Obama: Absolute

Drudge recently linked to Karl Rove's piece in the WSJ arguing that Obama is using "Chicago" politics to put pressure on his Congress.

What I found most intriguing about this article is that it suggests one of Obama's tactics is to maintain his grass-roots campaign infrastructure and use it to bully the legislature.

Americans United is going after Democrats who are skeptical of Mr. Obama's plans to double the national debt in five years and nearly triple it in 10. The White House is taking aim at lawmakers in 12 states, including Democratic Sens. Kent Conrad, Ben Nelson, Mary Landrieu, Blanche Lincoln and Mark Pryor. MoveOn.Org is running ads aimed at 10 moderate Senate and House Democrats. And robocalls are urging voters in key districts to pressure their congressman to get in line.

The argument here is that Obama's plan is the best for the common people -- it's the local representatives that are depriving the commoners of the rights and priviledges they deserve.

If this works, Obama has found a way to by-pass the system of checks and balances. Obama's cult of personality draws people to follow him rather than challenge him. It's also the classic tactic employed by sixteenth and seventeenth absolutist monarchs and their favorite role model Julius Caesar.

The legislature is supposed to protect the interests of the people against the potentially tyrannical consolidation of power in monarchical executive branch. However, we pretty much hate our legislature. we don't think they have the people's best interests in mind (much as the Roman plebes became suspicious of their own senate...which was largely dominated by fat-cat, aristocratic patricians).

The genius of Caesar was that he made himself beloved of the people -- the great lover of Rome.

This meant that people were eager to see him as their defender against a greedy, callous body of representatives. Caesar (at least in his legendary incarnations during the early modern period) seemed to be the guy who would at long last distribute the wealth and protect the people from the predations of their own government.

It's a model that proved highly effective for gathering power (especially in France).

I don't mean to sound paranoid about this -- and it's easy to sound paranoid about tyranny (unless you are a left-wing pundit attacking a Republican president) -- but maybe this is another reason why we should hope that Obama's policies will fail. It is encouraging, at least, that Rove argues Obama's former campaign has not proved as effective post-election:

Organizing for America's first effort has not been terribly effective. It emailed 13 million Obama election workers, recruited 1,200 neighborhood canvassers, and, after a couple of weeks and more email pleas to the Obama list, produced 642,000 signatures. Having less than 5% of your own activists sign a petition is unimpressive and perhaps evidence that adding $9.3 trillion to the deficit alarms even some of Mr. Obama's most fervent supporters.

Still, even this canvassing effort makes me nervous. It's one thing to have canvassers get names for a petition so you can prove to a representative that he or she isn't representing the people's expressed interests...but is it too far fetched to imagine that presidential canvassers might start taking the names of people who won't sign the petition pledging allegiance to Obama's plan so they can...shall we say..come back later with more persuasive "rhetoric?"

I know, I know...it sounds paranoid...