Every superhero needs an archenemy. After all, without villains, who needs superheroes? Take away The Joker, Catwoman, The Riddler, Mr. Freeze and their ilk, and Batman just becomes an odd circus performer running around in his underwear. And the villains need to be powerful and scary… who needs a superhero to save us from a shoplifter or a tax cheat? Politicians have long understood that a villain can be a shortcut to popularity. The first step is identifying a frightening enemy. From there it’s easy to coalesce huge blocks of the public into a single block of constituents willing to overlook almost anything because you are the enemy of their enemy. It’s rare for such an enemy to exist in reality, so generally the threat of these villains needs to be exaggerated, or fabricated altogether.
President Obama has found himself in a difficult situation, to a great extent it is of his own making. He’s running out of enemies. Not having enemies is alright in a Utopia, or even a Camelot; because there is always the implied enemy, the potential villain that could take away the wonderful paradise were it not for the ceaseless vigilance of the Dear Leader. In 2013 America though, a hero needs a villain, a leader needs an enemy, a president needs a scapegoat. Without an enemy, bad news can only be blamed on the person running the show.
Much of the evil in the universe is random, but chance makes a rotten enemy. Heroes are powerless against chance, and people feel safer to believe there is a villain behind the bad things that happen. Having beaten back the enemies that stood in his way, the President is now faced with a situation where he is successful without having succeeded. He has won two elections, pushed through policy initiatives, and usurped powers not granted to him by the Constitution, chiefly by casting his enemies as risky or dangerous impediments to his grand transformation of the nation. He has, perhaps, been too successful. His “enemies” vanquished, his “transformation” well underway… when do things get better? And if things don’t get better soon, the old enemies vanquished, the hero will become the enemy.
A cunning leader doesn’t eliminate his enemies, and if the ranks of villains thin, he must invent new ones. Bush haters will no doubt blame him for their arthritis in years to come, but for the sane he no longer serves as an effective scapegoat for the President. Mitt Romney was never that scary, and he seems content to withdraw now, and let the President run the country, or run it into the ground as the case may be. Since the election, establishment Republicans seem to have taken a “go along to get along” stance, believing the analysis that they need to move left, or at least out of the way. The narrative on the Tea Party seems to be that they are dead or seriously on the decline, so you can’t declare them to be a viable enemy. Geo-political enemies are often convenient, but don’t work for Obama, the Messiah, who would by his golden words bring peace to the planet. Other Presidents have found the antagonism of the powerful press as a foil to garner the sympathy of the public, but today’s mainstream press is a voluntary eunuch in the service of their king.
So who is left to blame when things go wrong? So far, the best the President has been able to come up with is a cable news network, and a popular talk show host. If things don’t go our way, blame Fox News and Rush Limbaugh. Of course, the idea that these popular but powerless entertainment outlets could stand in the way of “progress” is ludicrous. It only makes sense when you realize that when the President identifies these enemies, he is only referencing them as figureheads of a darker more substantial enemy, their followers. The menace isn’t Fox or Rush… it’s their ratings, and the citizens those ratings represent. Scapegoats are far more effective when there are hordes of them. Heretics! Witches! Infidels! Jews!
IMHO: The President enjoys the position of the most powerful man on the planet. In addition to that he has the megaphone of the bully pulpit and a largely sympathetic press. The Senate is in his back pocket, and the House is clearly spooked. If the country continues to decline, the responsibility will rightly be placed at his doorstep. He needs a scapegoat, a villain. It is a short jump to identify as the Enemy not just Fox and Rush, but the people they represent, “backwards thinking” Americans, “conservative obstructionists”, “haters”, “racists”, “homophobes”, the only reason it’s so hard to move “forward”. It’s nothing new, if you disagree with the President, then you are the problem, you are evil… you are his villain. The Emperor’s new clothes are excellent and magnificent! Only your wicked heart makes you see him as naked.
