Prof. Kesler on RCP Home Page, on Barack Obama

If you care to read the entire essay, "The Audacity of Barack Obama," I would very much recommend it to you.

I don't know if I share his view on Obama seeking a new majority. Obviously every politician seeks it, but will Obama achieve it? That would, it seem, be the question presented to us.

I don't believe he will sustain any majority. As Kesler makes clear, Obama's progressivism knows no natural limits. He writes,

Thus unity is for the sake of "dignity and respect," which require both "social justice" and "economic justice." The latter ramifies widely, demanding, for instance, that "if you work in America you should not be poor"; that a college education should be every child's "birthright"; and that every American should have broadband access.

I wonder what stops him from declaring that every American ought to have a graduate degree and why we would stop at broadband. The answer is that we won't stop at things like college or broadband because there is no natural limit to what people will demand or want from government.

Still, I don't think Kesler focused enough on the cult of Obama that seems to be I suspect a President Obama will be a lot like Deval Patrick, governor of the state of my parents, Massachusetts. He will move too quickly, catering and caring little of the whims and interests of the complicated machinery that is Washington, D.C. Alas, though I feel as if I was the first to make this argument, it's made more fully and nicely in this piece from Matthew Kaminksi of The Wall Street Journal:

Gov. Patrick's bigger challenge was to turn an autobiographical, pseudo-postideological campaign into a mandate for governing. The transition proved hard and, today, remains incomplete. Having made himself the focus of the election, Mr. Patrick could not easily point to a particular policy agenda of his own. "He won a mandate for a governing style," says Byron Rushing, a House Democrat. "That presents a problem because everyone in their mind has an agenda to go with that style." Jay Kaufman, another representative, adds, "Each decision disappointed someone."

Sound familiar?