POPULISM UNMASKED
There was a well-written article posted by Ms. O’Grady in the Wall Street Journal on Monday, July 27th, pointing to the mistakes President Obama is making in Central America and the Caribbean. The jist of it was, “Know your facts first . . . then act, and don’t confuse Populism with democratic supported freedom. She went on to suggest that constitutions are not there to be ignored and broken. Not something you normally think requires pointing out to a man who was Editor & Chief of the Harvard Law Review. The Journal, on another page, suggested the President was listening to the wrong people on Honduras and not his Secretary of State.
I sent the article to a good friend of mine who’s been very critical of prior administrations’ relations with our Latin neighbors. His name is David, and he called me this morning.
“I don’t always agree with that lady, but she made a convincing argument in the instance of Honduras. But you know what hit me the hardest?”
I waited.
“She could have been talking about what the Obama/Pelosi crowd are doing in the good old USA.”
I waited some more.
“Obama’s espousing pure, unadulterated, populism. It’s clothed as national health care, high taxes, cheap Dollars, a strong pro-union agenda, and a cash fix for our retreating economy. These notions could be coming out of Havana or Caracas. Don’t they understand letting people fail is part of the freedom we’ve fought so hard to maintain?”
Isn’t that a bit extreme?
“What he’s doing is extreme. And once a powerful leader like our President gets the bit between his (or her) teeth he will tend to extremes. In the case of Obama, it’s better we see it now rather than after he and his Congress have done it all. It’s much harder to turn things around when an ideologue accomplishes his goals. Better to nip him in the bud or, better yet, turn him back around to where he is what I thought he was . . . the brilliant, fair-minded, practical, solution-oriented, politician I voted for . . . not an arrogant, my-way-or-the-highway manipulator, using social means to empower his government and himself. But slim chance of that I reckon.”
How did you get all this out of her article on Honduras and an ill-advised Latin policy?
“Populism is populism. Promise your people everything, hand out cash to the poor, tell them there’s more where that came from, and by the time the duped wake up to what’s really happening it’s too late to change it back or make it right. In Honduras they stopped it before the damage could become eternal. When I read that in her article it made the connection for me. Our President doesn’t want it stopped in Honduras or in Washington. Otherwise he’d have opted out like he did on the demonstrations in Iran.”
Do you really think that’s his agenda?
“His backing of the deposed Honduran president, who was bent on abolishing their constitution in much the way Chavez has in Venezuela, let Obama’s cat out of the bag. He’s sympathetic, and at best has confused populism with democracy. No one truly anchored to freedom of the individual could be taking the position he has on the Honduran situation. Hillary Clinton disagreed with him on Iran, and I suspect she didn’t like much the President’s statements on Honduras. It made him seem out of touch.” Why have a State Department if you’re not going to use it?”
You were critical of Bill Clinton’s Latin policies.
“And George Bush’s too. But this is more troubling, because it goes to the heart of what makes the U.S. the best place to be and to be from. Populism cannot work without a strong, one-sided, central authority calling all the shots. Alexander Hamilton warned us about the Dictatorship of the Majority. We know now that this is where they’re going. Evita Peron would recognize the rhetoric.”
I agreed to join David for coffee tomorrow and talk about this some more. If nothing else he’s making me think.