Things the chattering class got wrong

As 2010 draws to a close, the list of items going down the memory hole — the place reserved for mistakes by liberal elites — is long. Before they are gone for good, let’s recount a few.

“The public will learn to love ObamaCare.” The voters never have, and it remains more than a policy nightmare, with soaring costs and unintended consequences strewn about, a rallying cry for fiscal conservatives. It was a unifying force, but unfortunately for Democrats, it was the independents and conservatives who were bound together in common dislike of a massive new entitlement program.

“Republicans can’t win because they are unpopular.” In myriad formulations, liberal pundits and activists trotted out that line. It turns out what matters in a midterm election is how popular — and successful — the incumbent party is.

“The Bush administration erred in being too close to Israel.” This, and a host of other ill-conceived notions, drove the Obama administration and its spinners to argue for a tougher-line against our democratic ally and to raise expectations for a Middle East peace deal. Instead of peace, Obama “achieved” strained relations with Israel and the frustration of the Arab states (who preferred he go after Iran rather than apartment buildings in East Jerusalem). Worse still, he embarrassed himself and delivered a blow to American prestige at a time a robust U.S. presence in the region is most needed.

“George W. Bush betrayed our values in the war on terror.” That was before Obama largely gave up on the ACLU wish list. Guantanamo remains open. The Obama team vouches for “indefinite detention.” The administration has stepped up the use of drones to kill the enemy and, regrettably, must explain why civilian casualties are a necessary consequence of battling an enemy that hides among women and children. In the reality of war, Obama and his advisers have shed a great deal of sanctimony. Yes, they remain tied up in knots by their own desire to criminalize the war on Islamic terror (a phrase they shrink from using), but in the main they have learned that Bush betrayed nothing — other than utter disdain for those who thought springing a caterpillar on a terrorist or slapping him across the face amounted to “torture.”

“Obama is [fill in the blank].” The smartest, the coolest, and the best communicator ever — the list was long. But as Ross Douthat writes today:

The fantasy was the idea that Barack Obama, a one-term senator with an appealing biography and a silver tongue, would turn out to be Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Robert F. Kennedy and Mahatma Gandhi all rolled into one. This fantasy inspired a wave of 1960s-style enthusiasm, an unsettling personality cult (that “Yes We Can” video full of harmonizing celebrities only gets creepier in hindsight) and a lot of over-the-top promises from Obama himself. It persuaded Democrats that the laws of politics had been suspended, and that every legislative goal they’d ever dreamed about was now within reach. It was even powerful enough to win President Obama a Nobel Peace Prize, just for being his amazing self.

It turns out he was an inexperienced administrator and a garden-variety liberal, slow to learn that the public was having none of his left-leaning agenda.

“Iran is more isolated than ever.” How many times has Secretary of State Hillary Clinton uttered that one? In fact Iran has many allies these days — Turkey, Syria, Venezuela, North Korea, to name a few. Jordan, the most pro-American of the moderate Arab states (with the possible exception of Morocco) is cozying up to Tehran as well. The Russians built Iran a nuclear enrichment plant. Iran is on the rise,a sure-fire formula for gathering friends in a region that praises the strong horse.

“Sanctions are working.” Well, if the point of sanctions was to slow the pace of Iran’s nuclear program or to deter its terrorist activities (maybe even to dislodge Mahmoud Ahmadinejad from power) sanctions are a bust. (A magnificently clever computer virus and the mysterious likelihood of auto accidents involving Iranian nuclear scientists’ have done far more good.) The purpose of sanctions is not to make the Iranian economy limp, but to make the regime crumble or fear that it will if it does not dump its dreams of nuclear powerdom. The grim dilemma facing the West in 2011 is what to do now that we know (many of us knew this before, but others are catching up) that the regimen is not deterred by banking or oil sanctions any more than was Saddam Hussein. Tyrants rarely are.

You would think the liberal intelligentsia would, with a record of so many misses on so many consequential matters, become chastened. But no. They are filled with certainty: Obama is back, the recovery is around the corner, Russian “reset” is a success, ObamaCare can’t be repealed, there are no electable Republican 2012 contenders, and more, they tell us. We’ll see if the left’s crystal ball is any more accurate in 2011. But for now, let’s not forget all the things they told as that simply weren’t so.