The Corner

On Looking ‘Bad’

Almost unremarked upon was one of Barack Obama’s more revealing recent statements, when campaigning in Maryland this week. At one point, he warned his crowd of supporters to get out to vote in order to prevent his own embarrassment in November:  “Don’t make me look bad, now.” Since he is not up for reelection, apparently the president means that the slaughter of perhaps 50 Democratic congressional representatives and 8-10 senators will reflect poorly upon himself. Of course it will, but he might have instead phrased his dilemma in terms of worry about his supporters’ fates rather than his own, inasmuch as most all voted for his agenda, despite the fact that almost all elements of it polled poorly with the American people. After November, many will be out of a job, not he — and yet his concern seems to be the public perception of his own godhead, not their unemployment.

Victor Davis Hanson is a classicist and historian at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University; the author of The Second World Wars: How the First Global Conflict Was Fought and Won; and a distinguished fellow of the Center for American Greatness.
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