I wish Frank Rich would read it, but we are not likely to get him here.
Excellent!
Take care, my friend.
I am ashamed to say this, but the first 20 years of my adult life was spend working in the media, both newspapers and radio. You have a fine working voice and present a compelling argument without rancor and hyperbole. If I was your editor, I’d advise you to keep writing.
Be well and God bless.
Interesting. Thanks for posting. I hope you’re right.
Only one minor disagreement:
“If we look at real communists like Lenin and Trotsky, we will see men who are engaged in the real world and who do realize what they are up against...This hardening eventually paid off, and when the time came, they were ready...Obama is, in many ways, the direct opposite of such men”
Lenin’s and Trotsky’s engagement in the real world consisted of attempts to bend and force reality into their theory. Obama’s trying to do the same thing - ineptly, and with a lot less force (so far). But he’s trying to shape the truth rather than adapting to it.
“G.O.P. propagandists notwithstanding, (NJ Governor) Christie’s appeal does not prove that New Jersey (and therefore the country) has “turned to the right.” It does prove that people want a leader with a strong voice, even if only to argue with it.
No one expects Obama to imitate Christie’s in-your-face, bull-in-the-china-shop shtick. But they have waited in vain for him to...”
...begin to halt the rise of the oceans, heal the planet, provide care for the sick and good jobs for the jobless? ‘Cause he’s actually kinda gone the other way on that jobs/jobless part.
Pelosi and Reid will do his thinking for him and inform TOTUS.
I have to disagree with you about the top... Repubs had exclusive control of D.C. for several years... and doubled the debt. If they stay any time in D.C. they are all bought off by someone.
What happened to term limits? What happened to eliminating earmarks? When are the lobbyists and special interests going to be turned down?
Never, if the old guard stays in there.
Primary ALL of these guys...
Thanks for your piece. It has a lot of plausibility
Did Bush not do much this same thing? When he got in with solid republican majorities, and announced he was taking on education reform, all the people I knew had worked for him (homeschoolers). Here at last America was looking for real educational choice, and I've no doubt there would have been a new intellectual renaissance.
Instead, he works with Kennedy and bypasses true reform.
It's not a repub or Dem thing, it's a politician thing.
Your essay is much more cogent and readable than much of what the ‘pros’ publish.
Thanks!
Don’t try to analyze Obama. Axelrod is Obama’s brain. Analyze Axelrod.
I agree 100% with your essay. The only other thing I would have mentioned is the added influence of being raised in another country. I see so much of that in his behavior, for instance, bowing to other countries leaders.
In America, we learned Americans don’t do that in second grade.
If only 1/10th of vanities were this cogently presented and argued. Nice work.
Now, I'm not naive enough to believe that candidates don't lie to get elected, but Obama's campaign went beyond the lie by exaggeration. Obama blatantly presented himself to voters as the exact opposite of who he really was. Once the American people found out just how extensively they were duped, they rejected Obama completely. And, they are taking the rest of the enabling Democrats with them.
Before the 2008 election, I wrote that Obama would set back the cause of African-American presidents for a generation, and now I'm convinced that I was right. Also, the mask is off the Democrat party, after how they abused their power to push through health care, set aside centuries of established law, and squandered the national treasury for payoffs to their base in the name of stimulus.
-PJ
"If all of life consists of voicing noble sentiments and enjoying great luxury in return, that is exactly what he should be doing."
"As for those who try to explain Obama as a communist, or a third-world anti-colonialist, they are seeing difficulties that do not really exist. If we look at real communists like Lenin and Trotsky, we will see men who are engaged in the real world and who do realize what they are up against. They spent hard time in Czarist prisons and exile, and scrambled to stay alive and keep their cause going. This hardening eventually paid off, and when the time came, they were ready. They may have been tough, they may have been brutal, but they knew what it took to seize power and hold it. Obama is, in many ways, the direct opposite of such men. His life has been more like that of the spoiled heirs of great industrial fortunes, who go to prep school, an Ivy league college, and a cushy job on Wall Street without any great effort on their part."
Obama has also comes across to me as someone who succeeded simply by showing up. The claims of a vast intelligence in the man have never rung true with me. I've never heard him speak on a subject in a manner that sounded like he knew what he was talking about.
He's the world's perfect bureaucrat. A know-nothing who looks great knowing nothing.
The cliché criticisms of Obama are (from the left) that he is a naïve centrist, not the audacious liberal that Democrats thought they were getting, and (from the right) that he is a socialist out to impose government on every corner of American life. But the real problem is that he’s so indistinct no one across the entire political spectrum knows who he is. A chief executive who repeatedly presents himself as a conciliator, forever searching for the “good side” of all adversaries and convening summits, in the end comes across as weightless, if not AWOL. A Rorschach test may make for a fine presidential candidate — when everyone projects their hopes on the guy. But it doesn’t work in the Oval Office: These days everyone is projecting their fears on Obama instead.
So he's basically endorsing the left's view of Obama as a naive centrist. But he doesn't really get into why Obama thinks that all the summits and speeches will work.
Moreover, Obama wasn't much of a "conciliator" when he had a hungry Democrat majority in Congress. He didn't go as far as the left wanted, but his attitude was "We won the election, get used to it" not "Let's compromise."
You wrote:
So his whole career consisted of reading and speaking with basically like-minded people. He presented liberal, progressive cliches to captive audiences, or sat in the Illinois legislature and voted the Democrat line. His real life, in the upper-middle class world, was curiously detached from the ideas he dealt in. The house he owned, the arugula he bought at the farmer’s market, the schools he sent his girls to, were in essence paid for by someone else’s labor. While he learned to milk the system, and get colleges and taxpayers to support him, they were not exactly giving him this money because they agreed with him or liked his views, although some undoubtedly did.
A career like this will undoubtedly give a man a very distorted idea of what constitutes success, and what kind of effort is needed to accomplish a goal. It tends to reinforce the notion that the job of a leader is to give a good speech, and accept the accolades of the masses—as well as the good life that comes with being a leader. Thus Obama’s soaring speeches and his career on the golf course can be seen as two sides of the same story. If all of life consists of voicing noble sentiments and enjoying great luxury in return, that is exactly what he should be doing.
Good argument. I think you get it right. All the meetings and "teaching moments" reflect a very academic style of politics as instruction. To many on the right it looks like the imposition of a socialist ideology on the country. To many on the left it looks like a compromise or sell-out.
But it looks a lot like how his counterparts at U Chicago would try to run the country if they had a chance: seminars and lectures that are intended to bring people around to one's own way of thinking. It's not the confrontational, aggressive politics that partisans would prefer, but it has a de haut en bas condescension that drives the other side crazy.
The upper classes have long been able to "park" their kids in universities or non-profits or foundations or government positions, until they're ready to take on governing responsibilities. The same goes for retiring politicians who become foundation heads or university presidents -- Bob Kerry, John Brademas, etc.
What happens now is that promising members of minority groups are taken up by establishment groups and placed and nurtured in jobs until they can take on political offices in minority areas. African-American Rhodes scholars like Kurt Schmoke and Corey Booker likewise get co-opted and placed in positions until they're ready to run for office (I hope they had more "street cred" than Obama, but I doubt it matters).
Obama was more or less a part of that network (as is Deval Patrick, though he has no "street cred" at all). Obama's job at U Chicago, like his wife's, was just to give him something to do until he found an opening politically. I suspect, he was very much on the margin there, almost a part-time employee or independent contractor, but he picked up the habits of the place and the arrogance that went with academic life.
I hope this is not your last. This is insightful and well presented.
