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Jewish World Review Nov. 15, 2012/ 1 Kislev, 5773 Oh, we forgot to tell you . . . By Victor Davis Hanson
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
The second-term curse goes like this: A president (e.g., Apparently, like tragic Greek heroes, administrations grow arrogant after their re-election wins. They believe that they are invincible and that heir public approval is permanent rather than fickle. The result is that Nemesis zeroes in on their fatal conceit and with a boom corrects their hubris. Or is the problem in some instances simply that embarrassments and scandals, hushed up in fear that they might cost an administration an election, explode with a fury in the second term? Coincidentally, right after the election we heard that Coincidentally, we just learned that new food stamp numbers were "delayed" and that millions more became new recipients in the months before the election. Coincidentally, we now gather that the federal relief effort following Hurricane Sandy was not so smooth, even as Coincidentally, we now learn that Obama's plan of letting tax rates increase for the "fat cat" 2 percent who make over Coincidentally, we now learn that the vaunted Dream Act would at most cover only about 10 percent to 20 percent of illegal immigrants. As part of the bargain, does Obama have a post-election Un-Dream Act to deport the other 80 percent who do not qualify since either they just recently arrived in America, are not working, are not in school or the military, are on public assistance, or have a criminal record? Coincidentally, now that the election is over, the scandal over the killings of Americans in The real postelection mystery is why we ever had a secondary consulate in Benghazi in the first place, when most nations had long ago pulled their embassies out of war-torn Why, about a mile from the consulate, did we have a large CIA-staffed "annex" that seems to have been busy with all sorts of things other than providing adequate security for our nearby diplomats? Before the election, the media was not interested in figuring out what Ambassador But the strangest "coincidentally" of all is the bizarre resignation of American hero Gen. If the affair was haphazardly hushed up for about a year, how exactly did Petraeus become confirmed as CIA director, a position that allows no secrets, much less an entire secret life? How and why did the FBI investigate the Petraeus matter? To whom and when did it report its findings? And what was the administration reaction? Coincidentally, if it is true that Petraeus can no longer testify as CIA director to the House and It has been less than two weeks since the election, and Obama seems no exception to the old rule that for administrations which manage to survive their second terms, almost none seem to enjoy them. The sudden release of all sorts of suppressed news and "new" facts right after the election creates public cynicism. The hushed-up, fragmentary account of the now-unfolding facts of the Libyan disaster contributes to further disbelief. The sudden implosion of Petraeus -- whose seemingly unimpeachable character appears so at odds with reports of sexual indiscretion, a lack of candor and The resulting mix is toxic, and it may tax even the formidable Chicago-style survival skills of Obama and the fealty of a so far dutiful media.
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here. Victor Davis Hanson, a classicist and military historian, is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and a recipient of the 2007 National Humanities Medal. Comment by clicking here. © 2012, TMS |
Arnold Ahlert | |||||||||||||
