A Political Nihilist

As the morning-after reaction to Barack Obama's imperial move to write his own laws on immigration reaches a crescendo, there's something deeper going on. Peggy Noonan writes:

Historical vindication happens. The Obama White House assumes it will happen to them. Thus they can do pretty much what they want.

What they forget is that facts largely decide what history thinks—outcomes, what happened, what it means. What they also forget, or perhaps never knew, is that the great ones are always constructive. They don’t divide and tear down. They build, gather in, create, bend, meld, and in so doing move things forward.

That’s not this crowd.

This White House seems driven—does it understand this?—by a kind of political nihilism. They agitate, aggravate, fray and separate.

That assessment is on target. Throughout his entire presidency, Barack Obama has worked hard to separate and divide the American people. He has demonized his political opposition continuously. He gives the clear indication that those who disagree with him are at best cold-hearted or at worse immoral. He has, through subtle implication and in-your-face rhetoric, tried to divide whites and blacks, rich and poor, men and women, and of course, Democrats and Republicans. At every turn, he has divided the country and destroyed any trust that might exist between opposing political views. In the process and ironically, he has done grave harm to his own party, who to their detriment, have followed his lead without question or comment (no 'profiles in courage' among the Dems).

If Obama wasn't a "political nihilist," he would have worked with the new GOP majority (who for political reasons understand as well as Obama that immigration reform legislation has to happen) to craft a bi-partisan law. It would have taken 2015 to get it done, but it would have gotten done. If it didn't happen, the country might have supported his imperial move. But he didn't even try. And please, let's not whine about a divided congress doing nothing in the first six years of his presidency or about the House holding up the senate immigration bill. The Democratic leader of the Senate, Harry Reid, held up 350 House bills—350! What goes around in politics, comes around.

With this aggressive and destruction action, Barack Obama establishes a dangerous counter-constitutional precedent for future presidents. He all but guarantees continuing division and resentment. He doesn't seem to care.