Posted on 04/29/2008 9:31:43 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Ever notice how Barack Obama handles a question from a real person, as opposed to one of us annoying media types? Even a question that challenges his position? It's a thing of beauty.
Watch him at one of his forums. He listens patiently, nods his head sympathetically, and seems to share his questioner's point of view. He identifies.
He then begins his answer by restating the question, often enough in more persuasive form than the original. He doesn't so much entertain a question as improve it.
Only after he has established a bond between himself and his critic does he present his own, different point of view, carrying the questioner and the rest of the audience with him every respectful step of the way. Soon it's his critic who is nodding sympathetically, understandingly. Barack Obama has made another friend and supporter.
This is the approach he adopted to address the God-damn-America rhetoric of his old pastor - and rise above it. By the time he was finished, he'd actually turned a political embarrassment to his advantage in what soon became known as The Speech, an instant classic of American rhetoric.
If Barack Obama ever tires of his day job, he'd make a good editorial writer, for he has grasped the essence of the assignment: Appeal to the community's own standards, and at the same time raise them. It's called raising the level of public discourse, and it should be the end of every exercise in rhetoric. It's quite a trick, but Sen. Obama has mastered it when dealing with the issues.
It's when the talented Mr. Obama takes to analyzing people the same way he does issues, like some social scientist weighing us in the balance, that he gets into trouble. Real trouble. As he did when he analyzed the benighted inhabitants of deepest, darkest Pennsylvania during a private fund-raiser - in mod San Francisco, of all unfortunate places. That's when he committed the following masterpiece of two-bit psychology:
You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and . . . the jobs have been gone now for 25 years, and nothing's replaced them. It's not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.
It was a revealing comment - not about people in small-town Pennsylvania and their counterparts all across America, but about Barack Obama. It revealed him as another smooth talker as glib as he is condescending. Note the way he just threw religion in there as one more harbor for America's disgruntled along with guns, opposition to free trade, anti-immigrant feelingsŠ.
Barack Obama's was an off-the-cuff analysis of those of us not as sharp and well adjusted and successful as he is. That is, the pitiful rest of us. It's the kind of attitude that has made the very word "liberal" odious in American politics, so much so that many liberals have stopped describing themselves as such, and started calling themselves progressives.
If there was a point in this campaign when the Obama magic cracked, that was it. Suddenly we saw an empty young man unscarred by age or experience or any great failure in life. This campaign's Golden Youth seemed blissfully unschooled by the best of teachers - a great failure.
The trouble with the senator's revealing comment in San Francisco was that it reduced rhetoric in its best sense - an appeal to common memory and shared values - to something else: cold, clever analysis. He'd severed the bond of community he'd been so good at establishing. He let the circle be broken.
Whatever he was saying in public, here Barack Obama was in private referring to us as Them, talking about how They feel, and what values They were clinging to for comfort. We had become just specimens under his microscope. And his oh-so-deep analysis of us? Poor creatures, we're just taking out our frustrations when we embrace, say, our faith. Maybe that sort of thing goes over in San Francisco; it doesn't in America.
There had been signs earlier in this campaign of the distance between Barack Obama and We the People he seeks to represent. As when he was campaigning in Iowa as if it were Zabar's. ("Anybody gone into Whole Foods lately and see what they charge for arugula? I mean, they're charging a lot of money for this stuff.") Goodness, is there a single Whole Foods anywhere between Dubuque and Sioux City?
He sounded out of his territory, like a Cub fan slumming in Comiskey Park, home of the White Sox. When the Sox are having a good year, tourists from the city's fashionable northern suburbs may brave the South Side to see how the game is really played. One year, when fortune's favored motored down from ivy-covered Wrigley Field in their Jaguars and insufferable little Lacoste polo shirts, they were greeted by a huge banner unfurled from the cheap seats: YUPPIE SCUM GO HOME.
The moral of the story: If a Democratic presidential candidate hopes to mobilize the core of the old Roosevelt Coalition, aka Reagan Democrats, he better not get caught exchanging class cliches with his rich buds in San Francisco. Overheard in that upscale setting, Mister Beautiful didn't sound so beautiful any more.
Back in the Iowa primary, which now seems years ago, Barack Obama's arugula comment could be seen as just a slip, an understandable gaffe on the part of a stranger in a strange land. But now one begins to wonder if it wasn't part of a pattern, and if America itself isn't a strange land to this elegant young stranger. Surely not. Surely he knows this country better than that. Or will pretend to.
And who eats arugula anyway besides yuppie snobs? :-D
I don’t know what’s more maddening: Being stuck with McCain or watching the Conservative media gush and faint and build Obama up.
There is something very telling about simple communications skills.
Bush has been so bad, the nation was starved for a strong communicator, who was not in disingenuous liar like Clinton.
Now that BHO appears to be full of it, the air appears to be going out of his campaign.
The FULL name is Barack Hussein Muhammad Obama...http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/2649
Arugula eating Crunchy Con present.
Oh really?! Wonder why we never hear about that in the drive-by media? LOL
Thanks for posting this article excellent article by Paul Greenberg. It does explain how phony Barack Hussein Obama is.
Every time I type his name it is underlined as a misspelling. lol (Oh except the Hussein part)
Ok, ok. There are 2 of you out there! LOL!! (I just thought it was funny that he chose arugula of all things — not the “common man” kind of thing. Not like Iceberg lettuce or carrots or something.)
Thanks for that link, I’ve added it to my collection.
mark
LOL! Yup!
Barak Hussein is an expert at NLP, Neuro Linguistic Programming, a method of twisting language to counter every objection in the most persuasive way. Anyone can learn the technique. Super salesmen, motivational speakers, and their ilk are experts. You can be too. Start by reading the first paragraphs of the above article describing B Hussein’s technique for handling questions. You essentially do the same thing when handling objections. There are books on the subject.
Several websites. Just Google Neuro linguistic Programming. Wikipedia has an article. Another site is http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/108673/neurolinguistic_programming_.html,
” NLP emphasizes process over content, or form over substance....”
Amazon.com sells many books on the topic, the original being “Reframing: Neuro Linguistic Programming and the Transformation of Meaning by Bandler and Grinder: http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/108673/neurolinguistic_programming_.html
Essentially, NLP is the art of the Major Mind Bleep
Barak Hussein Mohammed, eh? Do you know where the Canadian missionaries found this? Usually a muslim is Mohammed first, as in Mohammed Barak Hussein Obama.
I’d love to see a birth certificate.
I do not know. I think it is mandatory that this be followed up on, as it is of potentially huge significance. In the Islamic world, he is an apostate Muslim. Also, Islam permits any Muslim to masquerade in an infidel culture to gain value on behalf of Islam. While there is no hint of a real possibility on the horizon, it is possible for a candidate like Obama, if in high office where it might be of value to convert his religion...if elected, Muslims within or without this country, who want to make an issue of his having been a Muslim in his youth, can demand as President, that he covert back or he, his family or the US or the allies of the US will suffer the consequences. He is a perfect candidate for blackmail by the Islamic world under the rules of Sharia law regarding apostates. In this country, Americans accept him as a Christian, of an increasingly recognized non-mainstream church. No American of non-islamic descent is knowledable about Islamic practice and Sharia laws and Muslim apostates.
No apostate Muslim can be elected President without the national security of the US being immediately compromised. This is ok with the Dims, and has been ignored pathetically by republicans.
Birth certificate...he is a US citizen, born in Hawaii. He adopted his fathers name after he grew up and gave up Barry Soetoro as his name. He was listed as an Islamic student at his school in Indonesia. He has changed back to his fathers name, just not stating all of it, and there is nothing to say he could not go back to Islam if elected Pres. He could not be impeached for it. We should avoid the risk.
Huge amount of info needing attention by the Dim party and the media....http://www.theobamafile.com/
Because he’s clean and articulate.
Oh, and black.
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