Barack Obama pledged to be a transformative president.
In that, he’s succeeded.
Obama has been the most divisive president in modern history. But he’s done more than that: He’s destroyed all the institutions we hold in common, hoping that, by doing so, we will grant him more power.
America relies on our social capital: the notion that we can trust each other because we share things in common. Tocqueville wrote of America’s stunning reservoirs of social capital: “Americans of all ages, all stations in life, and all types of disposition are forever forming associations,” he wrote. Those associations are “not only commercial and industrial associations in which all take part, but others of a thousand different types — religious, moral, serious, futile, very general, very limited, immensely large, and very minute.”
Forming such associations requires us to share values, generally. If you wish to destroy social capital, however, you begin by destroying the credibility of institutions and associations. That is precisely what Obama has done.
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