Glenn Beck

The news that Glenn Beck's endorsement has sparked renewed interest in Friedrich Hayek's Road to Serfdom reminded me of this passage from Irving Kristol's "America's 'Exceptional Conservatism'" (1995, available in Neoconservatism: The Autobiography of an Idea):

President Obama is set to give a State of the Union address this evening in which he'll say he made "mistakes" in communicating to the American people why health care reform, cap and trade, and a huge increase in social spending is necessary for economic recovery. Which is to say: The White House is not prepared to acknowledge that the public, for substantive reasons, remains opposed to large parts of the Obama agenda.

Rather, the president and Democrats mistakenly assume that if they can only explain things more clearly, the public will rally to their side. This is ostrich-head-in-the-sand politics. Obama has already given speech after speech on the need for "comprehensive health care reform." Those speeches have produced a reform that no one likes and the first Republican elected to the Senate from Massachusetts in more than 35 years. One more speech will make a difference?