Posted on 12/11/2009 11:21:11 PM PST by goldstategop
It wasn’t so long ago that Barack Obama’s speeches were being hailed as “extraordinary” “rhetorical magic” (Joe Klein in Time) that should be “required reading in classrooms” (Bob Herbert in the New York Times). Pity the poor grade-schoolers who have to be on the bus at 5 a.m. for a daylong slog through the 4,000-word sludge of the president’s Nobel thank you. Rich Lowry, my boss at National Review, writes that Obama has become a “crashingly banal” bore. The good news is that he “is not nearly as dull as, say, Herman van Rompuy.”
Who?
Oh, come on. Herman van Rompuy. He’s some Belgian cove who was recently appointed “president” of “Europe,” whatever that means. He’s hardly a household name, even in the van Rompuy household. I’m not sure if Belgian TV has a Belgian Idol or Dancing with the Belgians, but, if so, he’d be knocked out in round one.
. For Americans interested in not pre-crippling the lives of their as-yet-unborn children and grandchildren, his windy leave-’em-wanting-less routine is currently one of their best friends. To return to wossname, the Belgian bloke, van Rumpoy, just because he’s a nonentity doesn’t mean he’s not effective. In his acceptance speech the other week, he declared: “2009 is the first year of global governance.”
Did you get that memo?
Me neither. But he has a point. The upgrading of the G20, Gordon Brown’s plans for planetary financial regulation, and the Copenhagen summit (whose inauguration of a transnational bureaucracy to facilitate the multitrillion-dollar shakedown of functioning economies would be the biggest exercise in punitive liberalism the developed world has ever been subjected to) are all pillars of “global governance.” Right now, if you don’t like the local grade school, you move to the next town. If you’re sick of Massachusetts taxes, you move to New Hampshire. Where do you move to if you don’t like “global governance”? What polling station do you go to to vote it out?
America has its Herman van Rumpoys, too. Harry Reid is really the Harry van Reidpoy of Congress. Very few people know who he is or what he does. But, while Obama continues on his stately progress from one 4,000-word dirge to the next, Reid’s beavering away advancing the cause of van Rumpoy–scale statism. The news this week that the well-connected Democrat pollster, Mark Penn, received $6 million of “stimulus” money to “preserve” three jobs in his public-relations firm to work on a promotional campaign for the switch from analog to digital TV is a perfect snapshot of Big Government. In the great sucking maw of the federal treasury, $6 million isn’t even a rounding error. But it comes from real people — from you and anybody you know who still makes the mistake of working for a living; and, if it had been left in your pockets, you’d have spent it in the real world, at a local business or in expanding your own, and maybe some way down the road it would have created some genuine jobs. Instead, it got funneled to a Democrat pitchman to preserve three non-jobs on a phony quasi-governmental PR campaign. Big Government does that every minute of the day. When Mom’n’Pop Cola of Dead Skunk Junction gets gobbled up by Coke, there are economies of scale. When real economic activity gets annexed by state and then federal government, there are no economies of scale. In fact, the very concept of “scale” disappears, so that tossing 6 million bucks away to “preserve” three already-existing positions isn’t even worth complaining about.
At his jobs summit, Obama seemed, rhetorically, to show some understanding of this. But that’s where his speechifying has outlived its welcome. When it’s tough and realistic (we need to be fiscally responsible; there are times when you have to go to war in your national interest; etc.), it bears no relation to any of the legislation. And, when it’s vapid and utopian, it looks absurd next to Harry Reid, Barney Frank & Co’s sleazy opportunism. For those of us who oppose the shriveling of liberty in both Washington and Copenhagen, a windy drone who won’t sit down keeps the spotlight on the racket. Once more from the top, Barack!Nonetheless, Rich Lowry does “President” van Rompuy a grave injustice. The boringness is, as the computer chappies say, not a bug but a feature. Like everything in Europe, the “presidency” was a backroom stitch-up, and neither the French nor the Germans wanted a charismatic glamorpuss in the gig stealing their respective thunders. A Belgian nonentity was just what they were looking for. Being a nondescript yawneroo was the minimum entry qualification. And, by those standards, Herman van Rompuy is performing brilliantly.
By contrast, the point of Barack Obama is to dazzle. That’s why he got all the magazine covers of him emerging topless from the Hawaiian surf as if his beautifully sculpted pectorals were long-vanished Pacific atolls restored to sunlight after he’d fulfilled his pledge to lower the oceans before the end of his first term. The squealing Obammyboppers of the media seem to have gotten more muted since those inaugural specials hit the newsstands back in late January. His numbers have fallen further faster than those of any other president — because of where he fell from: As Evan Thomas of Newsweek drooled a mere six months ago, Obama was “standing above the country . . . above the world. He’s sort of God.” That’s a long drop.
The Obama speechwriting team don’t seem to realize that. They seem to be the last guys on the planet in love with the sound of his voice and their one interminable tinny tune with its catchpenny hooks. The usual trick is to position their man as the uniquely insightful leader pitching his tent between two extremes no sane person has ever believed: “There are those who say there is no evil in the world. There are others who argue that pink fluffy bunnies are the spawn of Satan and conspiring to overthrow civilization. Let me be clear: I believe people of goodwill on all sides can find common ground between the absurdly implausible caricatures I attribute to them on a daily basis. We must begin by finding the courage to acknowledge the hard truth that I am living testimony to the power of nuance to triumph over hard truth and come to the end of the sentence on a note of sonorous, polysyllabic, if somewhat hollow, uplift. Pause for applause.”
It didn’t come but once at Oslo last week, where Obama got a bad press for blowing off the King of Norway’s luncheon. In Obama’s honor. Can you believe this line made it into the speech?
“I do not bring with me today a definitive solution to the problems of war.”
Well, there’s a surprise. When you consider all the White House eyeballs that approve a presidential speech, it’s truly remarkable that there’s no one to scribble on the first draft: “Scrub this, Fred. It makes POTUS sound like a self-aggrandizing buffoon.” It’s not even merely the content, but the stylistic tics: “I do not bring with me” — as if I, God of Evan Thomas’s Newsweek, am briefly descending to this obscure Scandinavian backwater bearing wisdom from beyond the stars. . For Americans interested in not pre-crippling the lives of their as-yet-unborn children and grandchildren, his windy leave-’em-wanting-less routine is currently one of their best friends. To return to wossname, the Belgian bloke, van Rumpoy, just because he’s a nonentity doesn’t mean he’s not effective. In his acceptance speech the other week, he declared: “2009 is the first year of global governance.”
Did you get that memo?
Me neither. But he has a point. The upgrading of the G20, Gordon Brown’s plans for planetary financial regulation, and the Copenhagen summit (whose inauguration of a transnational bureaucracy to facilitate the multitrillion-dollar shakedown of functioning economies would be the biggest exercise in punitive liberalism the developed world has ever been subjected to) are all pillars of “global governance.” Right now, if you don’t like the local grade school, you move to the next town. If you’re sick of Massachusetts taxes, you move to New Hampshire. Where do you move to if you don’t like “global governance”? What polling station do you go to to vote it out?
America has its Herman van Rumpoys, too. Harry Reid is really the Harry van Reidpoy of Congress. Very few people know who he is or what he does. But, while Obama continues on his stately progress from one 4,000-word dirge to the next, Reid’s beavering away advancing the cause of van Rumpoy–scale statism. The news this week that the well-connected Democrat pollster, Mark Penn, received $6 million of “stimulus” money to “preserve” three jobs in his public-relations firm to work on a promotional campaign for the switch from analog to digital TV is a perfect snapshot of Big Government. In the great sucking maw of the federal treasury, $6 million isn’t even a rounding error. But it comes from real people — from you and anybody you know who still makes the mistake of working for a living; and, if it had been left in your pockets, you’d have spent it in the real world, at a local business or in expanding your own, and maybe some way down the road it would have created some genuine jobs. Instead, it got funneled to a Democrat pitchman to preserve three non-jobs on a phony quasi-governmental PR campaign. Big Government does that every minute of the day. When Mom’n’Pop Cola of Dead Skunk Junction gets gobbled up by Coke, there are economies of scale. When real economic activity gets annexed by state and then federal government, there are no economies of scale. In fact, the very concept of “scale” disappears, so that tossing 6 million bucks away to “preserve” three already-existing positions isn’t even worth complaining about.
At his jobs summit, Obama seemed, rhetorically, to show some understanding of this. But that’s where his speechifying has outlived its welcome. When it’s tough and realistic (we need to be fiscally responsible; there are times when you have to go to war in your national interest; etc.), it bears no relation to any of the legislation. And, when it’s vapid and utopian, it looks absurd next to Harry Reid, Barney Frank & Co’s sleazy opportunism. For those of us who oppose the shriveling of liberty in both Washington and Copenhagen, a windy drone who won’t sit down keeps the spotlight on the racket. Once more from the top, Barack!
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find only things evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelogus
Love Steyn. Too many great quotes to choose from.. but I’ll choose:
“That’s why he got all the magazine covers of him emerging topless from the Hawaiian surf as if his beautifully sculpted pectorals were long-vanished Pacific atolls restored to sunlight after he’d fulfilled his pledge to lower the oceans before the end of his first term.”
There’s kind of a Mobius strip thing going on in there, where you repeat a huge chunk of the story at the end. Got a little queasy for a minute, thinking I was experiencing a flashback.
bump.
Steyn rules the Steyn way
Uh, isn’t this article a tad redundant???
All that traveling and he still doesn't know what to pack.
Excellent, LOL.
You can say that again.
I thought it was a warp in the space time continuum. I looked at my mouse and asked it “Did you do that?”
reat article. I ead it twice! ;)
Media...Obammyboppers,LOL!
“There’s kind of a Mobius strip thing going on in there, where you repeat a huge chunk of the story at the end. Got a little queasy for a minute, thinking I was experiencing a flashback.”
I noticed that. I think it’s just a copy-&-paste error.
Nice touch there matching the badly stitched photo.
I don’t think the photos were stitched. There are panes of glass on either side of the stairs. It’s an effect like seeing a bent stick in water that’s not really bent.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.