No More Evasion: Mr. Obama Chooses to 'Scare the Bear'

By James G. Wiles

In March, 2010, a Democrat and public intellectual named Peter Beinart noticed that President Obama and the Democrats -- then enjoying control of both Houses of Congress -- had broken with a time-tested Democratic strategy. What exercised Peter Beinart, fourteen months into the Obama administration, was Mr. Obama's and his allies' decision to bet their control of Congress on passing universal health care despite the opposition of a majority of the American people. Peter Beinart thought that that was very dangerous. Granted, Beinart said, Obama & Co. deserved credit for being true to their principles. They were going "all in" to achieve a goal of the American left since FDR's proposed Second Bill of Rights in 1944. But they were also, Beinart warned, abandoning a successful political strategy sometimes followed by Democrats since the 1972 McGovern debacle. That strategy goes by the name of "the politics of evasion." Evasion as a Democratic strategy dates from a famous academic paper published in 1989 by William Galston and Elaine Kamarck. The "politics.... (Read Full Article)