatives point hopefully, pathetically, to the first clauses of these words Obama said: "Nor is the question before us whether the market is a force for good or ill. Its power to generate wealth and expand freedom is unmatched, but this crisis has reminded us that without a watchful eye, the market can spin out of control." That "watchful eye" he calls for may be as benign as Teddy Roosevelt's anti-monopoly policies, or it could be as constricting as French socialism -- or worse.
And how easily (willingly?) some of our fellow conservative commentators are seduced to believe the good parts and hope away the bad bits.
What are we to make of the following dismissive assertion by Obama⢠"On this day, we come to proclaim an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn-out dogmas that for far too long have strangled our politics."
What exactly are the "petty grievances" and the "worn-out dogmas"⢠Well, as the most liberal senator in Washington, as a man who has called for redistributive justice, it is a fair guess that free markets, low tax rates and a respect for private property are the worn-out dogmas, petty grievances and childish things that he believes we cynics must move beyond.
I believe that Obama intends to craft a new nationalism, using the disassembled timber of our traditional values to build a more collectivist and less individualistic ship of state. The planks will look vaguely familiar, but the ship will be quite different.
Oddly, my suspicion is confirmed by my liberal friend, scholar and columnist for The Washington Post E.J. Dionne, who wrote last week that "President Obama intends to use conservative values for progressive ends. He will cast extreme individualism as an infantile approach to politics that must be supplanted by a more adult sense of personal and collective responsibility. And in trying to do all these things, he will confuse a lot of people."
Perhaps E.J., hopefully, and I, suspiciously, both have misread Obama. But one is entitled to be suspicious of a politician who brags, "I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views." That strikes me as a conscious intent to deceive in order to diffuse opposition to his designs until it is too late to block them. Ronald Reagan never hid his policy intentions. Neither, in fairness, did Lyndon Johnson or Walter Mondale.
A politician who will not sail under his own flag sails, in effect, against all flags. Such a strategy may, in time, undercut his support from increasingly suspicious progressives, liberals, moderates and conservatives -- once they recognize the deception.
Tony Blankley, former editorial page editor of The Washington Times, is executive vice president of Edelman public relations in Washington.
