Peggy Noonan

The president’s sequester strategy is like Howard Beale in “Network”: “Woe is us. . . . And woe is us! We’re in a lot of trouble!”

It is always cliffs, ceilings and looming catastrophes with Barack Obama. It is always government by freakout.

That’s what’s happening now with the daily sequester warnings. Seven hundred thousand children will be dropped from Head Start. Six hundred thousand women and children will be dropped from aid programs. Meat won’t be inspected. Seven thousand TSA workers will be laid off, customs workers too, and air traffic controllers. Lines at airports will be impossible. The Navy will slow down the building of an aircraft carrier. Troop readiness will be disrupted, weapons programs slowed or stalled, civilian contractors stiffed, uniformed first responders cut back. Our nuclear deterrent will be indefinitely suspended. Ha, made that one up, but give them time.

Mr. Obama has finally hit on his own version of national unity: Everyone get scared together.

Obviously the potential budget cuts the administration is announcing—well, not announcing but warning of—are the kind that would cause maximum pain, inconvenience or alarm. Obviously too, the administration doesn’t want to be clear about exactly who might be affected, how or when. Let the imaginative dwell on the extent of the menace; let them do it on cable news.

In a way it’s all brilliant showbiz: Scare people into supporting your position. But we’ve been though it before, and you wonder, again, why a triumphant president and a battered Republican House majority can’t reach a responsible agreement.

And then you remind yourself why. Because Mr. Obama thrives in chaos. He flourishes in unsettled circumstances and grooves on his own calm. He spins an air of calamity, points fingers and garners support. His only opponent is a hapless, hydra-headed House. America has a weakness for winners, and Republicans just now do not look like winners. They have many voices but no real voice, and no one saying anything that makes you stop and think. Mr. Obama, on the other hand, is a singular character who tells you in measured tones that we must have measured answers. Half the country finds his politics to be too much to one side, but his temperament is not extreme and he often looks reasonable. With this gift he ties his foes in knots to get what he wants, which is higher taxes. He wants the rich to pay more and those he judges to be in need to receive more. End of story. Debt and deficits don’t interest him, except to the extent he must give them lip service.

And so far this seems to be working fine for him. A USA Today/Pew Research Center poll out this week reported half the respondents said it will be the Republicans’ fault if the sequester goes through. Only a third said they’d blame the president.

So it’s tempting to see this moment as part of the continuing saga of Obama Triumphant. But I’m not so sure. Short-term you can win the way the president wins, but long-term? No, that’s not the way to go.

Because government by freakout carries a price. It wears people down. It doesn’t inject a sense of energy, purpose or confidence in those who do business in America, it does the opposite. The other day I was in a Wal-Mart in southern Florida. It was Sunday afternoon on a holiday weekend but even accounting for that the mood and look of the place was different from what it was two and five years ago. Then, things seemed dynamic—what buys, what an array of products, what bustle in the aisles. This time it seemed tired, frayed, with fewer families and scarcer employees. It looked like a diorama of the Great Recession. What effect do all the successive fiscal cliffs, ceilings and sequesters, have on public confidence? On the public’s spirit? They only add to the sense that Washington is dysfunctional and cannot possibly help us out of the mire.

It shows the world we lurch from crisis to crisis by habit now. This makes us look incapable and beset.

It further sours the sourest White House-Capitol Hill relationship of modern political history. That relationship probably can’t get worse—it was actually breaking news this week that the president picked up a phone and called a Republican senator—but it’s not good to see no possibility of repair.

It leaves the vulnerable feeling more anxious, and the sophisticated feeling more jerked around. The president is usually called popular, but his poll numbers are well below Bill Clinton’s and Ronald Reagan’s at this point in their presidencies. He’s pretty much stuck at George W. Bush’s levels. The president and his people overestimate his position in this 50-50 country.

Beyond that, the president damages himself with his cleverness. At the end of the day he looks incapable of creating a sense of stability. The thing he misses as he shrewdly surveys the field is what he is: the president. He is the man people expect to lead, to be wiser. He is the one they expect to come up with a plan that is a little more than Let’s Threaten Catastrophe. As Ron Fournier asked in a spirited piece in National Journal, is the fiscal standoff “just about scoring political points, or is it about governing? If it’s all about politics, bully for Obama. A majority of voters will likely side with the president over Republicans. . . . If it’s about governing, the story changes: In any enterprise, the chief executive is ultimately accountable for success and failure. . . . There is only one president.”

Republicans on the Hill, of course, are being cast as the nihilists in the drama, as the ones who want to blow things up. But is that even remotely fair? They just lost a battle on taxes—they fought, got their heads handed to them and accepted an increase in rates. What they are saying now to the president is: “OK, we gave you tax increases. Don’t demand more right now, work with us on spending cuts and a broad and coherent tax-reform plan. Don’t do the kind of small, targeted loophole-closing that’s just meant to torment the dread rich, do something more solid and comprehensive. And yes, let’s move to do what we can on entitlement spending.”

That’s not very radical.

If they wanted to be nihilists—and they must sometimes feel tempted—they could be. They could let the president have everything he wants—more spending,higher taxes—while making a great rhetorical show of resistance, and then caving in. They could give him everything he asks for and let the economy suffer for it, which would help resistance to Obamanomics spread and grow. The debt and the deficit would grow. Economic malaise would continue and deepen. You could call this the H.L. Mencken approach: “Democracy,” he observed, “is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.”

But congressional Republicans will not do that. Because, actually, they’re not nihilists. And yes, they’d co-own the catastrophe and risk being swept out.

But time may be their friend. The president looks strong now, but governing by freakout has too many costs. Again, he is overplaying his hand.

It is disquieting, the resignation of the pope. “We are in uncharted territory,” said a historian of the church. An old pope is leaving but staying within the walls of the Vatican, and a new one, younger and less known, will come before Easter.

In a week’s conversation with faithful and believing Catholics, I detected something I’ve never quite heard before, and that is a deep, unshaken, even cheerful faith accompanied by a certain anxiety, even foreboding. I heard acceptance of Pope Benedict’s decision coupled with an intense sympathy for what is broadly understood to be his suffering, from health problems to the necessity that his decision was a lonely one, its deepest reasoning known only to him. There was a lot of speculation that attempting to run the Vatican in the new age of technology, of leaks and indiscretions and instant responses, would have been hard on him.

So here are some things Catholics have been telling me.

From a Catholic journalist: “I trust Papa to know that he is doing the right thing, and the best thing, for the church. She is his whole life and nothing he has ever done has been but for her good. That said, you know that saying, ‘It’s going to get worse before it gets better’? That’s pretty much where I am about it. I think there is going to be a great deal of intrigue” in the conclave. She thinks some see it as the “last, best chance to try to ‘correct’ the ‘misguided’ trajectories of John Paul II and Benedict the 16th, and I think that is the practical reason Benedict is doing this now—he is a mystic but a very practical, clear-eyed one. He knows that he has more sway over the conclave alive than dead.”

He would have been deliberate about the timing of his announcement, just before Lent, which “has helped to intently focus us on our prayer for the church at a time when she needs our focused prayer, fasting and sacrifice. It’s a little chilling to consider that he may feel the church needs all three at this moment. The whole world is always watching a conclave but this time it may be watching more closely, with eyes that are both interested and on the lookout for wolves. But ultimately, I am willing to be optimistic. I tend to take the long view on these things, because I know God’s hand is always at work in everything, and that all things work for our good—in His time, though, not in ours, which is the thing that gets us unnerved.”

From a parish priest in New York City: “The resignation was truly shocking, and hard to imagine. People are concerned about the successor. They’re asking, What does it mean for the papacy? Will future popes be pressured to leave? Is it a sign of the technological thing that wears people out?”

From a historian of the Catholic Church: Some have been “unsettled” by the resignation because they think of the pope as a rock of stability, “but Benedict’s point is that he couldn’t be that anymore. Christ is the head of the Church, not him. If his physical and mental circumstances were not adequate then he should get out of the way. It said a lot about his character, just as it said a lot about John Paul’s that he should stay.” John Paul gave his last great lesson “by dying a holy death in front of the world.” Benedict’s lesson is humility and self-sacrifice.

In choosing a successor, “I think age is going to be an issue. I don’t know there’s any ceiling,” but the cardinals will think twice about older candidates. John Paul and Benedict had returned the Church to its biblical roots: “Saint Peter was prophet and martyr, but he wasn’t a manager. . . . The optimal outcome of this process is a vibrant evangelical pastor who hires a good manager to run the Curia for him. We don’t elect popes to move slots around on organizational charts.”

There is an old saying, God has already chosen the next pope, it’s up to the cardinals) to figure out who God’s choice is. The historian observes: “That doesn’t mean they’ll figure it out.” He remembered Benedict saying long ago, when he was a cardinal, “The role of the Holy Spirit in the conclave is to prevent us from electing a pope who will completely destroy the church.”

His hope: “As the dying John Paul II put everyone on their best behavior in 2005, the self effacing humility Benedict is displaying will put everyone on their best behavior again.” He’s not necessarily optimistic that will happen.

In past conclaves there has always been an idea that America’s superpower status constituted “a kind of veto” over the choosing of an American. America is so formidable, we’re not going to give her the papacy too. “You don’t hear that anymore,” the historian said, because “people don’t see us as a superpower anymore.” An American pope is possible, though unlikely.

It’s true, the historian said, that people are thinking about what nation or region the next pope might come from, but also true the Italians want very badly to win back the papacy back after 35 years of a Pole and a German. Is it because they believe only an Italian can understand and manage the Vatican? “That’s what they say,” he said. But the real reason is that Italy has lost a great deal—its economy is in the doldrums, its politics dysfunctional, its culture a mess. “Italy now has only two things, good food and the Vatican.”

From a Catholic writer: “I can’t quite say I am at peace,” about Benedict’s decision, but she feels “a unity of divine purpose in what the Holy Father has set in motion.” She sees a certain amount of “suffering” ahead. She sees Benedict’s decision as “at once a model, and an urgent plea, and a warning.”

Almost everyone I spoke to mentioned that they’d taken comfort from the words of Benedict, in a general audience in the Vatican on Ash Wednesday: “What sustains and illuminates me is the certainty that the Church belongs to Christ, whose care and guidance will never be lacking.”

A Washington-based Catholic activist spoke with some urgency of Cardinal Roger Mahony, who is scheduled to go to Rome to vote on Benedict’s successor. As the Washington Post this week noted in an editorial, Cardinal Mahony is “lucky not to be in prison” for his role in covering up hundreds of well-chronicled cases of child sexual abuse in the 1980s, during his 25-year tenure as archbishop of Los Angeles. A few weeks ago he was forcefully rebuked and relieved of many of his public duties by his successor, Archbishop Jose Gomez.

Said the activist: “If Mahony goes to Rome it will be so wrong. And the media will make everything about him.”

They will, and understandably. It would be a shame, and another scandal for the church, if Cardinal Mahony goes, and votes. He should take a nod from the pope he praises, and remove himself.

So many people this week mentioned Dodge’s great Super Bowl spot, “So God Made a Farmer,” from a 1978 speech by the late Paul Harvey.

Here are some reasons it was great:

• Because it spoke respectfully and even reverently of others. We don’t do that so much anymore. We’re afraid of looking corny or naive, and we fear that to praise one group is to suggest another group is less worthy of admiration. So we keep things bland and nonspecific. Harvey wasn’t afraid to valorize, and his specificity had the effect of reminding us there’s a lot of uncelebrated valor out there. It would be nice to hear someone do “So God Created Firemen,” or “So God Created Doctors,” but I’m not sure our culture has the requisite earnestness and respect. We do irony, sarcasm and spoofs: “So God Created Hedge Fund Managers.” Anyway, it was nice—a real refreshment—to hear the sound of authentic respect.

• Because it spoke un-self-consciously in praise of certain virtues—commitment, compassion, hard work, a sense of local responsibility. The most moving reference, to me, was when Harvey has the farmer get up before dawn, work all day, and “then go to town and stay past midnight at a meeting of the school board.” Notice the old word “town,” not “community”—that blight of a word that is used more and more as it means less and less.

• Because it explicitly put God as maker of life and governor of reality, again un-self-consciously, and with a tone that anticipated no pushback. God, you could say anything in Paul Harvey’s day.

• Because it was Paul Harvey, a great broadcaster and a clear, clean writer for the ear, who knew exactly what he was saying and why, and who was confident of the values he asserted. He wasn’t a hidden person, he wasn’t smuggling an agenda, he was conservative and Christian and made these things clear through the virtues and values he praised and the things he criticized. You could like him or not, but you understood that by his lights he was giving it to you straight as he could. He was often criticized as hokey, sentimental and overly dramatic, and sometimes he was. But mostly he was a pro who hit his mark every day, and it says something about his gifts that since he died in 2009, the ABC radio network has appointed a number of successors, but Harvey never really was replaced. Because he was irreplaceable.

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Which gets us to another story involving a media figure and a media institution. I refer to Steve Kroft’s interview, on “60 Minutes,” with Barack Obama and departing Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. That made a big impression too. It didn’t remind us of a style or approach for which we feel nostalgia, but one about which we are feeling increased apprehension, and that is the mainstream media fawn-a-thon toward the current president.

The Kroft interview was a truly scandalous example of the genre. It was so soft, so dazzled, so supportive, so embarrassing. And it was that way from the beginning, when Mr. Kroft breathlessly noted, “The White House granted us 30 minutes.” Granted. Like kings.

What followed was a steady, targeted barrage of softballs. “Why did you want to do this together, a joint interview?” Because, said the president, she’s been one of the best secretaries of state ever, and theirs has been one of the greatest collaborations in history. Also, “I’m gonna miss her.” No reading of the tea leaves here, pressed Mr. Kroft. We don’t have tea here, Hillary laughed.

Throughout the president and the secretary sat closely, shoulder to shoulder, leaning into each other, nodding as the other spoke, praising each other in a way that praised themselves. I don’t blame them for doing propaganda—that’s what White Houses do. But it’s hard not blaming Mr. Kroft and “60 Minutes” for being part of it.

Why did you want her as secretary of state? Mr. Kroft asked. Because she’s so wonderful, the president more or less responded, and not unlike me in the profundity of her seriousness.

Mr. Kroft noted that she had to be talked into taking the job. Mrs. Clinton said yes, she’d exhausted herself selflessly working to elect Mr. Obama in ‘08, she wasn’t sure she wanted to take on a cabinet position. But he’s so persuasive!

The president nodded, smiling. He noted that Mrs. Clinton travelled around the world carrying his forceful yet calibrated message.

“How would you characterize your relationship right now?” asked Mr. Kroft, the intrepid reporter. Hillary answered, “Very warm, close, I think there’s a sense of understanding that doesn’t even take words . . . a bond.”

Mr. Kroft said he’d “spare you reading what was said” during the heated 2008 Democratic primary battles. And boy, did he spare them.

How did they overcome the tensions and hard words of that battle? “We’re professionals,” said Hillary.

“What do you think the biggest success has been, foreign-policy success, of the first term?”

The president could think of a number of them.

Really, access isn’t worth this. The get isn’t worth it. The entire interview reminded me of an old radio insult: When an interviewer didn’t try to push and probe, didn’t even try to get the story, the resulting interview was called “soft as a sneaker full of puppy excrement.” No, they didn’t say excrement.

*   *   *

We are living in the age of emergency—the economy, the Mideast, North Korea, Iran. The president has an utter and historic inability to forge a relationship with Congress. Unemployment seems intractable.

And the best Steve Kroft and “60 Minutes” could do was how wonderful are you?

The Obama-Clinton relationship is interesting, but here are some questions about it that might have elicited more than outtakes for a Hillary 2016 commercial:

Mr. President, does your foreign policy really come out of the White House, even out of its political office, and not the State Department? Has the department’s ability to formulate policy and be a player in terms of the development of grand strategy been diminished? Her first year in office Mrs. Clinton looked like someone who’d been put on a plane and told to do interviews on “Good Morning Manila” about how she met Bill. What do you say?

Mrs. Clinton, some think you held your tongue, made the best of a bad situation, worked the areas you could, moved forward on issues of particular concern like women’s rights; that you dummied up on Benghazi, demolished your congressional critics in one masterly day of testimony, and now have been rewarded for your loyalty and discretion with a joint presidential interview that amounts to an anointment for 2016. Can you comment?”

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There is nothing wrong with being a declared liberal or conservative and conducting a sympathetic interview with a political figure who shares your views. Such interviews have their place and can be useful: a nondefensive, nonwary president elaborates on his thoughts, or commits accidental candor.

But Mr. Kroft is a reporter whose job it is to be impartial and nonpartisan, and who works for a towering journalistic institution, “60 Minutes.”

People like him are supposed to approach political figures with no fear or favor.

Their job is to grill. What are they afraid of?

Do you hear the sound of an ice floe cracking? I think I did the past 10 days. In that time these things happened:

Gov. Bobby Jindal went before the Republican National Committee to call the GOP “the stupid party.” Newly re-elected RNC chairman Reince Priebus admitted the party got smoked on vote technology, will have a hard time catching up with the Democrats and must start now. Joe Scarborough told a conservative gathering that dissent within the party has been suppressed. John Podhoretz said some of its long-held assumptions are creating “dead ends.” Marco Rubio and the gang of eight got out ahead of the president on immigration reform. Rep. Dave Camp zeroed in on the worst of Wall Street, the use of derivatives that helped crash the economy in 2008. He proposes to “crack down on the ability of investment firms and wealthy individuals to limit their taxes through complex financial instruments,” Roll Call reports. That’s a pirate move, and of the best kind because it doesn’t come from a pirate but from the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, a conservative veteran respected on both sides of the aisle.

These sharp cracks in the air just may be the sound of a frozen party moving on into swift and warmer waters. And if it’s just a beginning, good, it’s a beginning.

At the National Review Institute summit last weekend, three big things got said.

Ted Cruz, the new senator from Texas, urged conservative activists to recognize cultural realities among Hispanics in America, to wit: “There are 2.3 million Hispanic small-business owners in the country. . . . We are an incredibly entrepreneurial community.” Hispanics in America want what everyone wants, to rise. They will be open to arguments on which party’s policies are more likely to clear the path. Republicans spent 2012 answering President Obama with the slogan “You built that!” But that was a slogan aimed at those who’d already arrived, who were established. The GOP message, he said, should have been, “You can build that.” The party should not allow itself to look like the party of big business, it has to be the party of the young person in the garage inventing something that will challenge big business.

Part of Mr. Cruz’s point was that campaign consultants think appealing to Hispanics comes down to immigration policy—but it doesn’t.

In fact, solving immigration is important politically to the GOP because it would remove an impediment to reconciliation. But immigration reform itself probably won’t result in any electoral windfall for the Republicans. Mexican-Americans strike me as like the Irish who came to America in the great wave from 1880 to 1920. They saw the Republicans as snobs and establishment types, saw the Democrats as scrappy and for the little guy, and cleaved to the latter party for a good long while. That may be what’s coming here, but no one knows—everything’s more speeded up now, political affiliations are less placid and implacable than they once were. But Mr. Cruz’s insight on how to make an effective appeal was a needed corrective. Mr. Cruz was, alas, less impressive this week on the subject of Chuck Hagel, whom he charged with a lack of sympathy for the military. Really? Mr. Hagel was sympathetic enough to volunteer for Vietnam, where he won two Purple Hearts. Does Mr. Cruz have a comparable record? Then maybe some due respect is in order.

In a panel on the future of conservatism, Mr. Podhoretz, editor of Commentary, also said something that needed saying. Republican politicians now often feel reluctant to move forward on regulatory bills that would have a beneficial effect and are in line with conservative thinking, because the idea of government regulation has become poisonous among the base: “The problem with three decades of movement thinking is that it ends up creating dead ends.” It does.

Mr. Scarborough, a former GOP congressman who now hosts MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” broadened the criticism: “I think the debate within the party has been stifled,” he said. “It has been stifled because we have created this conservative groupthink over 30 years that’s become more and more narrow.” “Everybody’s afraid to talk.” Liberals, he said, make the mistake of believing you manage the government from the top down, and conservatives are right in believing in managing the economy from the bottom up. But “we’re managing our ideas from the top down.”

Poignantly—really, it was poignant—he spoke of the party he entered when he ran for Congress in 1994. It was alive with ideas: John Kasich on the budget, Jack Kemp on taxes, John Engler on welfare reform, Tommy Thompson on crime control. This was the bubble and fizz of a movement at its height. Now, he said, the national conversation is more constricted, with radio stars, websites and magazines functioning as unofficial arbiters and limiters of domestic and foreign policy debate.

All this is true, and needs to be said not only to conservatives but by conservatives.

*   *   *

I close with a memory of conservatism as I experienced it, in the Reagan White House. It was a brutal place full of infighting, with the left (older, more establishment Republicans), the right (younger movement conservatives and intellectuals) and the center (everyone else) in a continual, daily war over policy. This side leaked front-page hit jobs against the other side, these people were trying to get that guy fired. It was terrible.

And yet at the end of the day, all that fighting and arguing yielded good policy. In fact, it yielded the last fully successful American presidency.

That was the party I entered, and that’s what I thought conservatism was: a big fight that resulted in excellence.

The White Houses that followed Reagan’s overreacted to its chaos. Discipline and unity were suddenly more important than creativity and critical thinking. Personal loyalty became the highest value. In the George W. Bush White House they not only scotched internal dissent, they couldn’t tolerate conservative criticism from outside.

That White House hurt itself this way, and hurt the conservative movement that defended it. If the Bush White House had attempted not to suppress but to listen to those who argued it was spending too wildly, it might have moderated itself and saved the Republican brand. If they’d listened to warnings about Iraq, they might have thought twice about moving forward, or fought more wisely and with a longer view. If they’d listened to critics of their immigration approach instead of calling them bigots, a GOP split might not have begun. If they had not been so proud, they could have rejiggered, relaunched and perhaps saved immigration as an issue for the GOP.

Maybe groupthink can work when you’re in power, at least for a time. But you can’t take suppression as an operating style when you’re on the outside fighting to come back.

We need a return to the burly conservatism of 30 years ago.

If you put unity over intellectual integrity you’ll lose the second right away, and the first in time.

By the way, that panel on the future of conservatism was smart and provocative, but it was composed of six men, no women. Ice, break more quickly.

Two lessons on how conservatives and Republicans might approach the future, and a look at the meaning of Barack Obama.

Lesson one: Golf star Phil Mickelson this week complained about taxes—”I happen to be in that zone that has been targeted both federally and by the state”—and suggested he may leave California. Before anyone could jump down his throat, he abjectly apologized: He didn’t mean to hurt anyone, he shouldn’t have said it, taxes are a “personal” issue.

Actually they’re pretty public. The American Revolution started as a tax revolt. It is not remarkable that a man might protest a 50% to 60% tax rate that means he has to work from January through July or August for the government, and only gets to keep for himself and his family what he earns from then through December.

Most fans would rather see Mr. Mickelson hit a ball with a stick than hear his economic analysis, and talking about tax burdens when you’re making up to $50 million a year sounds like . . . well, a pretty high-class problem.

But his complaint came as kind of a relief. It was politically incorrect. It was based on actual numbers and facts and not grounded in abstractions, as most of our public pronouncements are. And it was unusual: Most people in his position are clever enough not to sound aggrieved.

Conservatives and Republicans feel a bit under siege these days because their views are not officially in style. But the Cringe is not the way to deal with it. If you take a stand, take a stand and take the blows. Many people would think that paying more than half your salary in city, state, county and federal taxes is unjust. Mr. Mickelson is not alone.

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Lesson two came from Republicans on Capitol Hill. Conservatives on the ground are angry with them after the Benghazi hearings. Members of the Senate and the House have huffed and puffed for months: “It’s worse than Watergate, Americans died.” Just wait till they question the secretary of state, they’ll get to the bottom of it.

Wednesday they questioned Hillary Clinton. It was a dud.

The senators weren’t organized or focused, they didn’t coordinate questions, follow up, have any coherent or discernible strategy. The only senator who really tried to bore in was Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, who asked a pointed question that was never answered: If you wanted to find out what happened when the consulate was attacked, why didn’t you pick up the phone the next day and call those who’d been there? John McCcain made a spirited, scattered speech—really, it was just like him—that couldn’t find the energy to end in serious questions.

Some conservatives are saying Mrs. Clinton looked unhinged, angry. In their dreams. She came across as human and indignant, and emerged untouched. What air there was in the Benghazi balloon leaked out. Someday we’ll find out what happened when somebody good writes a book.

All this looked like another example of the mindless personal entrepreneurialism of the Republicans on the Hill: They’re all in business for themselves. They make their speech, ask their question, and it’s not connected to anyone else’s speech or question. They aren’t part of something that moves and makes progress.

Minority parties can’t act like this, in such a slobby, un-unified way.

Hill Republicans continue not to understand that they are the face of the party when the cameras are trained on Washington. They don’t understand how they look, which is like ants on a sugar cube.

*   *   *

Finally, it became obvious this week that the Republican party top to bottom has to start taking Barack Obama seriously. All the famous criticisms of him are true: He has no talent for or interest in sustained, good-faith negotiations, he has no real sense of alarm about the great issue of the day, America’s debt. He’s a chill presence in a warm-blooded profession.

But he means business. He means to change America in fundamental ways and along the lines of justice as he sees it. The proper response to such a man is not—was not—that he’s a Muslim, he’s a Kenyan, he’s working out his feelings about colonialism. Those charges were meant to marginalize him, but they didn’t hurt him. They damaged Republicans, who came to see him as easy to defeat.

He doesn’t care if you like him—he’d just as soon you did, but it’s not necessary for him. He is certain he is right in what he’s doing, which is changing the economic balance between rich and poor. The rich are going to be made less rich, and those who are needy or request help are going to get more in government services, which the rich will pay for. He’d just as soon the middle class not get lost in the shuffle, but if they wind up marginally less middle class he won’t be up nights. The point is redistribution.

The great long-term question is the effect the change in mood he seeks to institute will have on what used to be called the national character. Eight years is almost half a generation. Don’t you change people when you tell them they have an absolute right to government support regardless of their efforts? Don’t you encourage dependence, and a bitter sense of entitlement? What about the wearing down of taxpayers? Some, especially those who are younger, do not fully understand that what is supporting them is actually coming from other people. To them it seems to come from “the government,” the big marble machine far away that prints money.

There is no sign, absolutely none, that any of this is on Mr. Obama’s mind. His emphasis is always on what one abstract group owes another in the service of a larger concept. “You didn’t build that” are the defining words of his presidency.

He is not going to negotiate, compromise, cajole. Absent those efforts his only path to primacy in Congress is to kill the Republican Party, to pulverize it, as John Dickerson noted this week in Slate, to “attempt to annihilate the Republican Party,” as Speaker John Boehner said in a remarkably candid speech to the Ripon Society.

Mr. Obama is not, as has been said, the left’s Ronald Reagan. Reagan won over, Mr. Obama just wins. What Mr. Obama really is is Franklin D. Roosevelt without the landslides. He has the same seriousness of intent but nothing like the base of support.

In 1932, FDR won the presidency with 58% of the vote to Herbert Hoover’s 40%. In 1936 it was even better: Roosevelt won 61% of the vote to Alf Landon’s 36.5%.

In 2008, Barack Mr. Obama beat John McCain solidly, 53% to 46%. But last year, against a woebegone GOP candidate, Obama won just 51% of the vote, to Mitt Romney’s 47%. (Yes: ironic.)

Mr. Obama received 66 million votes in 2012—but four years earlier he received 69.5 million.

His support went down, not up.

He is moving forward as if he has FDR’s mandate and attempting to crush his enemy every bit as ruthlessly as FDR, who was one ruthless patrician.

It will take guts and unity to fight him. Can the GOP, just in Washington, for now, develop those things?

Presidential inaugurations are rare and notable events, coming only once every four years since April 30, 1789, when George Washington raised his right hand and took the oath on the second-floor balcony of New York’s Federal Hall.

It’s a big day with all its pomp and ceremony, and among its purposes is this: to encourage all who watch to let go, for a moment, of the ups and downs of the political day-to-day and think, for a moment, about the longer arc of our history. A president’s inaugural address is a chance to go big and be big—to be thematic and not programmatic, to declare the meaning, as he sees it, of his leadership, to speak of where America is and ought to be. The whole day, from breakfasts to balls, is meant to be, insofar as possible within the confines of human nature, one of democratic fellowship and good feeling.

A president approaching that day will necessarily be, in his spirit, benign, embracing—unifying.

So here is what is utterly remarkable: President Obama has been using the days and weeks leading up to his inauguration to show the depth of his disdain for the leaders of the other major party and, by inference, that party’s voters, which is to say more or less half the country. He has been spending his time alienating instead of summoning. It has left the political air more sour and estranged.

As a presidential style this is something strange and new. That has to be said again: It is new, and does not augur well.

What was remarkable about the president’s news conference Monday is that he didn’t seem to think he had to mask his partisan rancor or be large-spirited. He bristled with unashamed hostility for Republicans on the Hill. They are holding the economy “ransom,” they are using the threat of “crashing the American economy” as “leverage,” some are “absolutist” while others are “consumed with partisan brinksmanship.” They are holding “a gun at the head of the American people.” And what is “motivating and propelling” them is not a desire for debt reduction, as they claim. They are “suspicious about government’s commitment . . . to make sure that seniors have decent health care as they get older. They have suspicions about Social Security. They have suspicions about whether government should make sure that kids in poverty are getting enough to eat, or whether we should be spending money on medical research.”

And yet, “when I’m over here at the congressional picnic and folks are coming up and taking pictures with their family, I promise you, Michelle and I are very nice to them.”

You’re nice to them? To people who’d take food from the mouths of babes?

Then, grimly: “But it doesn’t prevent them from going onto the floor of the House and blasting me for being a big-spending socialist.” Conservative media outlets “demonize” the president, he complained, and so Republican legislators fear standing near him.

If Richard Nixon talked like that, they’d have called him paranoid and self-pitying. Oh wait . . .

Throughout the press conference the president demanded—they’d “better choose quickly”—that Republicans extend the debt ceiling. Pressed by reporters on whether he would negotiate with them to win this outcome he made it clear he would not. He would have “a conversation.” Bloomberg’s Julianna Goldman asked: “So you technically will negotiate?”

“No, Julianna,” he answered. “Either Congress pays its bills or it doesn’t.”

There was a logical inconsistency to his argument. A government shutdown would be so disastrous to the economy that he won’t negotiate with Republicans if that’s what it takes to avert it.

This, he said, is what will happen if the debt ceiling is not extended: “Social Security checks and veteran’s benefits will be delayed. We might not be able to pay our troops, or honor our contracts with small businesses. Food inspectors, air traffic controllers, specialists who track down loose nuclear material wouldn’t get their paychecks.”

Why talk to Republicans when the stakes are so high? They must be the kind of people who like to see planes crash and bombs go off.

Two days later, unveiling his gun-control plan at a White House event, it wasn’t only Republicans in Congress who lie: “There will be pundits and politicians and special-interest lobbyists publicly warning of a tyrannical all-out assault on liberty, not because that’s true but because they want to gin up fear or higher ratings or revenue for themselves. And behind the scenes, they’ll do everything they can to block any common-sense reform and make sure nothing changes whatsoever.”

No one has good faith but him. No one is sincere but him. Doesn’t this get boring, even to him?

The president was criticized for surrounding himself with children during the event, but politicians use props and the props are usually people. Was it out of bounds that he used kids? No. Was it classy? No. But classiness doesn’t seem to be much on his mind. Perhaps his staffers were thinking less about gun control than warming up his image—”Julia, I will try very hard”—and trying to get people to think of him, after four years, and with his graying hair, as Papa Obama, instead of Irritating Older Brother Who Got 750 On His SATs And Thinks He’s Einstein Obama. Which is sort of how half the country sees him.

His gun-control recommendations themselves seemed, on balance, reasonable and moderate. I don’t remember that the Second Amendment died when Bill Clinton banned assault rifles; it seemed to thrive, and good, too. That ban shouldn’t have been allowed to expire in 2004.

What was offensive about the president’s recommendations is what they excluded. He had nothing to say about America’s culture of violence—its movies, TV shows and video games. Excuse me, there will be a study of video games; they are going to do “research” on whether seeing 10,000 heads explode on video screens every day might lead unstable young men to think about making heads explode. You’ll need a real genius to figure that out.

The president at one point asked congressmen in traditionally gun-supporting districts to take a chance, do the right thing and support some limits. But when it comes to challenging Hollywood—where he traditionally gets support, and from which he has taken great amounts of money for past campaigns and no doubt will for future libraries—he doesn’t seem to think he has do the right thing. He doesn’t even have to talk about it. It wouldn’t be good to have Steven Spielberg or Quentin Tarantino running around shouting “First amendment, slippery slope!” or have various powerful and admired actors worrying their brows, to the extent their brows can be worried.

On cultural issues, this Democratic president could have done a Nixon to China—the bold move that only he could make without inspiring fierce dissent, the move that could break through.

Instead he did a Nixon to the Orange County GOP.

Maybe the president doesn’t operate with as much good faith as he thinks, and maybe the other side isn’t as bad as he pretends. As I watched his news conference and his gun-control remarks I thought, for the first time in a while, that the Republicans are finally getting a break.

He is overplaying his hand.

He does that. He’s doing it again.

It’s official. Congress is now less popular than cockroaches and colonoscopies, though more popular than the ebola virus and gonorrhea. Really. The numbers came, this week, from a Public Policy Polling survey. The House and Senate have an approval rating of 9%.

GOP governors are the party’s most esteemed leaders, but they’re not in Washington. The Republican voice and presence in our national debates comes from its members on the Hill. They’re the ones America sees on the news every day, which is unfortunate because they are, largely, deal makers, legislators and even plain speakers who are not necessarily gifted explainers or thinkers.

They are up against the Democratic voice and presence. That would be President Obama (approval rating in the low to mid 50s) and his White House. He is just off a major electoral win, commands the national mic, is about to be celebrated at a second swearing-in, and will soon give a nationally covered inaugural address. Also he just won on the fiscal cliff, for now. We’ll see the blowback. Payroll taxes have just gone up, ObamaCare is yet to be fully instituted and will be costly, things are about to get more expensive for everybody. But at the moment he’s king.

And what the Republican Party has each day going up against him—presenting the party’s case, explaining its thinking—is a disparate and fractious lot of varying talent who, again, are connected to an institution less popular than cockroaches.

It doesn’t, at the moment, seem a fair fight.

Normally we see Republican congressmen and senators in a gaggle, and their message always seems to get lost. They’re usually talking about pieces of things, some part of a bill, or an amendment. Little they say seems to cohere, or to connect with a higher purpose, intent or meaning. What they say doesn’t amount to a cacophony—it’s not that lively. Their message always seems muted and blurred.

Congressional Republicans haven’t been able to come up with an immediate and overarching goal or a strategy to achieve it. Many feel as if they’re always in the dark, unclear on what the leadership is thinking or about to do.

But a goal and strategy are needed. Without them, everything will seem ad hoc, provisional, formless, meaningless. The public will see it that way, especially in comparison to the president, who seems these days to have a surer sense of what he’s about, and a greater confidence that you’ve finally twigged on to it, too.

So here’s an idea for Republicans in Congress. It has to do in part with policy, in part with attitude and approach.

They should starkly assess their position. It isn’t good. They just lost an election, they’re up against the wall, they have to figure out how to survive and thrive as a party that stands for something, while attempting each day to do the work that needs doing for a country in trouble. The challenges are huge, the odds long.

They can sit back and be depressed and whine. Or they can decide: It’s pirate time.

And really, it is.

Now is the time to fight and be fearless, to be surprising, to break out of lockstep, to be the one thing Republicans aren’t supposed to be, and that is interesting.

Now’s the time to put a dagger ‘tween their teeth, wave a sword, grab a rope and swing aboard the enemy’s galleon. Take the president’s issues, steal them—they never belonged to him, they’re yours!

In political terms this means: Reorient yourselves. Declare for Main Street over Wall Street, stand for the little guy against the big interests. And move. Don’t wait for the bill, declare the sentiments of your corner..

Really, it’s pirate time.

Examples of what might be done:

If you are conservative you are skeptical of concentrated power. You know the bullying and bossism it can lead to. Republicans should go to the populist right on the issue of bank breakup. Too big to fail is too big to continue. The megabanks have too much power in Washington and too much weight within the financial system. People think the GOP is for the bankers. The GOP should upend this assumption. In this case good policy is good politics.

If you are a conservative you’re supposed to be for just treatment of the individual over the demands of concentrated elites. Every individual in America making $400,000 a year or more just got a tax hike that was a blow to the gut. Regular working people are seeing their payroll deductions increase. But private-equity partners who make billions enjoy more favorable tax treatment. Their income is treated for tax purposes as a capital gain, so they’re taxed at far lower rates. This is called the carried interest exemption, and everybody knows it’s a big con.

The Republican Party should come out against it in a big way. Let the real rich pay the same percentage the not-actually-rich-but-formally-declared-rich are paying. If the Republicans did this they’d actually be joining the winning side, because carried interest will not survive the new era. If congressional Republicans care about their party they’ll want it to get credit for fairness, as opposed to the usual blame for being lackeys of the rich.

Republicans make too much of order and discipline. Sometimes a little anarchy is a good thing, a little disorder a sign of creativity and independence of thought. If there are voices within the GOP that are for some part or parts of gun reform it would be good for them—and for the party—to come forward now. I love the Second Amendment and I’m not kidding, but I have to say tens of millions of assault weapons in the hands of gangbangers and unstable young men couldn’t be what the Founders had in mind.

We need a little moderation here, a little give.

Finally, Republicans should shock everyone, including themselves, by pushing for immigration reform—now. Don’t wait for the president, do it yourselves, come forward individually or in groups with the argument for legalization of who lives here now. Such bills should include border control and pathways for citizenship, but—and most important—they shouldn’t seem punitive or grudging and involve fines and lines and new ways to sue employers. The world has changed. Ease up now. In the past 10 years immigrants, legal and illegal, have fought our wars. We need to hurry in those who are trying to bring gifts we need into the USA. Whoever comes here learns to love our crazy country, or at least appreciate it. If we do a better job of teaching them why the goodness we have even exists, we will do OK.

The point here is to have the GOP lead in terms of good policy. But it’s also important for the Republicans to show the variety, disagreement and alive-ness that exists within the party. It is not some grim monolith, some thought-free zone, or was not meant to be. It’s not bad to be unpredictable. Living things are.

Members should loosen up, speak for their corner, put together caucuses, go forward, move. Go on TV, dagger and sword, and make your case.

Really: It’s pirate time.