JON MEACHAM WANTS TO PUT A "MISSION ACCOMPLISHED" BANNER BEHIND OBAMA

Here's Jon Meacham being utterly naive in Newsweek, as he criticizes President Obama for taking on Fox:

The White House–vs.–Fox News mini-saga belongs to an era that effectively ended last fall, when President Bush radically enlarged the role of the federal government in the economy and Obama won the presidency. It was clear then, and is even clearer now, that the issues which long defined the right-left divide (hawkishness abroad, a limited role for government at home) are in spectacular disarray.

Is he kidding?

These issues aren't in spectacular disarray on the Beck/Limbaugh/tea party right, where -- freed of the obligation to walk the walk and required only to talk the talk -- wingnuts reject their ex-hero Bush, denounce big government and deficit spending, and angrily insist that we have to wave as big a stick as possible in Afghanistan, a country Bush started to ignore five minutes after U.S. troops overthrew its government. And this is the group that defines what being anti-Obama means. This is the group that's taken up the anti-Obama banner and waved it most vigorously -- this is the opposition. This group is going to fight Fox's war even if there's no GOP government to fight it alongside Fox. Think of the teabaggers as the insurgency. To use an Iraq analogy, Meacham thinks it's time to hang a "Mission Accomplished" banner -- but the irregulars and bomb-detonators (and Fox) haven't stopped fighting. Far from it.

Oh, and as Gallup notes, even more people are calling themselves "conservative" now, despite the fact that conservatives are far outnumbered by moderates plus liberals:



Maybe Meacham is right and a truce has been declared, but being "conservative"/a teabagger/a Fox fan is now like not signing on to the peace accord.

Maybe there are good reasons for Obama not to take on Fox. Maybe (as Meacham says elsewhere in this essay) Obama's taking on Fox only to make us lefties feel better as he fails to pursue progressive goals with the vigor we'd prefer. But, damn, Jon, the war isn't over. Fox fans are still planting IEDs in the path of Obama and the Democrats -- and Republicans who stand in their way.