Each Responsible For Everything

I don’t link George Will often, but this column is devastating:

His Dec. 1 Afghanistan speech to the nation was followed on Dec. 3 by his televised “jobs summit.” His Dec. 8 televised economics speech at the Brookings Institution was followed on Dec. 10 by his televised Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech, which was remarkable for 38 uses of the pronoun “I.”

And for disavowing a competence no one suspected him of. (“I do not bring with me today a definitive solution to the problems of war.” Note the superfluous adjective.) And for an unnecessary notification. (“Evil does exist in the world.”) And for delayed utopianism. (“We will not eradicate violent conflict in our lifetimes.” But in someone’s.) And for solemnly announcing something undisputed. (There can be a just war.) And for intellectual applesauce that should get speechwriters fired and editors hired. (“We do not have to think that human nature is perfect for us to still believe that the human condition can be perfected.” If the human “condition” can attain perfection anyway, human nature cannot be significantly imperfect.)

All the well-deserved Obama slamming is really an appetizer for Will’s main point: That Democrats are killing themselves for a vainglorious little man with a deeply flawed understanding of how the world and this country really work – and are providing the club which will beat them into obscurity by doing so:

So Republicans can win in 2009 by stopping the bill, or in 2010 by saying: Unpopular health legislation passed because of a 60-40 party-line decision to bring it to a Senate vote. Therefore each incumbent Democrat is responsible for everything in the law.

That is the huge miscalculation the Democrats have made. They think they can weather the storm.

They. Are. Wrong.

There will be no shelter. None. No deflection will work, no lies will work. Each incumbent Democrat will be responsible for every, single thing in the bill. And the revelations of all that is buried in those thousands of pages will be endless.

And each incumbent Democrat will be fully, completely, utterly responsible for everything in the law.

Public anger is seething and growing rapidly. Democrats will be better off – considerably so – in stopping their efforts and starting over.

(Do go over and read the whole piece. The warm-up Obama-bashing is worth reading in and of  itself. Because it is all true.)