"ALOHA" (means hello and goodbye in Hawaii).
Posted on 08/10/2010 5:33:51 AM PDT by NCjim
According to the preview offered by Vanity Fair:
[Todd] Purdum spends a day inside the West Wing and talks to Obama’s top aides, who tell him about the challenges of playing the Beltway game, ugly as it has become, even as their boss insists they find a way to transcend it.
“There’s a relentlessness to this that’s unlike anything else, especially when you come into office in a time of crisis,” says Obama senior adviser David Axelrod. “We did not exactly ease into the tub. The world is so much smaller, and events reverberate much more quickly, and one person can create an event so quickly from one computer terminal.”
Larry Summers, who served as Clinton’s Treasury secretary for the last 18 months of his term, says, “It used to be there was a kind of rhythm to the day” with the tempo picking up after the markets closed and as newspaper deadlines approached, between four and seven P.M. “That’s gone.” And, according to Rahm Emanuel, C.I.A. director Leon Panetta thinks “it’s a huge problem” that Washington runs at such “a highly caffeinated speed.”
Emanuel calls it “F***nutsville,” and Valerie Jarrett says she looks back wistfully to a time when credible people could put a stamp of reliability on information and opinion: “Walter Cronkite would get on and say the truth, and people believed the media,” she says.
It got so bad last December that President Obama and Emanuel would joke that, when it was all over, they were going to open a T-shirt stand on a beach in Hawaii. It would face the ocean and sell only one color and one size. “We didn’t want to make another decision, or choice, or judgment,” Emanuel tells Purdum. They took to beginning staff meetings with Obama smiling at Emanuel and simply saying “White,” and Emanuel nodding back and replying “Medium.”
I’ll reserve final judgment until I read the entire piece. But based on these excerpts — which presumably reflect the thrust of the 10,000-word article — what is striking is the degree of self-pity we find in Obama’s advisers, which is reflected in the president’s words and attitude as well. Team Obama sounds nothing so much as overmatched and overwhelmed, unable to understand what has gone wrong, and increasingly bitter toward the nation’s capital and the pace and nature of politics.
What we are seeing, I think, is a group of supremely arrogant people humbled by events. They are turning out to be a good deal more incompetent than they (and many Americans) ever imagined. They see impending political doom in the form of the midterm elections. Yet this is not leading them toward any apparent serious self-reflection; rather, they are engaging in an extraordinary degree of whining, finger-pointing, and self-indulgence.
It was said of President Kennedy that he was a happy president. “Happiness, [Kennedy] often said, paraphrasing Aristotle, is the full use of one’s faculties along lines of excellence, and to him the Presidency offered the ideal opportunity to pursue excellence,” Theodore Sorenson wrote in Kennedy. “He liked the job, he thrived on its pressures.”
One doesn’t get that sense with Obama or his key advisers. In 18 months they appear to have developed deep grievances and an increasing unhappiness and frustration with the duties of governing.
Life in the White House is challenging; anyone who has worked there can testify to that. And Washington, D.C., is certainly an imperfect city, as all are. But the impression Team Obama is trying to create — that no group has ever faced more challenges, more difficulties, or more hardships — is silly and somewhat pathetic. Politics is the worthiest ambition, wrote John Buchan (the author of JFK’s favorite book, Pilgrim’s Way); it is the greatest and most honorable adventure.
If Obama and his aides don’t see that or anything like that — if they view politics and governing only through a lens tinted by bitterness, frustration, and resentment — then it is time for them to step aside. If not, then they should man up. Self-pity is a terribly unattractive quality.
I'm being overpaid to screw the American people and (sniff, sniff) they expect me to do WORK!! WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!
I hate sniveling communists and this bunch of bedwetters is the sniveliest!!
(I made that word up.)
Dear BArry Zero and the A@@-clown posse:
Dial the Waaaaaaaaaaaammmmmmmmmmbulance.
No one cares.
Take your pitty party elsewhere.
In fact, just resign. Then the pain will be over.......
Biden said that 0 would be tested. Well, he has been tested and found wanting. If he can’t handle the pressure, for the good of the country, he should step aside.
Narcissists not only have a huge sense of self worth and a huge desire for approval,
they are VERY sensitive to criticism.
This is the ultimate example of what happens when you lie to gain power.
Once the lie is exposed, you lose all credibility. The far left was delusional when they figured they had a mandate upon winning.
These people have trapped themselves between the ideology and the reality of the American will.
The far left criminal Chicago cabal has created an implosion of the democrat party.
That said, they will not go quietly into the night. That is my greatest fear.
Whining, self-pitying, quick to blame others, immature, weak, arrogant (without the slightest justification for it), distracted, self-indulgent, vain, irresponsible, credit hogging...just downright pathetic as human beings go.
If this guy worked for me in a hardware store or fast-food restaurant or ice cream parlor or medium to large manufacturing plant...I would fire his @ss this afternoon.
"ALOHA" (means hello and goodbye in Hawaii).
Clinton was happy, too. Hmmmm, common thread here?
I can't imagine whining about how hard it is to be president when Bush had to deal with being attacked on our own soil. Of course, for Biggie O, that would make it all better!
“...“Walter Cronkite would get on and say the truth, and people believed the media,” she says.”
Isn’t that a striking piece of self-revelation?
WAHHHH...nobody is buying OUR propaganda anymore!!
For extremist Liberals/Socialists/Marxists, they clearly don't understand nuance as espoused by their sycophantic presstitutes..
“...one person can create an event so quickly from one computer terminal”
Translation:
“Whhhhaaa...make that Sarah Palin stop! Make her stop!!!”
No mommy, no grandma, no teachers or professors steeped in Affirmative Action theory to tell him “there, there Barry, you’re doing fine! Everything is going to be allright!” For the first time in his life he is walking the wire without a net.
“The Truth is Out There”
The liberal craves the good old days when they controlled the flow of information. They will try to get it back.
Virtually none of these folks had enough experience for the job when they entered the WH. Especially the Pres. whose short govt. service marks him as the least experienced of all when compared to his responsibilities..
This is just part of the “everybody’s-a-victim” mentality—which is the opposite of the self-reliant, can-do, “it’s-my-own-damn-fault” puissance that made the U.S.A. the greatest nation the world has ever known.
“Whining, self-pitying, quick to blame others, immature, weak, arrogant (without the slightest justification for it), distracted, self-indulgent, vain, irresponsible, credit hogging...just downright pathetic as human beings go.”
I would add “racist” as well, but your description of that miserable creature Obama is very apt.
“If this guy worked for me ...I would fire his @ss this afternoon.”
I would never have hired his lying @ss in the first place.
Poor widdle university Marxists...they thought they were so brilliant that they could hijack the country with no opposition. After all, it worked when they rolled the dunces in the Democrat Party. Unfortunately, they found out that the tax drones have internet access now, and with every Socialist move BO and his gang of Leftists make, patriotic Americans can stay on them like white on rice.
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