Posted on 09/15/2010 12:05:13 AM PDT by thecodont
Barack Obama is a reformed doper, so of course he's against legalizing marijuana.
Another disappointment for the legions of politically progressive fans who'd taken to Obamania as though it was its own opiate. Who is this guy, anyway? He's said he smoked dope and snorted coke in his youth. So where's the empathy, man?
But forget about its effect on his policies. His druggie past is not helping him shape the overarching grit of his public character nearly as much as it could be. Weed and cocaine? Who's going to be impressed with that, when his hugely successful contemporaries like Oprah Winfrey have the truly dark and evil specter of crack in their background?
Not the previously supportive New York Times, whose columnists are tearing Obama apart for being an elitist wuss. "Even many Democrats," wrote Frank Rich last Sunday, "have become lukewarm in their conviction that their president 'understands the problems of people like you.'"
His poll numbers on the "understanding" issue "have imploded," Rich notes, dropping from 72 percent who thought he did when he started the job down to 50 percent now. People who think he doesn't understand have doubled from 24 to 48 percent.
The problem is not just that he's an ideological jellyfish, too conservative for the left and too liberal for the right. It's that, as diverse and interesting as his background is, he was never down enough to make himself truly credible.
He needed some rock in that pipe of his youth. If he'd had a crack addiction then instead of an effete taste for powdered cocaine and pot, people might be a little more respectful of him now. It would have been an even tougher journey to the top. The big dog bite needs teeth sharpened by real adversity.
Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/bronstein/detail?entry_id=72279#ixzz0zZxAWCbu
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
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