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Perfection may be President Obama's biggest flaw ("themes for a columnist ducking Afghanistan")
New York Daily News ^ | Tuesday, October 20th 2009 | Richard Cohen

Posted on 10/20/2009 11:46:20 AM PDT by presidio9

Edited on 10/20/2009 2:21:43 PM PDT by Admin Moderator. [history]

If, as the saying goes, the perfect is the enemy of the good, then Barack Obama is his own worst enemy. That becomes clear in the upcoming HBO documentary "By the People: The Election of Barack Obama," which is the product of many months of behind-the-scenes access to Obama during the presidential campaign. It reveals that Barack Obama is pretty close to the most perfect person you will never get to know.


(Excerpt) Read more at nydailynews.com ...


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Editorial; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: richardcohen; usefulidiots

1 posted on 10/20/2009 11:46:20 AM PDT by presidio9
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To: presidio9

So now the excuse is that Obama is TOO perfect!


2 posted on 10/20/2009 11:49:28 AM PDT by ozzymandus
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To: presidio9

I thought it might be “dishonesty,” or possibly, “irrationally held utopian beliefs.”


3 posted on 10/20/2009 11:49:36 AM PDT by Pearls Before Swine (Is /sarc really necessary?)
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To: presidio9

“Wag the Wagyu” or “Primarily Colored”?


4 posted on 10/20/2009 11:51:37 AM PDT by SERKIT ("Blazing Saddles" explains it all.....)
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To: presidio9
All this time I've had an utter dislike for Obama, but couldn't quite put my finger on what it was I didn't care for.

Now I see....it's perfection!

{GAG!}

5 posted on 10/20/2009 11:51:42 AM PDT by Allegra (It doesn't matter what this tagline says...the liberals are going to call it "racist.")
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To: presidio9
Perfection may be President Obama's biggest flaw

Communism hasn't been done correctly in past. ZERO insists he'll get it correct this time.


6 posted on 10/20/2009 11:52:03 AM PDT by pyx (Rule#1.The LEFT lies.Rule#2.See Rule#1. IF THE LEFT CONTROLS THE LANGUAGE, IT CONTROLS THE ARGUMENT.)
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To: ozzymandus

I stopped after the first paragraph, so you confirm that’s what the article says? Thank you for the extra minutes of good life.


7 posted on 10/20/2009 11:52:25 AM PDT by stevio (Crunchy Con - God, guns, guts, and organically grown crunchy nuts.)
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To: presidio9

Step aside Jesus, the real messiah is here. All sheeple will bow as he passes. No eye contact allowed. Do not speak to him or draw any attention away from him. If you are fortunate, his shadow will fall upon you. Count your blessings. Hope and change is here. Hey shoot that guy over there, he isn’t bowing.


8 posted on 10/20/2009 11:52:41 AM PDT by holyscroller ( Without God, America is one nation under)
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To: presidio9
---link to a few more questions on the "perfect" ONE--

------http://www.westernjournalism.com/?page_id=3255

9 posted on 10/20/2009 11:53:02 AM PDT by rellimpank (--don't believe anything the MSM tells you about firearms or explosives--NRA Benefactor)
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To: ozzymandus

In striving for “perfection”, is Obama just not making key decisions?

Yet, a key aspect of leadership and management is having to make decisions, even if you have imperfect choices to make.

I wonder if part of Obama’s problem is that he had no management experiece before becoming president. It’s hard to believe that his very first executive or management experience is in his current job as president of the United States.

Has any other president ever had zero executive experience?

I know that President Eisenhower had not run for elective office before he ran for president, but, I think that his experience as Supreme Allied Commander during World War 2 gave him significant executive experience to take to the Oval Office.


10 posted on 10/20/2009 11:54:26 AM PDT by Dilbert San Diego
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To: presidio9

Charles Krauthammer was at his sarcastic best when he offered that Obozo “won” the Nobel “...due to his GENERAL SPLENDIDNESS.”

Charles does have a way with words.


11 posted on 10/20/2009 11:55:22 AM PDT by Dick Bachert (FREEDOM HAS AN ADDRESS:WWW.JBS.ORG)
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To: presidio9

My God man. Don’t ever post crap like this again without a BARF ALERT!


12 posted on 10/20/2009 11:56:15 AM PDT by Dick Bachert (FREEDOM HAS AN ADDRESS:WWW.JBS.ORG)
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To: presidio9

“...a driving sense of conviction, the fulsome embrace of causes and not just issues. That is not something Obama has yet shown. See the movie.”

The Kenyan ran to get the big plane, big house, servants, to get rich and score chicks, to be the HNIC. He got all that. He’s done.


13 posted on 10/20/2009 11:56:25 AM PDT by y6162 (uish..)
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To: presidio9

Let’s see those college transcripts before we break out in maudlin tears.

Oh, the HUMANITY (get me a drink).


14 posted on 10/20/2009 11:56:33 AM PDT by ROTB ("By any means necessary" is evil. See what God thinks of "rising oceans" in Jeremiah 5:22)
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To: presidio9

15 posted on 10/20/2009 11:56:38 AM PDT by Iron Munro (Suppose you were an idiot, and suppose you were a member of Congress; but I repeat myself)
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To: presidio9

Doing a column like this must be hard on the knees of an old guy like Cohen. I wonder if his technique is as good as Larry Sinclair’s....


16 posted on 10/20/2009 12:03:30 PM PDT by clintonh8r (My country. Not my government.)
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To: presidio9

Richard Cohen is apparently under the mistaken impression that the HBO documentary makers were given unfettered access to Obama, as every other such documentary has been given, and therefore that what we see is the “unfiltered” Obama.

Which means he must have missed the announcement from the WH this week that the campaign completely controlled ALL access to Obama,and never let ANY journalist see anything but what they scripted them to see.

Which must certainly include the HBO documentarians.

Now, it may well be that obama does not “lose his temper”, in the sense that he seems the kind of guy you see playing a serial killer who is always smiling while he’s cutting you into little pieces.


17 posted on 10/20/2009 12:05:30 PM PDT by CharlesWayneCT
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To: ozzymandus

Read the article...it pretty much gets the empty suit potus right.


18 posted on 10/20/2009 12:06:47 PM PDT by wtc911 ("How you gonna get down that hill?")
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To: presidio9

“He’s just too damperfect!”
From the good people who gave us, “VP ManBearPig (who flunked art class) is the brightest kid in the class!”


19 posted on 10/20/2009 12:07:51 PM PDT by tumblindice (He's an earthtone Alpha wolf)
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To: stevio

You should have read on...it is not a puff piece.


20 posted on 10/20/2009 12:08:02 PM PDT by wtc911 ("How you gonna get down that hill?")
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To: presidio9

>>What’s striking about this inside look at Obama is how being inside gets you nowhere. It is virtually the same as being outside. What’s also striking about this movie is its lack of arc. Obama is always golden, always going to win and always does. His issue, if it can be called that, is himself. He is something new, something young, something biracial and something black, but he is not something from a political or ideological constituency. He is adored by his fans - the directors, Amy Rice and Alicia Sams, included - not for something he’s done, but rather for something he is.


Now he tells us, what about those of us who were derided for pointing this out....dumb media schmucks!


21 posted on 10/20/2009 12:13:01 PM PDT by swarthyguy (MEAT, the new tobacco. Your right to eat meat ends where my planetary ecosystem begins.)
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To: presidio9
I began reading this article with trepidation - partly after having seen the headline and partly after seeing the name "Richard Cohen" attached to it - but pressed on nonetheless. I did so in the (vain) hope that it might propose a not-entirely-unsupportable observation that Obama has had difficulty making tough decisions because of an innate perfectionism that makes him fear the consequence of error.

But alas, my brief flirtation with hope for a change in Cohen's powers of observation were dispelled when it became apparent - sadly, yet still appallingly - that he really thinks Obama is perfect in every way and is just too pure and good to sully his soft-skinned palms with the impure soil of Earthly conflicts.

And still every mainstream media hack waxes wroth at the terrible "bias" of FOX, whose true sin is refraining from idolatry, and beholding the man rather than the myth.

22 posted on 10/20/2009 12:13:06 PM PDT by andy58-in-nh (America does not need to be organized: it needs to be liberated.)
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To: presidio9
"His issue, if it can be called that, is himself. He is something new, something young, something biracial and something black, but he is not something from a political or ideological constituency."

OMG!! Not bad enough that a B.S. documentary movie was made, but it made this man who reviewed it cry!!

Does being a Marxist fall under the category of political or ideological constituency?

23 posted on 10/20/2009 12:18:05 PM PDT by LADY J (Change your thoughts and you change your world. - Norman Vincent Peale)
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To: SERKIT

Outstandingly clever!


24 posted on 10/20/2009 12:22:05 PM PDT by 2nd Bn, 11th Mar (The "P" in democrat stands for patriotism)
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To: presidio9
But if he fails in all or most of that, it will be because it is not enough to be the smartest person in the room.

Because democrats are always the "smartest person in the room". Bill and Hill, Jimmuh, Barry and Michelle, all sooo smart. LOL

25 posted on 10/20/2009 12:22:57 PM PDT by keepitreal ( Don't tread on me.)
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To: andy58-in-nh

You probably need to hold your nose and pay a little closer attention to Senor Cohen. He is liberal because he can’t help it. He is a gay Jewish NYer who came of age in the 60’s. Now he lives in Washinton. He has zero choice in his political affiliation. But he’s smart enough to know when something smells bad. And man enough to conclude (as he does this column) that if things don’t work about PERFECTLY for the Obama Presidency, public perception won’t save him.


26 posted on 10/20/2009 12:34:13 PM PDT by presidio9 ("All right then. I'll go to hell." =Huckleberry Finn)
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To: presidio9

The only thing perfect about Obama is that he is a perfect usurper and liar.


27 posted on 10/20/2009 12:52:45 PM PDT by thethirddegree
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To: presidio9
Upon reflection, what Cohen appears to recognize in Obama (without exactly saying so) is a hollowness at the core of the man. For Cohen, that means a lack of "warmth and commitment... a driving sense of conviction, the fulsome embrace of causes and not just issues".

Obama's essential vulnerability is thus rendered as a certain superficiality, unencumbered by a deeper understanding of and attachment to that which he pretends to represent. I take this as an admission of the President's (frankly undeniable) egoism.

And yet, what are the causes that Cohen believes Obama ought pursue with an outward-focused conviction as opposed to his inward-focused amour-propre? In fact, those causes are the very things Obama has relegated to his White House political staff, in the persons of Rahm Emmanuel and David Axelrod, who jointly play Machiavelli to their Prince.

We are left with the image of Obama as a perfect symbol and yet a quite detached and imperfect executive, in the service of an ideology many of us still find repugnant. To my mind then, Obama will finally be judged not by how much his Administration accomplishes, but by the nature of those accomplishments and their effect upon the country he was elected to lead, not merely as a symbol, but as a man.

28 posted on 10/20/2009 4:53:35 PM PDT by andy58-in-nh (America does not need to be organized: it needs to be liberated.)
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To: presidio9

Hmmmm....maybe they are writing the HEADLINES for the LIBERALS....but TRYING to say the TRUTH (somewhat) deep in the article...where MOST libs won’t read!


29 posted on 10/20/2009 6:16:26 PM PDT by goodnesswins (Democrats are RACISTS and are afraid of losing their PLANTATION workers)
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