You are using an outdated browser.
Please upgrade your browser
and improve your visit to our site.
Skip Navigation

Today's Wehner Fallacy

National Review Editor Rich Lowry:

Obama wouldn’t tame the impatient Left because he’s part of it. After he won in 1964, Lyndon Johnson told his aides he’d won by 16 million votes and would lose a million votes’ worth of support every month, so he had to act fast.

Obama made the same calculation, but on behalf of an agenda that wasn’t popular. If people had been persuaded of its merits, Obama could have made Republicans pay the price for obstruction. “Public sentiment is everything,” Abraham Lincoln said. “With it, nothing can fail; against it, nothing can succeed.”

If Obama tries to govern from the center, he’ll find the system magically restored to health. Otherwise, it will look more miserably broken by the day.

The Wehner Fallacy is explained here.