Talking me down from the ledge

Jonah Goldberg gives it a try:

Barack Obama, who holds a patent on a device that hurls aides and friends under a bus from great distances, also understands [the need to be the least acceptable available scapegoat].  That is why Kathleen Sebelius these days looks a lot like a Soviet general on his way to brief Stalin on the early "progress" in the battle of Stalingrad. 

. . . [A]s I've written many times, I don't think we have much reason to fear traditional jack-booted dictators in this country.  Ironically, the main reason we don't have to worry about them is that we worry about them so much. . . .  Deep in American DNA is a visceral aversion to despotism.  Sometimes, during a war or other crisis, it can be suspended for a while, but eventually we remember that we just don't like dictators. 

The bad news is that we don't feel that way -- anymore -- about softer, more diffuse and bureaucratic forms of tyranny.  Every American is taught from grade school up that they should fear living in the world of Orwell's 1984.  Few Americans can tell you why we shouldn't live in Huxley's Brave New World.  We've got the dogmatic muscle and rhetorical sinew to repel militarism, but we're intellectually flabby when it comes to rejecting statist maternalism.  We hate hearing "Because I said so!"  But we're increasingly powerless against, "It's for your own good!" 

. . . 

For instance, when the national-security types intrude on our privacy or civil liberties, even theoretically, all of the "responsible" voices in the media and academia wig out.  But when Obamacare poses a vastly more intrusive and real threat to our privacy, the same people yawn and roll their eyes at anyone who complains.  If the District of Columbia justified its omnipresent traffic cameras as an attempt to keep tabs on dissidents, they'd be torn down in a heartbeat by mobs of civil libertarians.  But when justified on the grounds of public safety (or revenue for social services or as a way to make driving cars more difficult), well, that's different. 

And it is different. Motives matter. But at the same time, I do wish we looked a bit more like the America Edmund Burke once described: 

In other countries, the people, more simple, and of a less mercurial cast, judge of an ill principle in government only by an actual grievance; [In America] they anticipate the evil, and judge of the pressure of the grievance by the badness of the principle. They augur misgovernment at a distance; and snuff the approach of tyranny in every tainted breeze. 

. . . 

The remarkable thing about this is that there's no real executive experience in his explication of his executive experience.  Yes, the candidate can fire people from the campaign.  But being the candidate and being the campaign manager are as different as being the lead singer for Spinal Tap and being the band's manager.  On the campaign trail, Obama's job was to "be Barack Obama," to sound smart and charismatic and rev up the crowds.  He's still playing that part rather than fulfilling the job description. 

And no one will tell him.  That's why, I suspect, when he went to check on the progress of the site's development he had no idea how to ask questions that would get at the reality of the situation.  Bureaucrats, apparatchiks, and contractors blow smoke.  That's what they do. Obama has no idea how to cut through the smoke.  He thinks being president involves constantly going out and giving speeches to crowds that love him about how hard he's working rather than actually, you know, working.  It's all very meta.  He's playing president Obama because he doesn't know how to be president Obama.  I think that when he went out on Monday and did his infomercial schtick in the Rose Garden -- Operators are standing by!  It's not just a website; it's a floorwax! etc. -- he honestly thought he was fixing the problem.  Well, I've done my part!

I can't link to this, because it comes from his email feed, but Goldberg usually has good stuff up at NRO.