Men of Intemperate Minds

Many leading conservatives look to former Democrat campaign strategist Dick Morris for political insights and forecasts. In his Newsmax piece this week titled “Obama Support Crumbling,” Morris wonders…if the Chief Executive seems in over his head, what were voters expecting when they elected him? Morris writes:


“One of my favorite quotes about politics comes from Henry Kissinger in his book "Years of Upheaval," his memoir of the Ford presidency: "A statesman's duty is to bridge the gap between his vision and his nation's experience. If his vision gets too far out ahead of his nation's experience, he will lose his mandate. But if he hews too close to the conventional, he will lose control over events." Now, at once, we see both happening to President Obama.

His healthcare proposals obviously ran afoul of the first of Kissinger's warnings. By pushing for changes that conflicted with America's values, common sense, and experience, he lost his mandate. In that disastrous push for an elusive goal, he ruined his own presidency… Indeed, his push for health legislation, in the face of rapidly eroding public support, ranks with the war in Vietnam, Watergate, and, of course, Clinton's healthcare initiatives as the most costly to their respective political parties.

But now, as he faces threats from Iran, domestic terrorism, continually high unemployment, and the swollen deficit, he also is violating the second half of Kissinger's warning: His politics are too passive and too conventional and, as a result, losing control over events. In the phase of presidential dithering in the aftermath of the Scott Brown victory in Massachusetts, there is no clear presidential message, no coherent strategy and, even, no identifiable program… He is experiencing both ends of the Kissinger prediction.

Republicans and independents are still in shock from his headlong rush into socialism while Democrats are increasingly restive and disillusioned by his failure to lead. And the entire country is worried at his passivity in the face of domestic terror threats and the rapidly growing Iranian momentum toward the acquisition of nuclear weapons…

Seemingly paralyzed by adversity, President Obama and his advisers are showing a lack of resilience in the face of reversals that is perhaps the inevitable outcome of his smooth rise to the top in 2008… All this might be what happens when you elect a state senator whose U.S. Senate career was consumed with his presidential campaign as president.”


Whether the actions of the President have caused an erosion of support for his administration or not, a majority of Americans sense that long-held rights and privileges are being chiseled away—and someone is to blame.

Englishman Edmund Burke (1729-97) identified a culprit. He reasoned that “Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites....Society cannot exist, unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere; and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without. It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.”

Something libertarians might ponder.