Obama's Not New!?

andophiroxia · #1 10-28-2008, 05:28 PM

Wow, but I thought Obama was "new".

Quote:

Jonah Goldberg:
Obama's not 'new'
Don't think that policies Obama is touting haven't been touted before.Jonah Goldberg
October 28, 2008

There's an old saying: The oldest word in American politics is "new." Only in that sense is there anything new to Barack Obama.

Obama prefers the word "progressive" to "liberal" because it makes it sound like he's shedding old liberal ideas. But if he is, it's only to embrace older ones.

America first encountered the vision Obama espouses under Woodrow Wilson, the first progressive president, and the first to openly disparage the U.S. Constitution as a hindrance to enlightened government. His new idea was to replace it with a "living constitution" that empowered government to evolve beyond that document's constraints. The Bill of Rights, lamented the progressives, inhibited what the government can do to people, but it failed to delineate what it must do for people.

The old conception of individualism needed to be replaced by a new system in which the citizen "married his interests to the state," in Wilson's words. This would allow the state to fulfill the progressive pledge to "spread the prosperity around." Obama shares Wilson's faith in a living constitution and has argued that Supreme Court judges should be confirmed based on their empathy for the downtrodden.

In a vital essay in the current Claremont Review of Books, Charles Kesler notes that Obama mentions Franklin Roosevelt in his book, "The Audacity of Hope," more times than any living Democratic politician. That's not surprising, given that FDR -- a veteran of the Wilson administration -- carried the progressive vision of government much further than Wilson himself.

Link here.

Fuzzball · #2 10-28-2008, 09:35 PM

Just goes to prove...the "Change" that Hussein is talking about is what he'll leave in your pockets...

andophiroxia · #3 10-28-2008, 10:20 PM

He'll just leave a thin dime.

MrsMcGee · #4 10-29-2008, 01:41 AM

And Mr. Goldberg isn't the only one who thinks so:

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/art..._new_poli.html