Rush's Obama Theory is Right

Last year’s presidential campaign surprised me like so many people.  It wasn’t a big Obama win—50.3% to 49.0%-- but I had to rethink where the mentality of the country was.  Here’s the ironclad rule of campaign management.  When times are bad, people want to see a strong contrast in the political parties.  ‘What’s your solution?’ they seem to ask every pol.  But when times are good, people are apathetic and vote more on personality.  I was expecting a contrast election.  What we got was a personality election.  Obama seemed to turn the distress of 2010 into a personality campaign.  I wondered how.  Evidently he appealed to and turned out people who were apathetic but supportive of him—the low-information voters.  Rush Limbaugh makes the point that many people see the direction of the country as bad and most are against all the Obama policies. (NY Times poll)  But they keep electing him.  What gives?? 

            Obama’s strategy is to refuse to govern (no responsibility) but to campaign constantly.  By not governing or he is not associated with the wrong directions and policies.  He just scolds Congress and constantly and rails against some nebulous bad entity, whether it be “the rich” or Republicans in general.  Low information voters lap this up because they don’t think in much depth and the media is a supporting chorus.  Youth identify—accept no responsibility but bitch about the adult world.  Leftists lap this up because like O they think the country was founded upon evil and is inherently vile.   (‘We must apologize for America. Oblamer is just trying to fix this long term badness and 4 years is not nearly long enough to get it changed.’)  If anything bad happens, Obama just disclaims that he had anything to do with it. Bush’s Fault.  And there will never be compromise or bipartisanship because to make an agreement would make him responsible for the results.   The Great Divider.

            But there’s a weakness in this strategy.  What if something happens which sticks to the Teflon Democrat?  The same mob which was excited by the outsider, the protest organizer today will turn on him tomorrow. Look at Robespierre in the French Revolution.  Another Benghazi incident or a bad downturn in the economy will do it. 

            Ever study the story of how Sweden turned Protestant?  It involves how 2 leaders overstepped and overreached.  The Swedes in 1520, were quite happy to be Catholic, and in fact their current version of Lutheranism is considered the most formal and Catholic of the Lutherans. The Church held almost half the land of the country as fiefs.  The people were poor, agrarian, and illiterate in their far-northern climate.  In the 1300’s Queen Margaret unified Norway, Sweden, and Denmark into one country by the Treaty of Calmar.  She is considered by historians to have been perhaps the most capable female monarch of Europe, surpassing even Elizabeth of England.  By the 1500’s some Swedish nobility, however felt they needed their own country again and they elected Sten Shure the Younger as regent.  But Shure was opposed by the Archbishop Gustav Trolle of Uppsala (then the capital of Sweden). Shure tried to depose Trolle.  The Pope got mad and demanded Christian II of Denmark, the ruler of the joint kingdom, put down this rebellion.  Christian did, first taking good will hostages in a truce and then winning in a second campaign.  He was re-crowned king of Sweden by a triumphant Trolle on Nov. 4, 1520.  Three days later, the nobles who were Shure supporters were summoned to a peace conference in Stockholm.  Christian and Trolle had them beheaded—70 noblemen plus others.

            This attempt by Christian II to make his rule secure and Trolle to assert the Church backfired.  It became known as the Stockholm Bath of Blood.  An young man, Gustavus Eriksson, nicknamed Vasa (for the “bundle” of sticks in his family coat of arms), who had been one of the good will hostages of the truce Christian had signed earlier, escaped and traveled back to his native hometown.  Like a George Washington, Vasa was reknowned for being exceedingly honest and principled, and also somewhat intellectual.  En route, he got word of the Bath of Blood and was energized to lead a revolt.  But with winter coming on and news traveling slowly in Sweden, he could find no one to join the cause. They either hadn’t heard of the atrocity in Stockholm or weren’t interested, or wouldn’t be caught dead opposing the Church.  Finally, without a friend, he decided to quietly seek asylum in Norway.  But just as he was near the border, horsemen rode up and begged him come back.  They had now heard of the Stockholm executions of one hundred Swedish patriots and everyone was asking what in the devil was the Archbishop who is supposed to lead us in prayer doing to us?  But Vasa, with all the nobles and brains of the nationalism movement killed off, had a hard time organizing.  He eventually managed a peasant army, trained them, led them brilliantly and won, June 7, 1523.  By luck, Christian II of Denmark was internally deposed about the same time and the new Danish king renounced claims to Sweden. 

            Newly crowned King Gustavus I, Vasa had huge war debts and unpaid soldiers.  He had no way to pay for things and taxation was difficult in Sweden because all the people who could pay would fight it. So he deflated the currency to pay people off but it didn’t work. People were saavy to this strategy and demanded real value.  So he begged the Church bishops to help.  When those tightwads begrudged the effort, he began to think maybe he should be like the Lutheran princes of Germany and just kick out the bishops and take over their vast lands.  This was nothing but a government conundrum at the time. 

            But there was a certain Olaus Petri, a priest who had gone to study in Germany at a small college called Wittenberg in 1519.  He came back to Sweden circulating the writings of Luther.  When one bishop crab-assed about giving Vasa a loan, he replaced the guy with Petri, then made Petri’s brother professor of theology.  Together they published a Swedish translation of the Bible. Then Petri challenged another theologian to debate the Protestant reforms.  The intellectual Vasa showed up and said he would judge the debate.  He found himself siding in faith with the Reformation.  Sweden had a Diet (nationwide assembly) made up of bishops, nobles, merchants and town dwellers, miners and peasants—the most diverse in Europe.  Vasa asked the Diet of 1527 if the country should become Lutheran.  They decided not.  Vasa nodded and said that he would then leave the country and resign his crown.  The Diet debated another 3 days and decided they wanted Vasa more than the Pope. Sweden thus became Lutheran. 

            Vasa instituted reforms that still left the church with lands but donated much to be sold to the benefit of the crown.  It was far less bloodless than what happened in Germany.  Vasa used the wealth to stimulate the iron industry, signed free commerce agreements with England and others, and lowered fees (like taxes) on all the citizenry—sort of an early day Reaganomics.  Sweden flourished and Gustavus Vasa I went down in history as the father of Modern Sweden.

            But the real lesson of this is that Christian and Trolle overstepped Swedish sensibility and found themselves going from beloved guys to bad guys in a hurry.  Instead of annihilating the nationalists, they opened the door for a revolution.  Christian was adulated only so long as life was normal and people were apathetic.  Trolle was adulated as a leader of faith, but when he became Torquemada, Swedes were appalled.  What the nationalists needed was a leader willing to put his life, his fortune and his sacred honor on the line for what he believed.  They found it in Vasa.