Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

In “ History’s Bad Ideas Are an Inspiration for Progressives, ”  historian and columnist Victor Davis Hanson examines the dark side of progressivism. Stymied by a Supreme Court that was a bit too traditionalist for his tastes – that is to say, a high court that faithfully interpreted the laws with reference to a real rather than a fictitious “living Constitution” --     President Franklin Roosevelt, Hanson notes, attempted to pack the court. His “convoluted proposal would have allowed Roosevelt to select a new—and additional justice—to the Supreme Court for every sitting judge who had reached 70 years, 6 months, and had not retired. And in theory, he could pack on 6 more judges, creating a 15-member court with a progressive majority.”

A historical revision of Harry Truman has been underway for some time. Historians are now smiling at the 33rd President. His was an accidental presidency, and his contemporaries, the political swamp of his day, did not like accidents. The more things change, as the French say, the more they remain the same. Victor David Hanson -- a classicist historian and the author of “ The Second World Wars: How the First Global Conflict Was Fought and Won ,” in addition to “ A War Like No Other ,” the best and most riveting account of the Peloponnesian War  (431–404 BC) between Athens and Sparta -- has written the best short account of the Truman presidency for The Washington Times . Anti-Trumpists will be spooked by the title and subtitle: “Truman as a model for Donald Trump: The outsider president succeeds because of what he does, and in spite of what he says.”

Victor Davis Hanson has a way with concision. “Let me get this straight: Populist and racial healer Barack Obama, in impromptu remarks to zillionaires in Marin County, "explains" to them the rural sociology of Middle America. In anthropological fashion, he warns of their peculiar customs, so, that armed with such brilliant Obamian insight, his campaign workers can approach and win over the natives, who cling to guns, go to church, hate ("antipathy") those who seem different, and scapegoat the other ("anti-immigrant" and "anti-trade"). And all of this is published on the pro-Obama Huffington Post—perhaps because its radically egalitarian editor, Arianna Huffington, is off on David Geffen's 454-foot mega-yacht, cruising the shores of Tahiti.”