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Monday 21 May 2012

Obama & Napoleon

Monday, 22nd March 2010

Historical analogies are always fun! Health Care reform was going to be, as Senator Jim DeMint argued, "Obama's Waterloo". Now that it haspassed conservatives are having to rethink that. The eternally optimistic Bill Kristol winds the clock back a bit and argues that, actually, HCR is Obama's Borodino*:

Last night’s victory was the culmination of Obama’s health care effort, which has been his version of Napoleon’s Russia campaign. He won a short-term victory, but one that will turn out to mark an inflection point on the road to defeat, and the beginning of the end of the Democratic party’s dominance** over American politics. Last night was Obama’s Borodino. Obama’s Waterloo will be November 6, 2012.

Well, maybe! And from a Conservative point of view that's better than thinking it Marengo or Austerlitz.

But what it Obama isn't Napoleon? What if, instead, the part of Napoleon has been played by health care reform's opponents? After all, they've had the upper hand for many years and it's the advocates of reform who have wondered, often despairingly, whether they might ever prevail against an implacable, seemingly unbeatable foe that has dominated the political map for decades. (And, actually, invading Mesopotamia might be thought akin to invading Russia...)

Viewed from that angle you might think that Obama has played the part of Arthur Wellesley leading the allied (Democratic) forces in the long, grinding, stubborn Peninsular War that eventually would force Napoleon from the field and into exile. That too was a major, if incomplete, victory.

The advantage of looking at like this is that it allows one to fit Republican gains in November into the narrative. That would be akin to Napoleon's return from Elba and the (ultimately Pyrrhic) glory of the Hundred Days which, for a moment, threatened to redraw the map all over again. There was plenty of panic then too. But that was before the final showdown at Waterloo in 1815.

That was a damned close run thing itself. But if we're playing this game of Historical Analogy then it seems to me that it's the Republican party playing the part of Napoleon and Obama that's Wellington. Like the Iron Duke, one of Obama's great strengths is his patience.

So let's give Kristol half a point: November 6th 2012 will indeed be the Waterloo moment for all concerned. But perhaps not quite in the way he thinks.

*Link via Dave Weigel who joins the Washington Post next month. Congratulations Dave!

**Would that make the Republican party the Bourbons? Maybe! So much history, so much fun to be had, so little of it to any real point whatsoever!

UPDATE: Matt Yglesias has more.

Filed under: GOP (332 more articles) , History (515 more articles) , Napoleon (2 more articles) , Obama (365 more articles)

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Lallands Peat Worrier

March 22nd, 2010 7:20pm Report this comment

The 1812 of Badajoz may be a particularly apposite Peninsular parallel. Obama as the stern Wellesley, goading his men from the rear. Les Enfants Perdu - or in the English terminology, in happy echo of the US election's mantra - the Forlorn Hope of House Democrats smashing themselves messily against the battlements, stone and man and fire defying their healthcare advances.

"Form up and charge again!", cries our Presidential Wellesley in the rear, his gruff-voiced Pictons growling orders and leering his troops into the fray again, half-wrecked, half-exhausted. Only to flood over the walls in triumph!

Admittedly, as I recall, in the wake Wellington had to hang a number of his soldiers whose instincts for booze-soaked rapine got the better of themselves in the subsequent glut of triumph...

dearieme

March 22nd, 2010 8:18pm Report this comment

I pay no heed to plonkers who can't tell an inflection point from a turning point.

Conservative Cabbie

March 22nd, 2010 8:48pm Report this comment

I think Pyrrhus at Asculum is the better historical analogy.

Vern

March 22nd, 2010 8:49pm Report this comment

Oh, look- it's exactly the same blog as always, all over again. Yes, Andrew Sullivan's Mini Me- of course it's the Republicans.

Edmund Jerk

March 22nd, 2010 8:53pm Report this comment

Maybe the Republicans are hoping Romney will play Pierre - with of course the aim of taking out the bill rather than Napoleon himself.

Patrick

March 22nd, 2010 9:47pm Report this comment

I don't think Mr. Kristol is properly using the term "inflection point". Obama's popularity and health care's popularity have been declining over the course of this year. The inflection point would be the point at which the rate of decline begins to slow*. After inflecting, the popularity would bottom out, and eventually turn positive, growing at an ever increasing rate.

Although he is misusing inflection, inflection does seem to be the more probable scenario.

*Inflection is when you go from decelerating to accelerating, or vice versa. In technical terms, the point at which second derivative of a function switches signs.

Collin Klamper

March 22nd, 2010 10:33pm Report this comment

So many analogies, so many typos.

DavidDP

March 23rd, 2010 2:14am Report this comment

The important thing about the bill is that it embeds, finally, the humane and just principles of universal healthcare in the US. Rather than throwing their toys out of the pram and proving unfit to govern, the Republicans should be trying to fix an improve the bill. It has many flaws, but is still an improvement on the current situation.

Daniel Lauzaw

May 19th, 2010 2:45pm Report this comment

I totaly agree with you, something has to be done. After, yes may be it's not perfect but the principles are here. Let the next generations make it even better.

Scrabble Cheat

Katty Suger

June 25th, 2010 12:54pm Report this comment

Napoleon, despite his height, was a great force of nature. A giant of a man born to conquer and rule, who for a time bent France and Continental Europe to his will. Sol Alinsky dreamed of a socialist Napoleon becoming president and subjugating America to big government rule. But instead what we got, thank God, was a moral and mental pip-squeak; a feeble, senseless, out of control fool, the Michael Jackson of American politics, who's not worthy enough to kiss Napoleon's shoe. If Alinsky were alive he'd be puking himself to death over this unpresidential president.

Best regards