Post Partisan?

Ain't no such thing! A welcome piece from The Wall Street Journal that discusses the unraveling myth of Obama's soi-disant post partisan world.

Barack Obama campaigned last year on a pledge to end the angry partisanship in Washington. He wasn't the first to promise a post-partisan presidency: Both George W. Bush and Bill Clinton offered a similar change, only to see the mutual hostility between Republicans and Democrats increase while they were in the White House.

Now, just as his predecessors did, Mr. Obama is seeing that promise turn to ashes. Angry town-hall meetings, slumping presidential approval poll numbers and rising opposition to his signature health-care proposals suggest an early resumption of politics as usual.

In the run-up to the campaign, much was made of Americans "seeing purple" in the age of Obama; no red, no blue, just one color, one people. But if such an idea wasn't possible at the founding, it is certainly not possible in 2009. A post partisan world is not the real world and anyone who believes a post partisan world is doable is hopelessly naive. Those in power promising such a thing usually end up assuming the role of autocrat, the Legislator, Big Brother, or whatever. "Ni droite ni gauche!" was a favorite battle cry of Jacobin revolutionaries in France. Despite the soothing rhetoric, throughout his life, Obama has demonstrated his strident, left-wing partisanship. The myth about Obama as a post partisan, messianic unifier is the clever brainchild of the liberal media, who forged this lie in an attempt to gloss over the real Barack Obama, his chockablock rolodex of left wing radicals, and his extreme political and social pet projects: Jeremiah Wright, William Ayers, Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals, abortion on demand, socialism, etc. You get the picture.