Investor's Business Daily ^ | June 8, 2012 | Victor Davis Hanson
Barack Obama lately has been accusing presumptive rival Mitt Romney of not waging his campaign in the nice (but losing) manner of John McCain in 2008. But a more marked difference can be seen in Obama himself, whose style and record bear no resemblance to his glory days of four years ago.
Recently, the president purportedly has been reassuring Democratic donors that his signature achievement, ObamaCare, could be readjusted in the second term — something Republicans have promised to do for the last three years.
What an evolution: We have gone from being told we would love Obama-Care, to granting exemptions to favored companies from it, to private assurances to modify it after re-election — all before it was even fully enacted.
Obama's calls for a new civility four years ago are apparently inoperative. The vow to "punish our enemies" and the intimidation of Romney campaign donors are a long way from the soaring speech at Berlin's Victory Column and "Yes, we can."
Obama once called for a focus on issues rather than personal invective. But now we mysteriously hear again of Romney's dog, his great-great-grandfather's wives and a roughhousing incident some 50 years ago in prep school.
The "hope and change" slogan for a new unity gave way to a new "us vs. them" divide. "Us" now means all sorts of targeted appeals to identity groups like African-Americans for Obama, Latinos for Obama, gays for Obamas, greens for Obama, or students for Obama.
"Them," in contrast, means almost everyone else who cannot claim hyphenation or be counted on as a single-cause constituency. In 2008, the Obama strategy was supposedly to unite disparate groups with a common vision; in 2012, it is to rally special interests through common enemies....
(Excerpt) Read more at news.investors.com ...
