The American Anti-President and the New Federalism

By Bernie Quigley

For The Hill on 10/07/10

It is increasingly clear now that the American anti-president simply doesn’t understand that governance is not a world soccer match in which everyone gets a little trophy from their mother; that when he stands shoulder-to-shoulder with Mexican President Felipe Calderon and a bunch of degenerate rock stars in opposition to Arizona Governor Jan Brewer, he is building a global coalition to war against an American state; that when he listens to the ignorant, criminal, drug-induced and woman-hating lyrics of Lil Wayne and Jay-Z (“. . . get a crate, some crack and some house slippers . . .”) on his IPod he is endorsing and advancing to the most viral form of nihilism post-war has yet seen and it is destroying black America. That he simply doesn’t understand his job when Texas Governor Rick Perry, in the war with Mexico which has just claimed another American life, says: "Frankly, these two presidents (Calderon and President Barack Obama) need to get together with their secretaries of state and say, 'What are we going to do about this?'" That he simply would not know the right thing to do and so will do nothing. Then he will give a speech.

It is increasing clear that we are coming to the end of it. And so it comes as no surprise that The Hill/ANGA poll reports that a majority of voters in key battleground districts favor repeal of the legislative overhaul Congress passed this year.

It means the realities of the new century are beginning to set in. It means Americans are not sheep and the age of Roosevelt has past. America is a vital, complex, responsive and diverse group in a varied work force from coast to coast and not the compliant, dependent and uniform “huddled masses”; the European immigrant horde of the factory floors of a few northeastern cities waiting for guidance as the nostalgicos in power today wish it to be again.

As John Fund of the Wall Street Journal writes yesterday, the real historic parallel may by 1894 when Republicans took 100 seats. Obama is America’s Grover Cleveland; the still sea between a gone era and century and the awakening of the American century. As you recall, McKinley was just ahead, prelude to Teddy Roosevelt, and rise of the power paradigm that created the modern world. We are at such a turning today. The century ahead will find prelude in November and begin to awaken in 2012 and 2016. This is the critical fourth-generational turning which will form our century and it will be marked by internal growth and strengths and regional circles of responsibilities. It will awaken in the red states where the soldiers are as soldiers and veterans engage and engineer every historic turning. ‘Twas ever thus. Call it the new federalism.