2016: A Review

Yesterday, I saw the documentary 2016, which was written and directed by Dinesh D'Souza and John Sullivan.  The movie is basically an adaptation of D'Souza's 2010 book The Roots of Obama's Rage.  It runs just over an hour and half (which is just about the right time for a movie of this kind), and it overall has the feel of a well done, serious documentary (Gerald R. Molen, the producer, has done Schindler's List among other top movies).  The theater was much less than half full, but I am sure that was due to the fact that I went to the 11:30 showing.

D'Souza, the President of King's College in New York, first introduces us to his grand theory by explaining that in order to understand Barack Obama's political philosophy, we need to have actually read his first book, Dreams From My Father.  Unlike most, if not all, of the press since Obama has come on to the national stage, D'Souza actually thinks it important to find out the background of the man who is now our president.

D'Souza's main claim is that Obama has inherited his politics from his father, whom he met only once in 1971.  They did, however, correspond over a number of years so this does seem plausible.  Obama's politics are driven by his father's anti-colonialism which, for D'Souza, explains everything from why Obama sides with the Falkland Islands in their disputes with the British to why he wants to redistribute wealth and have the rich pay a higher share of taxes.  In the midst of this D'Souza does us a great service by explaining the radical people who had great influence over Obama during his formative years.  John Hinderaker at Power Line has more:

Obama came of age, over a period of decades, in an environment that can charitably be described as hard-left. His father and mother were both socialists or worse. His maternal grandfather selected a mentor for young Barry who was a long-time member of the Communist Party USA. The socialist New Party listed him as a member. His friend, colleague and fundraiser Bill Ayers is a terrorist who says he wishes he had set off more bombs. His college professor Edward Said was the leading intellectual voice of those who want Israel destroyed. His law school mentor Roberto Unger was too far left for Brazil’s socialist party, and was sent back to Harvard, where he declined all interviews lest he endanger Obama’s electoral prospects. The minister who converted him to Christianity was Jeremiah “Gad damn America” Wright. You can go on and on.

This is very important and highlights something that D'Souza too easily overlooks.  Why does Bill Ayers or Edward Said believe in many of the same things Obama believes in?  They're certainly not anti-colonialists.  Why does virtually every major Democrat in Washington believe that the cure-all to the nation's economy is to raise taxes on the rich?  Last time I checked, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi weren't from a third-world country.  While D'Souza mines some very good details and information that the public ought to have known before they picked Obama in 2008, this theory certainly does not explain the whole, and it has the great potential to actually undercut the conservative argument.  

Ramesh Ponnuru reviewed The Roots of Obama's Rage in the Claremont Review last year and found that the anti-colonialist theory left much to be desired:

By the time he explains that sending more troops to Afghanistan is another clever anti-colonialist gambit, one begins to wonder whether anything could falsify the theory. He sees the auto bailout as evidence that Obama views the autoworkers' unions as victims of oppression by neo-colonialist CEOs. If Obama had let the companies sink, though, couldn't the anti-colonialist theory have explained it away as his indifference to a symbol of American might?

And:

Perhaps the real solution to the mystery of Obama is that there is no mystery at all. Obama's political views are consequential because he is the president, but they show little sign of being especially interesting aside from that. Genus liberal, species academic, character type pragmatic: That classification seems adequate. His heart belongs to the Left, and his heart of hearts to Barack Obama.

His conventionality is a good thing for conservatism. One reason conservatism's political fortunes rebounded so quickly after the 2008 election is that liberalism made its critique of President Bush too personal—a matter of his own alleged stupidity and closed-mindedness rather than of the conservative creed. If Americans reach the verdict that President Obama is a failure, it would be better for conservatism if they attributed that failure to the liberalism he shares with most of his party rather than to his personal quirks. The evidence suggests, too, that this attribution would be just.

While ani-colonialism may have something to do with it, surely the bigger target for conservatives should be modern liberalism itself -- the same modern liberalism that began with the Progressive movement in the early twentieth century.  Arguing instead that far from being an outlier, that Obama represents  the logical extension and evolution of many the policies and ideas behind modern liberalism would certainly be a more controversial but overall a much more effective argument (it would also be the identical argument that Tea Partiers among others were making in 2010, and look how that election turned out).  Let's just hope that the president does not have another four years to further the project.