Obama strikes some as a pompous elitist

McClatchy Newspapers ^ | 8-20-2008 | David Lightman and Margaret Talev

[Hadean]

LITTLETON, Colo. — Something about Barack Obama's manner bothers Margaret Cowan.

"There's something egotistical about him," the Sheridan, Colo., retiree said. "It's the way he struts around."

Many swing voters here and throughout the country consider the presumptive Democratic nominee distant, pompous, arrogant, even elitist.

"It's a big issue that he needs to address," said Eric Davis, a professor emeritus of political science at Middlebury College in Vermont.

Obama has Ivy League degrees from Columbia and Harvard universities. He's extraordinarily articulate and exudes self-confidence. Those credentials and qualities combine to strike some people as arrogant.

He counters by reminding voters that he was raised by a single mother of modest means and worked as a Chicago community organizer. Those aren't elitist roots.

Not to mention that presumptive Republican presidential nominee John McCain, the son and grandson of four-star Navy admirals, also could be tagged as having an elitist background.

[Vigilanteman]

Many swing voters here and throughout the country consider the presumptive Democratic nominee distant, pompous, arrogant, even elitist.

With all the enemida behind him, how could he possibly project such an image?

Could it be because he is actually distant, pompous, arrogant, and even elitist?

[roses of sharon]

Barf, it has nothing to do with money or class.

It's the way he and his wife constantly lecture us (even in foreign countries), about how horrible we are.

Very much the turn off, imo.

[Spok]

His problem is he’s starting to believe the crap the media says about him. It’s like the Roman emperors who surrounded themselves with sycophants then began to believe their fawning drivel.

[hoe_cake]

“The Obama camp says that voters just don’t know its candidate well yet. ... .”

There’s a reason why voters don’t know Obama. He doesn’t know himself.

[VeniVidiVici]

Obama strikes some as a pompous elitist

Our Obama?? Nahhh. I never noticed!!

[Red Badger]

Pompous elitist?....He’s not good enough to be a pompous elitist..................

[Always Right]

Obama: more arrogant than Bill Clinton, more naive than Jimmy Carter, and more liberal than LBJ.

[unkus]

Obama is an elitist, Commie sob. Screw him and the “5 year plan” he drove in on.

[Canedawg]

“He’s extraordinarily articulate...”

This MYTH needs to be retired. He can read well off of a teleprompter; he is an actor. He is not a deep thinker, nor is he good at thinking or speaking on his feet.

Being a good reader does not make one articulate.

[rightinthemiddle]

He is pompous, but naive. Arrogant, but perhaps not very confident.

He’s lived in the comfortable fishbowl of Liberalism in Chicago and Washington. Now, he’s a fish out of water.

It’s still a big country, Barry.

[Bobalu]

Gotta fix that title...

Obama strikes some as a pompous ass.

There, that’s better

[RC2]

If people think Obama is an elitist now, wait and see what happens if this guy gets elected. Every statement will be considered racist. Just try and mention a watermelon in a conversation. The scientific statement “Black Hole” will be outlawed.

[hoe_cake]

Yes, he is arrogant, and he is an elitist, and he is naive.

The political arena will eat fish out of water.

Here’s hoping.

[fleagle]

Arugula.

[50sDad]

He's extraordinarily articulate and exudes self-confidence. Those credentials and qualities combine to strike some people as arrogant.

This is almost exactly what a Liberal friend said about Rush, years ago, although not in those near-positive words. The fact that Rush is sure he is right, that he has confidence in his own views, is generally the antithesis to the modern Liberal, who has to double-think over and over to decide what he believes. Obama has the same confidence, but on him, it fits like a bad suit...he does come off as elitist, and a know-it-all. Cliff Clavin with a $1000 haircut.

[goldstategop]

Liberals think the country is going to warm up to a know it all egghead. Now that's funny!

"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus

[Argus]

David Campt, a San Francisco-based consultant on racial diversity, saw Obama inheriting a problem that's often dogged Democrats since they nominated Adlai Stevenson for president in 1952. "The party's candidates tend to have an intellectual way of expressing their views," often with nuance and detail. "That gets portrayed as effete and elitist. People like simplicity," Campt said.

Well gosh, if a "San Francisco-based consultant on racial diversity" says so, it must be so.

Yet another unbelievably blatant puff piece apologia for the Messiah disguised as a news analysis.

[livius]

LOL! The problem is that he has an ego that is about the size of Hitler’s - or maybe Stalin’s. He doesn’t have any ideas, and he’s basically an affirmative action hire in any position he’s in (including editor of Harvard Law Review, where he never dared to write a single thing because he knows he can’t compete). This is true even though he’s NOT African American. He’s the child of an American white hippie and a foreign African grad student who has been capitalizing on his suntan colored skin to pretend to be African American.

[Uncle Miltie]

Obama’s not an elitist. He bowls a 37.

< / sarc>

[Pharmboy]

Here's the truth in a catchy tune

[goldstategop]

Yep. Obama has shared precious little of himself with voters. He reminds people of a suitor who won't open up to a woman and be seen as vulnerable because he needs to be in control all the time. That can be a lonely place to be. If Obama doesn't trust the American people enough to level with them about his life, why the should they trust him with the White House?

"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus

[Dilbert San Diego]

He was raised by a single mother, true enough, for part of his growing up years. And he lived with grandparents part of the time growing up. But, he attended private schools growing up. The private school he attended in Hawaii is a very exclusive school. And then he went to two Ivy League universities. He clearly comes from an elitist background. His talk of the single mother is supposed to make us think he was raised by a baby mama in the ghetto. And he is not a product of the ghetto in any way shape or form.

[hoe_cake]

“That can be a lonely place to be.”

It’s also lonely at the top.

And

The higher you rise, the harder you fall.

I am hopeful.

[Dilbert San Diego]

Five Year Plans? The communist world loved those plans.

I’ll be convinced of Obama’s inclinations if “President” Obama calls his plan the “Great Leap Forward”, and proclaim that we need a “Cultural Revolution”.

[rockabyebaby]

Obama strikes some as a pompous elitist

Obama strikes some MOST SANE PEOPLE as a pompous elitist

[shankbear]

DUH!!!!

[fleagle]

You got it Dilbert. Obama didn't come from the 'hood. I hope the next time he's in Philly he orders a cheesesteak at Geno's wid arugula.

It went so well for John Kerry when he got his cheesesteak w/ swiss cheese. (chuckling to myself yet again at John Kerry's expense)

[AmusedBystander]

What? Me? Smug??

[Verginius Rufus]

Obama strikes some people as a pompous elitist?

It just goes to validate Abraham Lincoln's observation that "you can't fool all of the people all of the time."

[griswold3]

While talking about running an ‘positive campaign’, all they ever did was highlight how horrible we are. (Yes, I’m talking to all you clingers out there!)

[MovementConservative]

Regardless of McCain’s upbringing, spending those years as a POW would have stripped him of any excess pride, arrogance, and sense of entitlement. He’s been stripped bare and come back. Obama hasn’t faced any type of adversity like that. In fact, most of us haven’t.

[Jaded]

I’m shocked! Shocked I tell you. He also looks like he needs a new make up b**ch. He looks fake/plastic.

[AngelesCrestHighway]

“Many swing voters here and throughout the country consider the presumptive Democratic nominee distant, pompous, arrogant, even elitist.”.......

I couldn’t care less!....That crap is minor compared to the fact he’s a FLAMING GLOBAL SOCIALIST!.....

[Jaded]

More like the emporer’s new clothes.

[ModelBreaker]

He’s not good enough to be a pompous elitist.................

Most pompous elitists aren't.

[anglian]

How Obama became an arrogant narcissistic liberal; 20 little-known stories about Obama’s life. http://obamawtf.blogspot.com/2008/08/how-obama-became-arrogant-narcissistic.html

[Defiant]

He can read well off of a teleprompter; he is an actor. He is not a deep thinker, nor is he good at thinking or speaking on his feet.

Absolutely. Any Hollywood actor can sound eloquent and moving when speaking from a script. Then, put them on live, and ask them a question about world affairs, and they expose their ignorance and inelegance. Obama is doing that now.

[LegalEagle61]

Pompous elitist?? No, he is just someone who likes to put on AYRES but deep in his heart he is always WRIGHT.

[RipSawyer]

Being a good reader does not make one articulate.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Thanks, I started reading posts looking for this, I knew someone must have said it for me. I find him to be about as articulate as the average staggering drunk.

[RipSawyer]

I love watermelon, I grew up on a watermelon farm, I planted four varieties of watermelon in my garden this year. I have eaten watermelon almost every day for the last six weeks or longer. I suppose I can look forward to being executed when Obama takes over.

[HighlyOpinionated]

I read somewhere that he is just like his mother, having learned from her the attitude of an anthropologist . . . Here it is.

"Spengler" at Asia Times provided insight nearly six months ago into Obama's anthropoligist mentality:

Barack Obama is a clever fellow who imbibed hatred of America with his mother's milk, but worked his way up the elite ladder of education and career. He shares the resentment of Muslims against the encroachment of American culture, although not their religion. He has the empathetic skill set of an anthropologist who lives with his subjects, learns their language, and elicits their hopes and fears while remaining at emotional distance. That is, he is the political equivalent of a sociopath. The difference is that he is practicing not on a primitive tribe but on the population of the United States.

There is nothing mysterious about Obama's methods. "A demagogue tries to sound as stupid as his audience so that they will think they are as clever as he is," wrote Karl Krauss. Americans are the world's biggest suckers, and laugh at this weakness in their popular culture. Listening to Obama speak, Sinclair Lewis' cynical tent-revivalist Elmer Gantry comes to mind, or, even better, Tyrone Power's portrayal of a carnival mentalist in the 1947 film noire Nightmare Alley. The latter is available for instant viewing at Netflix, and highly recommended as an antidote to having felt uplifted by an Obama speech.

America has the great misfortune to have encountered Obama at the peak of his powers at its worst moment of vulnerability in a generation. With malice aforethought, he has sought out their sore point.

This explains Obama's inability to get close enough to empathize with normal people. He can't. He never learned how. He is "dis-passionate" which is not a good thing to be if you're a US Citizen. He wasn't taught to be patriotic. He probably wasn't taught the Pledge of Allegiance or the National Anthem, either.

Barry Soetoro-Obama is an enigma in need of an enema to help loosen him up and help him act as if he were an empathetic human.

[fightinJAG]

Obama strikes some as a pompous elitist

Oh, really?

[libstripper]

There’s a reason why voters don’t know Obama. He doesn’t kno himself.

Quite possibly true. His father abandoned him when he was an infant, his mother trundled him off to Indonesia and kept him there until he was 10, then shipped him off alone to Hawaii to be cared for by his grandparents, meaning he had no real psychological nationality or family grounding. Add to that the fact that he was a mixed race kid who couldn't really relate either to blacks or whites, and you have the recipe for one thoroughly mixed up individual, somebody who shouldn't be POTUS.

[sergeantdave]

“extraordinarily articulate...”

I...ummm,eh, ah, er, you know, ummmm, like, ahhhh, oh, errrrrrr, ah... I, uh, um, oh, and, errrr, was, ah, ah, ah, ah, ummmm, hmmm, ah, um, you know, uh, uh, uh, I mean, ohhh, ooo, eh, eh, eh, eh, we, uh, uh..................................................... like, you know, uh, um, um, um, er, what that, ah, ah, ah, skin, my skin, uh, uh, uh, ummmm, ahhhhhh, ohhhhh.......ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah I, ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, um, um, um. oh

[WilliamReading]