Why Obama doesn't get Glenn Beck

Not every American who marches behind a hateful crackpot is a hateful crackpot. The peaceful, thoughtful throng that assembled for Louis Farrakhan at the Million Man March in 1995 -- including a young Barack Obama -- proved that point. Notwithstanding some commentary, I tend to feel the same way about the much different (and rather smaller) assemblage that gathered at the behest of Glenn Beck in Washington last Saturday.

Certainly, if you’re president of the United States, the most prudent course is to draw a distinction between the leader and the anonymous masses and treat the latter with at least feigned respect -- even if, as in the case of Beck’s rally, most of them despise you, none of them voted for you and none of them ever would vote for you. Whatever you do, show that they, and their loathsome leader, can’t get your goat.

In that sense, I thought President Obama struck the wrong note in answer to a question about the rally from Brian Williams of NBC News.

The president started off okay, acknowledging that “Mr. Beck and the rest of those folks were exercising their rights under our Constitution exactly as they should.”   Gee Thanks........

But then he fell back on an abstract analysis eerily reminiscent of his notorious “cling to guns or religion” riff from campaign 2008:

I -- I do think that it's important for us to recognize that right now, the country's going through a very difficult time, as a consequence of years of neglect in a whole range of areas. Our schools not working the way they need to, so we've slipped in terms of the number of college graduates, you know?

A financial system that was not, you know, operating in a way that maintained integrity and assured that the people who were investing or who were buying a home or were using a credit card weren't getting in some way cheated. We had a health-care system that was broken and that was bankrupting families and businesses. All those issues are big, tough, difficult issues. And those are just our domestic issues. That's before we get to policy issues in two wars. And a continuing battle against terrorists who want to do us harm. So, given all those anxieties -- and given the fact that, you know, in none of these situations are you going to be fix things overnight. It's not surprising that somebody like a Mr. Beck is able to stir up a certain portion of the country. That's been true throughout our history.

That’s a pretty confident analysis from someone who admitted that he did not even watch the rally on TV. I’m not sure exactly how I would feel if the president labeled me an anxious member of a “certain” subculture manipulated -- “stirred up” -- by “somebody like a Mr. Beck.” But I am sure I wouldn’t feel respected.

Why couldn’t Obama at least find it within himself to say that he shared the rally’s ostensible goals of honoring the military, etc.?

This was such a silly political unforced error that I have to assume Obama committed it out of sincere belief. He appears persuaded, intellectually, that things like bad credit-card regulation and low college graduation rates lead mechanically to irrational populist resentment. He is not a Marxist or even a socialist. But he is what you might call a historical materialist, in that he clearly thinks economic trends are the main determinants of political thought and behavior.

Obviously there’s much truth to the president’s view. But less than he thinks: Plainly, the people who flocked to his banner of “hope” in 2008 weren’t just in it for a few extra GDP points. And for all their opportunism, rancor and obtuseness, I take Beck, Palin, and their followers seriously when they say they're sincerely troubled by the loss of “traditional” American values -- as they imagine them, to be sure -- and seek some kind of “restoration” of spiritual and cultural greatness. It’s not the lack of progress, as Obama defines it, which threatens them -- it’s progress. Movements of this kind have, indeed, been recurrent “throughout our history.” To counter it effectively, Obama must first comprehend it.