That "Vision Thing" Again

POLITICO seriously thinks that President Obama is suffering from the same problem that vexed former President George H.W. Bush.  That is, he has yet to articulate clearly his vision for America.  They even quote presidential historian Douglas Brinkley to that effect: “Americans aren’t quite sure what the grand vision of Barack Obama really is. … His chess pieces are really scattered around the board.”

Unbelievable.

Let me help'em out.

All hypocrisies aside (that's something you must always say first when describing the vision of anyone on the left side of our political spectrum), Barack Obama is a unapologetic champion of big, no, make that huge, omnicompetent, welfare-state liberalism.  To that end, he values equality over liberty and pursues leveling policies whenever possible.  Like most liberals, not all, he fashions himself a cosmopolite, a citizen of the world, first, and an American second.  Like many liberals, too many, his identity as an American is a source of genuine personal embarrassment.  His audacious hope is that he can make America over again into an idealized version of almost any (you pick) European country.

The reason Obama's "chess pieces are really scattered around the board", or at least appear so, is because he came along at a time, in point of fact to a large extent he helped precipitate that time, when we simply ran out of money and credit.  Moreover, he came up against, finally, a citizenry who, unlike him, remain passionately patriotic and who also still, thank God, value liberty and property more than they do equality.

Oh, he has a vision alright.  It's just that more and more Americans have emerged from the feel-good fog of voting for the first black president and don't like what they see.  They have a vision too.