By JAMES TARANTO
Not long ago, Barack Obama and the Democrats were invincible. Republicans not only had substantially reduced minorities in the House and Senate, but they didn't even have a leader.
Suddenly Obama seems quite vincible, with his signature project, postalizing the health-care system, in deep trouble. How could that have happened?
Andrew Breitbart, a Washington Times columnist, argues that the opposition's lack of leadership, far from being a hindrance, has been a necessary condition for its effectiveness. He notes that the tactics of the left have long been informed by Saul Alinsky's "Rules for Radicals"--the bible of so-called community organizing--and especially this rule:
"Rule 12: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it and polarize it. Cut off the support network and isolate the target from sympathy. Go after people and not institutions; people hurt faster than institutions. (This is cruel, but very effective. Direct, personalized criticism and ridicule works.)"
For years, of course, the obvious target was President Bush. Since last year's campaign got under way, Bretibart notes, the left has set its sights on a series of lesser targets, with varying degrees of success: Sarah Palin, Joe the Plumber, Rush Limbaugh, Carrie Prejean. But with the exception of Palin before her resignation, none of these people actually held political power. For the moment, the Democrats have a monopoly on power, which makes them vulnerable to Alinskyite tactics. As Breitbart writes:
A grass-roots movement of average Americans has stood up, making it extremely difficult to isolate and demonize an individual.
Mr. Alinsky noted in "Rule 12" that it is difficult to go after "institutions." And attacking "tea baggers" and "mobs" has only created more resistance and drawn attention to the left's limited playbook. Even Americans expressing their constitutionally protected right to free speech are open game.
Now that many people are Googling the Alinsky rule book and catching up with the way Chicago thugs play their political games, Mr. Obama and the Fighting Illini are going to be forced to create new rules--or double down on the old ones.
The Financial Times reports that Dick Armey, a former House Republican leader who now leads Freedom Works, a free-market community-organizing group, "draws consciously on the forms of agitation pioneered by Mr Alinsky":
Mr Alinsky believed that packing public meetings with highly vocal activists would sway their outcomes and give people a taste of the power they could exercise when they showed up in numbers.
"What's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander," said Mr Armey, who was one of the leaders of the "Contract with America" Republican landslide in 1994.
One lesson of the 1994 experience is that the tactics and attitudes that make an opposition movement effective are not sufficient for governing. Newt Gingrich was a lot better at the former than the latter. The same seems to be true--at least so far--of the Democrats and their leader, Barack Obama. Obama's supporters are now reduced to portraying him as a victim, as in this column by New York Daily News sportswriter Mike Lupica:
We hear that all of this is democracy in action. It's not. It's boom-box democracy, people thinking that if they somehow make enough noise on this subject, they can make Obama into a one-term President.
The most violent opposition isn't directed at his ideas about health care reform. It is directed at him. It is about him. They couldn't make enough of a majority to beat the Harvard-educated black guy out of the White House, so they will beat him on an issue where they see him as being most vulnerable.
In the process, they'll come after him on health care the way Kenneth Starr went after Bill Clinton on oral sex in the Oval Office.
With that kind of zealotry, screaming about government programs as if Medicare isn't one. It is why so many of them, all these wild-eyed red faces in the crowd, look completely certifiable, screaming about how Obama wants to kill Grandma, as if he's suddenly turned into Jack Kevorkian.
Not very persuasive, is it? Lupica whines that the most powerful man in the world is being victimized by people with "red faces." He thereby makes Obama look weak and himself look like a bigot. And this observation underscores Breitbart's point: It's a lot easier to ridicule a powerful individual than a variegated group of citizens.
Which brings us to a word of caution for those who don't want to see Obama re-elected: Inasmuch as the condition of being leaderless gives Republicans significant tactical advantages now, they will not enjoy those advantages in three years. Even if Obama's performance as president leaves much to be desired, he could win a second term if the Republicans nominate an opponent who makes an easy target for ridicule. Just ask John Kerry.
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