Twelve years ago today, I wrote my first “Blue State Blues” column. It focused on then-President Barack Obama’s preference for the use (or abuse) of executive power, as opposed to negotiating with Congress.
Obama, I wrote, had developed his political identity in Chicago, and identified strongly with the city’s first black mayor, Harold Washington.
Washington had been elected with support from “progressive” reformers, but once he was in office, he ran into opposition from fellow Democrats, especially the white “ethnic” Democrats who dominated the Chicago political machine and opposed everything he did in the city.
Faced with the “Council Wars,” Washington started exploring the boundaries of his executive authority. He eventually turned the tide against the machine when Luis Gutiérrez — later a Democratic congressman — won a key special election that gave Washington’s reform faction a majority on the council.
But it was too late: Washington died of a heart attack early in his second term, before he could use the power he had won.
The lesson, for Obama, was twofold: first, that political opposition could be attributed to bad motives, like racism or corruption; and second, that a leader had to move quickly to exercise authority, lest fate take away the chance.
That was why Obama rushed Obamacare through Congress on a party-line vote — an overhaul of the nation’s health insurance system that never worked and which, even today, needs subsidies to survive.
It is also why Obama enacted Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) and other forms of amnesty by fiat; and why he refused to submit the disastrous Iran nuclear deal to the Senate, as required, for ratification.
Obama was elected because he promised to transcend the country’s political divisions and to deliver the unpopular, but necessary, changes that America needed. (Sen. Joe Lieberman once lamented that Obama had missed a unique opportunity to enact entitlement reform; only he would have had the credibility to do it.) Instead, he fell back on tired, doctrinaire liberal ideas that he tried to force through with his “pen and phone.”
Democrats loved Obama’s dirigiste, almost dictatorial approach. The Tea Party rose up against it, reminding the country that the Constitution had checks and balances on executive power. (Democrats and the media called that “racist.”)
Now, it is Democrats who march in “No Kings” protests and decry President Trump’s supposed authoritarianism — though Trump’s executive actions have usually been vindicated by the courts, and long before he had appointed enough new judges to reflect a conservative, originalist point of view.
It is heartening to see Democrats echo the Tea Party in their newfound demand for a president who adheres to the Constitution. But that embrace is incomplete. Their party has just nominated a socialist in New York, who promises to expand the powers of city government — such as they are — to fix grocery prices, to do away with magnet schools, and even to arrest international leaders (well, only the Israeli one).
Many Democrats are motivated by utopian visions of a perfect society, and they can only achieve that vision by increasing the power of the state and suppressing dissent, which is how they have run the cities, and the universities.
Conservatives are inherently suspicious of government, and tend to dislike politics. We do not want power over the lives of others; we do, however, want control of our own lives.
Trump is restoring that control, which is why his mannerisms and his style of leadership — paternalistic at times, demanding loyalty, and encouraging flattery — do not bother us or strike most of us as contrary to conservative ideals. That behavior familiar from the business world, which rewards (and even requires) assertive behavior, within boundaries.
If Obama saw himself as the mayor of America, Trump seems to see himself as the leader of America — as a family business. There are risks, political and ethical, in that approach, but it seems to be working. It has, at least, restored a sense of connection between government and the governed, which had been lost for decades.
Obama also represented a “woke,” totalitarian mindset that believed American institutions were inherently corrupted by the past, and had to be replaced, or redeemed, by a post-national, post-modern elite. Trump has attacked the “woke” revolution, and restored the ideals of nationalism and modernity to our politics. These are not perfect or complete answers to the challenges we face, but they are necessary if we are to survive.
A final note: some of the president’s early “Never Trump” critics, a decade ago, noted that our website’s founder, Andrew Breitbart, had warned that conservatives might be stuck, one day, with a celebrity like Trump as our candidate.
But Andrew also said that Trump understood the electorate — and the media — better than the Republicans did. It was that insight destined him to be the remedy to the Obama years.
A Christian woman at a Trump rally in Sarasota, Florida, on the eve of Trump’s stunning victory in 2016 told me that she believed that Donald Trump, while hardly a saint, was God’s instrument for saving America.
If so, that was because Andrew Breitbart, and the website he founded, led the way in taking on Hollywood, the media, and Obama himself, creating the audience for Trump’s message, and the openness to hear it.
Trump is no king. He is a leader — something many Americans struggle to recognize, simply because it has been so long since we had one. But his power does not come from his wealth, his charisma, or even the Oval Office itself. Rather, it comes from the support of the people who needed him, or someone like him, to break through the complacency of our elites and to do what is necessary to restore our control of our own lives.
Trump is closing the political chapter Obama opened. After the trauma of 9/11, the tragedy of the Iraq War, and the ruin of the financial crisis, Obama believed in “fundamentally transforming” America. Conservatives believe in “restoring” America, and found a champion in Trump.
The radicals persist, in places like New York. But the fact that many Democrats are embracing the Constitution — at least as a tool of opposition — is a sign of hope.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the recent e-book, “The Zionist Conspiracy (and how to join it),” now available on Audible. He is also the author of the e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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