Posted on 07/10/2008 3:24:45 PM PDT by Uncle Ralph
The day Andrew Sullivan found out Santa Claus does not exist:
A few things have unsettled me these past couple of weeks about the Obama campaign. It is not the small adjustments to previously-held positions - FISA, the Second Amendment, Iraq. It's a sense that Obama's ample self-regard is lapsing into hubris. The signs of this are pretty trivial on the surface, but they are troubling nonetheless.
That simulated faux-presidential seal was both tacky, silly and presumptive - a small version of "Mission Accomplished" Obama could well do without. The decision to give his acceptance speech in a stadium, rather than the traditional convention hall is also an unnecessary over-reach. The night will be freighted enough with history; it needs no new drama to set it apart. And the drama of the first black man accepting the nomination -- with Obama's rhetorical brilliance -- will be more than enough for impact. Lastly, I was gob-smacked by the Obamas' decision to include their children in a soft-focus TV interview.
I can barely credit that Michelle Obama agreed to this and that Barack Obama went along with it - it's not what they would have done a few months ago. One great aspect of the Obama marriage has been the way in which they appear to have brought up their daughters as very regular girls, down-to-earth, normal and sane. Displaying them in this way was bad judgment and poor parenting. Fame is a toxin. Children deserve to be protected from it as much as they would from lead paint.
Any one of these misjudgments would be a trivial lapse -- and we all make mistakes. It's the combination that concerns me -- and the possibility that this campaign is becoming far too cocky for its own good.
Wait until the world sees the campaign video that uses the Fourth of July in Butte, MT as just another prop in what is fast becoming a Disneyesque theatrical production.
But not, I suppose, from rectal buggery.
Hubris comes before the fall.
I bet the girls learned some interesting things in church!
I wonder how their Spanish lessons are coming along?
Hey, remember when what Andrew Sullivan thought was relevant? Nope, me neither.
Sullivan stikes gold here, but I suspect he doesn’t realize that Dems are all symbolism over substance anyway.
It doesn't have a stake in it's heart yet.
“One great aspect of the Obama marriage has been the way in which they appear to have brought up their daughters as very regular girls, down-to-earth, normal and sane.”
I bet Michelle physically abuses Obambi.
Interesting, sort of.
McCain can certainly snatch defeat from an easy victory, but even Juan will have trouble losing to this nincompoop.
You know I’m not really bothered by the interview that included the kids. If one wanted to protect their children from fame, they wouldn’t run for public office, especially not POTUS. Those kids will be in the limelight, and I think the public has some right to know a little about the Obamas as a family. I didn’t think the piece was exploitive (at least not what I saw of it—granted I didn’t see the whole thing). I don’t like Obama as a candidate, but he seems to be a good father.
susie
I suspect he has always believed his own press—that is, he has always thought he was special and better than most of us mere mortals.
susie
Has it ever snowed in Denver at the end of August?
Good one. I don’t trust Homosexuals so I dang sure don’t turn to them to get slanted news/views
We’re talking about a guy who’s already written two autobiographies and hasn’t accomplished anything significant in his life except hot air.
But if you look at it from a militant anti-American and abject marxist point of view (which is Obama's point of view) regarding how to gain power in these United States...he is on track.
It is up to us, we the people, to knock him off that track.
Sullivan became relevant as he became a fair weather conservative friend and then a recovering neo-con and then an In-Obama-We-Trust believer. This is common enough among political and emotionally indistinct but it does reflect what I see among Homosexuals. They tend to be in this constant searching mode and when whatever they latch on to doesn’t serve there egos adequately they act as jilted lovers and turn hostile on it and move on to something else. Relationship after relationship ideology after ideology. Sullivan fits the mold and he will soon have a new lover. I’m sure it won’t be John McCain. Will it be Bob Barr or Ralph Nadar who knows but at least he has wised up to Obama maybe someday he will wise up to his own personal self deception.
That Andrew Sullivan can swallow these major reversals as "small things," is probably symptomatic of his habit of swallowing... er... large things. Obama's legislative record on the Second Amendment -- just as one example -- displays an animosity to gun rights that his tepid defense of an individual right since he became a national candidate cannot disguise. Even were it not so, he held the DC ban to be lawful, but embraced the ruling only weeks later that it was not.
It's a sense that Obama's ample self-regard is lapsing into hubris. The signs of this are pretty trivial on the surface, but they are troubling nonetheless.
Trivial. Uh-huh.
Obama has made one munificent pronouncement after another over the course of this campaign with ever increasing extravagance; clearly he's started to buy into his own messiah projections, which have become a messiah complex. What could be more breathtakingly arrogant than to lie about a previous position, knowing that it's on video, and claiming our own lying eyes don't see what they see?
The anti-war candidate, who will now suffer himself to accept the advice of generals in theater. Hillary Clinton, defeated in the early primaries by BHO's radical anti-war position must have set an indoor high blood pressure record hearing the latest spin on this. Not even as facile an apologist as Andrew Sullivan can possibly convince himself that this 180 is a nuance: he reduces himself to a laughingstock along with Obama for expecting us to think even he believes it.
Andrew Sullivan: the blind pig who found a truffle once on 9/11. He's so five minutes ago. NR shouldn't even lower itself to comment on his worthless analysis.
I remain quite firm in my conviction that there hasn’t been a race yet that the GOP couldn’t find a way to lose.
What, did Obama come out against gay marriage, or something. Because we all know, that at the end of the day, the thing Andrew Sullivan cares about most is getting state sanction on where he sends Lil’ Andrew...
A good father who took his kids to that racist church.
Yes, there is that....
what a great start...
Lastly, I was gob-smacked
what a dismal end.
That idiotic term, gob-smacked, and that other idiotic term, kerfuffle, are threatening to force me on a reader's strike.
FortheluvofPete. I thought I was safe when I gave up TV all those years ago...
“with Obama’s rhetorical brilliance”
God I am sick of this MSM bull-meme. Obama is about as brilliant as a burnt out light bulb, except when he is speaking words on a teleprompter that someone else wrote for him. When he is speaking extemporaneously, he makes GW Bush look like a “brilliant rhetorical speaker.” I mean, why do the libdims think he is dodging as many true debates as possible?
I’m sure Andy has been smacked by many “gobs” during his career.
I hope you’re right that McCain is going to win. So far, I have seen little evidence to support the position. The news is always about Nobama. And he will forever be protected from his boners by a fawning media. Tough road ahead...
[The Obama Campaign] Losing Andrew Sullivan
I hate it when obama loses dead writers. Is Norman Mailer and Monet still on obama’s side? Sorry, I’m losing track...
“the possibility that this campaign is becoming far too cocky for its own good.”
*Becoming* cocky? In his next column, perhaps Sullivan will realize that he’s *becoming* irrelevant.
Well, like I said, Juan is extremely capable of blowing what should be an easy race.
He had written TWO autobiographies about a life that can be summed up in one page by the time he was forty. That's a megalomaniac. He's ALWAYS believed his own press.
In the world of modern celebrity, this is typical: My Every Inane Utterance And Minor Escapade Is Of Enormous Importance To All The World!
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