Academic

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: The Chrysalis Opens. The new Barack Obama has learned not to offer instanta?

By Glenn Reynolds

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON: The Chrysalis Opens.

The new Barack Obama has learned not to offer instantaneous editorial commentary in the fashion of his past editorializing on hearing of the Skip Gates affair, the Mutallab bombing attempt, the Ground Zero mosque controversy or the Maj. Hasan mass murdering.

Instead, the metamorphosizing president put his finger to the wind. He soon learned that his leftist base within 72 hours had turned off the public with its demagogic charges of conservative culpability for a deranged killer murdering the innocent. And so Obama summarily jettisoned his leftist scapegoating base. In dispassionate fashion, he figured that within hours the New York Times et al. would Trotskyize their earlier narratives, and most of the Left would cease the poll-killing (excuse the metaphor) ?climate of hate? narrative.

He was right. The progressive community snapped back into line, reminding the country that the desire for power and status always trumps ideology. . . . Will Obama 2.0 work? Perhaps, especially if conservatives ornate the Clinton ?96 analogy with their own Bob Dole in 2012. But all that said, the wages of hubris?nemesis?are not so easily forgotten.

Read the whole thing. Related: The President Is Not Therapist-in-Chief.

Full post as published by Instapundit.com on January 16, 2011 (boomark / email).