Pattern bargaining

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By James Morrow in Sydney

6 May 2009

Among conservatives, it has been fashionable to describe Barack Obama as the black Jimmy Carter.

Among liberals, Barack Obama is really the black FDR.

Both are wrong: Barack Obama is in fact the black Richard Nixon.

Forget the cosmetic differences of mien and marriage. A little more than a hundred days into Barack Obama's presidency, it has become abundantly clear that the erstwhile Chicago community organiser is at heart not so much a lightworker as a political bully and standover artist, happy to make nice for the cameras but even happier to leverage the power of his office to shake down his opponents behind closed doors.

Much has been made of reports that Obama officials threatened to sic the White House Press Corps on Chrysler creditors who did not go along with the president's plan to shaft bondholders and reward his allies in the United Autoworkers Union, and personally I believe them. Not so much because of any personal animus towards Barack Obama - unlike so many on the Left during the Bush administration, I do not want every terrible thing reported about the president to be true - but because it is part of a greater pattern. Nixon had his IRS and his plumbers; Obama has Chris Matthews, Keith Olbermann, and AIG bus tours. Both tools contain a not-so-subtle message: We know where you live.

Look at how Obama forced Chris Dodd - no ethical paragon himself - to insert a provision saving the bonuses of AIG executives into the bank bailout -so that Obama could then go out and attack those same bonuses.

Or the way Obama forced Rick Wagoner to resign as head of GM.

The list goes on.

It's time for conservatives, business leaders, and Americans who are appalled by this bullying to take a page out of the President's own playbook - specifically Alinksy's Rules for Radicals, which a young Barack Obama studied well in his days as a Chicago "community organiser". Specifically rules 5 ("Ridicule is a man's most potent weapon") and 9 ("the threat is usually more potent than the thing itself").

Liberals, unfairly, destroyed Nixon's presidency through mockery. Instead of just getting angry at the president, conservatives need to learn to laugh again (something P.J. O'Rourke reminded us here in Australia during his recent visit to Sydney). And more to the point, they need to remember that his threats are still checked by rule of law.