Those listening to President Obama’s speech in the Rose Garden yesterday may have been hoping for remarks outlining a comprehensive debt reducing package from the nation’s chief executive, but what they got was yet another class warfare screed.  Replete with admonitions that the wealthy need to pay their “fair share” (as defined by Him of course) and sprinkled with his patented scare tactics rooted in the fallacy of the false alternative (either hedge fund managers pay more or seniors will go hungry) the president to me revealed more of himself even than he has in the past about what really makes him tick, both philosophically as psychologically.

He is, at heart, an ardent believer that the wealth of a nation’s citizenry is in the end the property of their government into which the haves pay and bureaucrats then distribute out as social justice in the form or largess to the have-nots.  His increasing vibe of anger, that seems to conversely rise as his poll numbers fall, reveals to me a rather petulant man, unable to grasp the notion that he may not actually be the smartest guy in the room (despite the assurances of his orbiting satellites of sycophants in and out of  the MSM media) and that there are those who disagree with him not because they haven’t heard his message, but rather because they have and have found it wanting.

I found myself listening to his speech and thinking that I’d heard most of it before.  Most but not all.  One new tact that the historian in me found fascinating, and quite cynical, was his reaching down into the soil of Mount Vernon to summon the ghost of our most esteemed first president, George Washington, to help make his case.  Mr. Obama offered up this snippet from Washington’s September 19, 1796 Farwell Address to the nation to bolster his tax raising stance:

“…towards the payment of debts there must be revenue; that to have revenue there must be taxes; and no taxes can be devised which are not more or less inconvenient and unpleasant.”

Here is how Mr. Obama’s speech-writers interpreted our first president’s advice,   Said our current president:

“It’s always more popular to promise the moon and leave the bill for after the next election or the election after that.  That’s been true since our founding.  George Washington grappled with this problem.  He understood that dealing with the debt is — these are his words – ‘always a choice of difficulties.’  But he also knew that public servants weren’t elected to do what was easy; they weren’t elected to do what was politically advantageous.”

I wonder if anyone in the Obama administration studied history because to reach back to Washington to support, in effect, raising already burdensome income taxes to sustain a massive federal bureaucracy and social welfare state is about as far a reach as one can stretch before toppling over into the abyss of utter nonsense.

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So now a new group has appeared claiming to eschew all political labels. Appropriately, they have taken the moniker “No Labels.” A closer examination of this group, however, seems to indicate that this is about as artificial as artificial can get.

The “No Labels” approach is inherently contradictory. Simply by creating the group and giving it a name, it has been labeled. Now we have Republicans, Democrats, and No Labelers. While it claims to be inclusive, it seems to attract primarily those to the left of center, whether Democrats or Republicans. The thing is, they don’t consider themselves left of center; rather, they place themselves squarely at the center and conclude that anyone not of their ilk is a “wingnut.” In fact, one of this group’s founders, John Avlon, wrote a book using that term.

I think it’s also instructive that this movement, such as it is, arose only after Republicans took back the House, made gains in the Senate, swamped governorships, and dominated state legislatures in the November elections. Why all of a sudden the need for a centrist party? Obviously because the Republicans did so well—and they must be stopped.

This effort is probably not going to make much of a dent in American politics. The idea that there are no “sides” in political debate is fanciful. Even the Founding Fathers had to face up to that. The Constitution, as originally written, did not take into account the development of political parties. There was this high hope that statesmen would govern for the good of all. Yet during Washington’s administration, we divided into Hamiltonian Federalists and Jeffersonian Republicans.

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A talk Before a Tea Party rally sponsored by the Cecil County (Md.) Patriots in Elkton, Md., 10/23/10

Twenty months ago, on February 19, 2009, business reporter Rick Santelli of CNBC took to the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange to deliver his famous rant against government bail-outs, and call for “a Chicago tea party.”

Santelli may have sparked the Tea Party movement. But he only tapped into outrage that had been growing in many of us for decades.

For too long, you and I have watched helplessly as a clique of politicians, intellectuals, activists, and bureaucrats from both parties have tried to obliterate our Constitution, our capitalist system, and our personal liberty. This “bipartisan Ruling Class”—as scholar Angelo Codevilla describes it—sees itself as a moral, cultural, and intellectual elite. Codevilla says that “Today’s ruling class, from Boston to San Diego, was formed by an educational system that exposed them to the same ideas and gave them remarkably uniform guidance, as well as tastes and habits.”

Oozing sanctimonious arrogance, viewing the rest of us as coarse, unsophisticated rubes who cling bitterly to guns and bibles, this class seeks to impose its own supposedly superior values and visions upon the rest of us, by force of law.

As we know too well, the ultimate goal of our Ruling Class is power. They exist—not to produce, not to invent, not to create—but to manipulate and master others. Ronald Reagan memorably summed up the Ruling Class’s governing outlook this way: “If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.”

By contrast, the rest of us Americans seek power over circumstances, but not over each other. We acquire our personal sense of identity and self-esteem through productive work—not through imposing our will, values, and visions on our neighbors. We accept a “live and let live” philosophy.

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When they teach American government and the history of the early American republic, political scientists and historians have a puzzle to explain. There is, within the American constitution, no mention of political parties. And yet it is impossible to make sense of American politics in and after the early republic without reference to parties. Moreover, the parties that did emerge in the United States bear only a faint resemblance to the parties that existed in England and on the European continent prior to the American civil war and even less to the parties that exist on the other side of the Atlantic today.

The two puzzles are related. It is true that the Framers of the Constitution had no liking and made no provision for organized political parties, and it is also true that all of the early Presidents made at least a half-hearted attempt to transcend partisanship. It was not until Andrew Jackson that we got our first unequivocally partisan President. It is also true that the partisan divide that emerged in the 1790s was viewed by both sides as something temporary and regrettable. Thomas Jefferson and James Madison formed a party, which in time they called the Republican Party, to counter what they considered a conspiracy on the part of George Washington’s Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton, and in response he formed a party to counter what he considered a conspiracy on their part. Absent the conspiracy, or in the eventuality of its defeat and disappearance, the American republic’s first partisans expected the parties to wither away.

In this presumption, as Martin van Buren came to realize, they were wrong. Given the separation of powers, it was virtually impossible to govern in the absence of partisan alliances. But the very structure of American government – in which Congressmen are elected by particular constituencies located in particular places and look to that locality for re-election, and in which Senators represent particular states and are no less sensitive to local concerns – subverts partisanship and promotes a species of moderation as well. Only the President sees the Union from the perspective of the whole. When Tip O’Neill remarked that all politics is local, he spoke in a fashion perfectly appropriate to his situation as Speaker of the House of Representatives.

We must, then, view political parties from a double perspective.

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The New Yorker Magazine published a classic cover illustration for its January 29, 2009 edition. It showed the newly-inaugurated President Obama in a classic pose as George Washington.

It could be my favorite picture of Barack Obama. It emphasizes the continuity of our traditions, the debt we all owe as Americans to the Father of our Country. Sober, thoughtful, wise, it bestows on our new President all the dignity of the office. It stresses the fact that the President is not only leader of a party, or an administration, but he is also the chief of state. What a stately portrait it is.

That inauguration was a great moment of unity for all Americans. We had achieved peacefully not only a transfer of power, but an historic first. We had reason to congratulate ourselves on a post-racial future. We had reason to hope that Dr. King’s famous cry—that we would each be judged not by the color of our skin, but by the content of our character—would at last be realized.

Americans—even the millions like me who did not vote for Barack Obama—had reason to be proud that as a candidate, he had garnered 41% of white male voters and 43% of white voters overall. This was better than John Kerry’s 35% of white males and 42% of all white voters. This was convincing evidence that if America was really the racist country some liberals portray it, Barack Obama would still be sitting in the Illinois state senate.

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Today, in 1792, President George Washington exercised the first Presidential veto. We’re not sure what the bill was, but we trust that Washington made the right choice. (In fact, we think a veto is the proper default position for the executive branch.)

The left has been at war with traditional American values for decades: the Founding Fathers, the Constitution, free enterprise, Christianity. All are objects of scorn and ridicule by those who hope to “remake America” – to use President Obama’s phrase – into some sort of leftist utopia on the model of those that have already failed all around the world.

The war on Christianity is a particularly disturbing fight. The battle has been lowlighted over the years by leftists who twist themselves into intellectual knots in an effort to remove Christ from Christmas – which is like trying to remove the wet from water.

But the fact that they’re trying to defy the laws of physics doesn’t stop leftists.

Their war on American culture took a new turn this week, when the city of Davenport, Iowa, at the urging of its civil rights commission, decided to rebrand Good Friday as the “spring holiday.” A certain Baptist minister from Montgomery, Alabama might be shocked to find that civil rights activists these days are devoted to striking Christ from the public lexicon.

The decision sparked a national firestorm – Good Friday, after all, is merely the day that Christians around the nation and the world mark the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. The city finally had to reverse its decision.

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A group made up of some of the biggest names in contemporary conservatism got together a few days ago and crafted what they are calling the “Mount Vernon Statement,” a manifesto of sorts meant to give direction to today’s conservative movement. Put succinctly, it fails to fill the bill.

Taken as a whole this statement is fine as a short history lesson. It explains pretty clearly what the founders had wrought when their basic work was done with the adoption of the U.S. Constitution. But as a statement of principles that might guide today’s discussion, I do not think the letter works.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not saying that this effort is harmful. In fact, I think every young person should read it for its explication of our historically conservative American principles. The problem is that this thing doesn’t seem to speak directly to what we are facing today like a statement that perhaps aims to become boilerplate should.

Some of those involved with the statement said that the 1960 “Sharon Statement” served as their inspiration. The Sharon Statement, intended to give some ideological umph to Goldwater conservatives, is an effort that works much better as a rallying cry to action. Sadly, the Mount Vernon Statement falls a little flat in this respect.

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Today, in 1789, the Electoral College unanimously elected George Washington as the first President of the United States. (Yes, we understand there were a few other “presidents” preceding Washington, but he was the first President under the U.S. Constitution.)

In earlier posts – here, here, and here – I drew attention to the pre-eminence of Charles-Louis de Secondat, baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu in and for a time after the eighteenth century, and I suggested that at least two of the reasons for his pre-eminence are still pertinent today. There is at least one other such reason, and it, too, deserves careful consideration.

In The Spirit of Laws, Montesquieu pays exceedingly close attention to the political psychology regnant within the various forms of government that he examines. Republics have as their psychological principle, he tells us, virtue or love of the fatherland and its laws; and, when this fails, they collapse. As we have just seen, monarchies have as their principle the love of honor; and, when monarchs make holding public office degrading and demeaning, they subvert their own authority. And by the same token, despotisms have as their principle fear, and they are corrupt through and through. In The Spirit of Laws, all of this is made crystal clear.

But when it comes time for Montesquieu to specify the principle or passion that sets in motion “the republic concealed as a monarchy” that he discovered when he visited England, he is ostentatiously silent. Eventually, however, in oblique fashion, he will tiptoe around the question.

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From the American Revolution Website:  Here is an eyewitness account of the Battle of Trenton written by an officer on Washington’s Staff (account and more back ground info here):

New Town PA, December 22, 1776

Things have been going against us since last August, when we were forced to give up Long Island, losing 3000 men and a great amount of supplies. In October we were forced to evacuate New York and cross the Hudson into New Jersey.

We reached Trenton Dec. 2. It was prudent forethought on the part of General Washington to send General [William] Maxwell ahead to secure all the boats on the Delaware River and have them at Trenton upon our arrival. If it had not been done we should have been in a bad fix with [British Army Lieutenant-General Charles] Cornwallis at our heels. As it was the Hessians under Count [Carl von] Donop and Colonel [Johann] Rall arrived in that village in season to fire a few shots at the last boat.

According to last accounts General [William] Howe [the British Commander-in-Chief] and General Cornwallis have gone to New York leaving General [Sir James] Grant with a few hundred English troops at Princeton, Colonel Rall with 1500 Hessians at Trenton and Count Donop with 2000 at Bordentown, ten miles down the river from Trenton.

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This morning, in 1776, General Washington led a rag-tag Continental Army across the Delaware and surprised the Hessians in the Battle of Trenton. Though final victory was still 5 years away, the victory at Trenton provided an important morale boost in the Revolution’s darkest hours.

Today, in 1783, Washington gave his farewell address to his officers at Fraunces Tavern in New York City. The tavern was owned by Samuel Fraunces, a free black from Dominica. He would later accept Washington’s invitation to be Chief Steward at the President’s residence.

Today, in 1783, the last remaining British troops evacuated New York City. The event, known as “Evacuation Day” took place three months after signing of the formal treaty ending the American Revolution. George Washington made a triumphant return into the city.

Today, in 1781, Lord Cornwallis surrended at Yorktown, VA, effectively ending the American Revolution.

Discuss. Celebrate. Tip your waitress.

No, not his problem with the GOP. In an interesting piece at RealClearPolitics, Jay Cost argues that the Obama Presidency seems at odds with our republican form of government. We’re perhaps not quite at a ‘cult of personality’ stage, but we are probably as close as we’ve ever come:

Ultimately, this President stands a better chance of success if he embraces the republican character of the people who imbue his temporary position with its power and majesty. The fact is that we are a republican people who tend not to think that anybody is better than we. If we begin to intuit that the President thinks he is better, it could impede his efforts to rally us to his side.

It is also a fact that staunch republicans created the presidency, and the office reflects their preferences even after 220 years of intervening history. By explicit design, the President is not a leader-for-life. Instead, he must face the judgment of his peers just 48 months after he wins the office. The Constitution endorses the view of the supremacy of the people because it delineates a timeline for when the executive power leaves the President and returns to the people (originally, as represented by the state governments). As if that were not enough, the 22nd Amendment forbids a President from seeking a third term, meaning that the people of this democratic republic will be around long after the Obama Administration has come to an end.

Read the whole thing here.