Donal Blaney is the Chief Executive of the Young Britons’ Foundation.
Barack Obama took time off the golf course this weekend to reveal that he missed Glenn Beck’s historic Restoring Honor Rally in Washington DC this past weekend. If he wishes to watch this remarkable gathering of conservatives, independents, monotheists and patriots, the good news is he can do so online. He will be joining 669,838 others who watched the rally online, and the estimated 200,000+ who came to the Mall and who helped to raise $5m for the Special Operations Warrior Foundation, a charity for war veterans akin to Help for Heroes. Poor Al Sharpton must have wished for a fraction of that number of people at his rally that same day.
Beck received criticism from many in the mainstream media for daring to host his rally on the 47th anniversary of Martin Luther King’s memorable “I Have A Dream” speech. And yet King’s niece, Dr Alveda King, proudly spoke alongside Beck and former Alaska Governor, Sarah Palin, in an event that also saw prayers from evangelist preachers, hymns sung by gospel choirs accompanied by bagpipes and the remarkable and moving sight of priests, rabbis and imams joining hands in front of the Lincoln Memorial to proclaim the need to put God at the centre of American renewal.
Received wisdom is that such a message communicated through such a medium and in such a manner by Beck simply would not work in Britain, and that is doubtless correct. The muscular Christianity of so many on the right in the US hardly chimes with many Conservatives in the UK, let alone the broader electorate. And yet Beck’s efforts this weekend cannot simply be ignored, derided or sneered at by bien pensant liberals and self-appointed elites. Beck speaks for many in the US who feel badly let down by their leaders, while Sarah Palin has tapped into the hearts and minds of many, especially women, who had no interest in politics until her arrival on the national scene two years ago next month. Would that the right had regrouped so quickly in Britain after 1997 as has occurred in the US.
President Obama was undoubtedly elected on a tide of goodwill. But having campaigned for election as a moderate, Obama has governed as a partisan radical. Rather than triangulating as Bill Clinton so effortlessly did, Obama has brought the bludgeoning politics of Chicago to the White House. Instead of uniting Americans, he has sought to divide them. His healthcare reforms, excessive governmental spending and accommodationist foreign policy have helped to mobilize a conservative movement that many thought was finished in 2008. And while at first glance Beck’s appeal to tea party activists may seem to be narrow in focus, the tea party movement would appear to be speaking for far more Americans than Democrats might wish – as was shown by the Republicans’ gubernatorial victories in Virginia and New Jersey and even in Ted Kennedy’s old Senate seat in liberal Massachusetts in the past year.
The importance of Glenn Beck’s rally will be shown in November when the Republicans seem likely to take control of the House of Representatives, and possibly even the Senate. If the past two years are anything to go by, President Obama will fail to readjust to the changed political landscape where he has to deal with a GOP Congress. He will then face a fraught re-election campaign. As things stand today, having squandered the goodwill surrounding his election in 2008, he faces being a one-term President like Jimmy Carter rather than a popular and re-elected leader like Ronald Reagan. Perhaps it may be time for President Obama to take on board what voters think, rather than attacking so many of them for “clinging to guns or religion”.
