Barack Obama the speechmaker is being rumbled

Times (UK) ^ | September 12, 2008 | Gerard Baker

[presidio9]

It's funny how the harder you look at something, the harder it can be to understand it. I can't recall a US presidential election that has attracted more attention. But neither can there have been a time when the world has watched what goes on in America with the nonplussed, horrified incomprehension it has now.

Travelling in Britain this week, I've been asked repeatedly by close followers of US politics if it can really be true that Barack Obama might not win. Thoughtful people cannot get their head around the idea that Mr Obama, exciting new pilot of change, supported by Joseph Biden, experienced navigator of the swamplands of Washington politics, could possibly be defeated.

They look upon John McCain and Sarah Palin and see something out of hag-ridden history: the wizened old warrior, obsessed with finding enemies in every corner of the globe, marching in lockstep with the crackpot, mooseburger-chomping mother from the wilds of Alaska, rifle in one hand, Bible in the other, smiting caribou and conventional science as she goes.

Two patronising explanations are adduced to explain why Americans are going wrong. The first is racism. I've dealt with this before and it has acquired no more merit. White supremacists haven't been big on Democratic candidates, whatever their colour, for a long time, and Mr Obama's race is as likely to generate enthusiasm among blacks and young voters as it is hostility among racists.

In a similarly condescending account, those foolish saps are being conned into voting for Mr McCain because they like his running-mate. Her hockey-mom charm and storybook career appeals to their worst instincts. The race is boiling down to a beauty contest in which a former beauty queen is stealing the show. Believe this if it helps

[yldstrk]

More of a speech reader. Too bad he didn’t go into acting

[Ditter]

For some reason liberals care very much what the rest of the world thinks of us. I don't give a rat's ass what France or Germany or China thinks of us. I went to France for the first time in 1960 and they were rude to me, I have been back quite a number of times and their manners haven't improved. My next door neighbor is French and an American citizen now, even she doesn't like the French. Just so they respect and recognize our power, then I'll be OK with them.

BTW I saw your nic on a bumpersticker in Kalispel Montana last week, was that you?

[johnnycap]

We feel the same way about British politics too. I mean look at Gordon Brown...any American looking at that guy would think, “Isn't that the guy who sprays the shoes down at the bowling alley?”

And what about Boris, the mayor of London...he looks like Gary Buce’s mug shot only more disheveled

[nobama08]

Nah, I am in NC. And it isn’t original, I know, but appropriate.

Liberals are just plain nuts.

[Inyo-Mono]

I get the feeling that more than a few posters on this thread didn’t read the entire article.

[marsh2]

I once read an article about two towns within miles of each other - one in Canada and one in the United States. The article painted a revealing picture of the difference in world view. The people in the American town were innovative, entrepreneural, passionate in their beliefs, there was class mobility and they took risks. The Canadians were staid, traditional, orderly, bureaucratic, class conscious and process oriented.

I do love the English and their sense of humor, but their attorneys wear wigs and they are subjects of a Queen. I don’t think they have ever “gotten” their rambunctious American offspring and our passion for freedom.

[muawiyah]

The Brits finally got it ~ we are presently undergoing the largest emigration from the United Kingdom to the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand in history.

Within a couple of decades there will no longer be any "white Englishmen" ~ instead, a steady stream of "wannabes" from the Commonwealth nations like Jamaica and India are sweeping in and taking up those white wigs and old club mannerisms without skipping a beat.

[Need4Truth]

“Here’s the real problem with Mr Obama: the jarring gap between his promises of change and his status quo performance.”

In other words, The guy ain’t what he says he is...

[Senator Goldwater]

This election is a struggle between the followers of American exceptionalism and the supporters of global universalism.

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I’d sign for this.

[Senator Goldwater]

Here’s the real problem with Mr Obama: the jarring gap between his promises of change and his status quo performance.

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Well done.

[ClaudiusI]

One point I like to make when some Eurotrash starts talking like that is to say, as soberly and apathetically as possible.
“If we so chose, there wouldn’t be a ‘rest of the world’.”

Shuts them right up.

[FrankR]

I think we have some British elites who haven't heard that we're not their freakin' "colonies" anymore....

You'd think after saving their asses through a couple of wars, they'd begin to wake up.

[HowlinglyMind-BendingAbsurdity]

Gerard Baker: "It's been remarked that the biggest difference between Americans and Europeans is religion: ignorant Americans cling to faith; enlightened Europeans long ago embraced the liberating power of reason. Yet here's an odd thing about this election. Europeans are asking Americans to take a leap of faith, to break the chains of empiricism and embrace the possibility of the imagination.

The fact is that a vote for Mr Obama demands uncritical subservience to the irrational, anti-empirical proposition that the past holds no clues about the future, that promise is wholly detached from experience. The second-greatest story ever told, perhaps."

One slight editorial suggestion: "Europeans are asking Americans to take a leap of faith, to break the chains of empiricism and embrace the possibility of the imagination kookery."

It's a leap of faith [ existentialists grab your Kierkegaard paperbacks], but he and his weird messiah cult are all over place with what this will actually mean in concrete terms. It's never quite clear where the Obama Twilight Zone is leading.

Clash of Civilizations 2008: National Review

The Palin Portfolio: Damage Control or the Clash of Civilizations:
Roger Kimball:"Many people, I suspect, believe that the legacy of multiculturalism and political correctness–the legacy, in a word, of 1960s radicalism–has inflicted grievous ruin upon this country. One party embraces that ruin as our destiny. John McCain and Sarah Palin reject it as tantamount to moral betrayal. This election really is shaping up as a clash of civilizations. No wonder its skirmishes have been so bitter. They are likely to become even more heated as more and more people awaken to the nature of the choice that confronts us."

Indeed.

[iowamark]

Here's the real problem with Mr Obama: the jarring gap between his promises of change and his status quo performance. There are just too many contradictions between the eloquent poetry of the man's stirring rhetoric and the dull, familiar prose of his political record.

It's been remarked that the biggest difference between Americans and Europeans is religion: ignorant Americans cling to faith; enlightened Europeans long ago embraced the liberating power of reason. Yet here's an odd thing about this election. Europeans are asking Americans to take a leap of faith, to break the chains of empiricism and embrace the possibility of the imagination.

The fact is that a vote for Mr Obama demands uncritical subservience to the irrational, anti-empirical proposition that the past holds no clues about the future, that promise is wholly detached from experience. The second-greatest story ever told, perhaps.

[SuziQ]

Bump for later reading