"Everyone in the WORLD is an IDIOT but ME!"
Posted on 01/22/2010 7:37:26 PM PST by kristinn
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Barack Obama has now, in just a year's time, become the single most inept president perhaps in all of American history, and certainly in my lifetime. Never has so much political advantage been p***ed away so rapidly, and what's more in the context of so much national urgency and crisis. It's astonishing, really, to contemplate how much has been lost in a single year.
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But the election in Massachusetts was only slightly less inevitable than the sun rising in the east each morning. It was the product of an amazing collection of abysmal choices and practices over the last year that has produced a meltdown of equally amazing proportions for this president and his party. It is fitting that it comes on the anniversary of the president's inauguration, a moment filled with so much hope for so many just a year ago.
What has Obama - this Conan O'Brien of presidents - done wrong in order to produce this devastating outcome? The short answer is: Just about everything imaginable.
More specifically:
* He does not lead. Americans, especially in times of crisis, want their daddy-president to pick a point on the horizon and lead them to it. Often - especially in the short term - they don't even care that much which point it is. They will happily follow a president whose policies they oppose if he will but lead.
* And if he will demonstrate some conviction. I have never seen a president so utterly lacking in passion. This man literally doesn't even seem to care about himself, let alone this or that policy issue. He doesn't seem to have any strong opinions on anything, a sure prescription for presidential failure.
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* While you're at it, if you're trying to run the most failed presidency ever, a really good idea is to campaign in the grandest terms possible, and then deliver squat. You know, talk about bending the arc of history. Invoke Martin Luther King's dream and his struggles and even those of the slaves. Ring the big bells of generational calling. Remind voters every thirty seconds that the country badly needs "Change!". Then get elected and turn around and continue the policies of your hated predecessor in every meaningful policy area. Only with less conviction. People will love that.
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* As long as you're walking away from the grand narrative, why not let the opposition define you as well? Let them say anything imaginable about you, and never respond. You're a socialist! No, you're a fascist! No, you're both! At the same time, no less! You're a granny killer! You're not really even an American! You're taking over the US for the Muslims! You're a massive taxer and spender! You're running around the world, apologizing for America everywhere you go! No worries. Just remember the golden rule, and your presidency is sure to sink: Never engage, never respond, never preempt, never attack, never fight back.
* In general, you'll also want to take the most important power the president has - the bully pulpit - and totally p*** it away. Appear everywhere at once, all the time, saying lots of nice words, about a thousand different issues. But never with passion, never with compelling simplicity, never with repetition, and never with urgency. Pretty soon you'll turn being everywhere into being nowhere. Everyone one will tune out your ubiquitous self. Give up the high moral ground which is the most important asset of the office you hold, and you'll make sure that no one ever listens to you anymore. You will persuade the public of nothing. Except that you are irrelevant.
* But you can do better still. Help your enemies, so that they can crush you more effectively! Start by not even realizing they are your enemies. Then, treat them with greater respect than your friends, even though they've run the country over a cliff. Defer to them at every opportunity. Consult with them even as they insult you to your face. Allow them to run Congress, even though they have small minorities in both houses. Never force them to vote against simple, popular legislation. Never call their bluffs. Never associate them with the destruction they've caused. Never label them the treasonous hypocritical liars that they are. Help them to resuscitate the comatose near-corpse of their political party, just before it's about to die, so it can rise up and savage you.
* Another great trick for crashing a presidency is to pick all the wrong priorities to ‘fight' for. Imagine, for example, if FDR had substituted for his ‘Day of Infamy' speech right after Pearl Harbor a ringing call for an American revolution in cobbler technology! Yes, that's right, in response to the devastating surprise attack by the armed forces of the Empire of Japan, what if the president urgently called upon us all to start making really amazing shoes?! Before it's too late, and we all get blisters on our feet! Similarly, Mr. Obama, your spending the last year on (jive) health care and jetting around the world dipping your toes into foreign policy problems while Americans are losing their jobs and their houses is a fine way to kill your presidency. Guaranteed to work every time.
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All of this represents the best prescription I can imagine for wrecking a presidency, and Obama has followed it with exacting precision. Indeed, doing so would appear to be his only real passion. It's almost as if he were a Republican sleeper politician in some party politics version of the Manchurian Candidate, planted to arise on cue and destroy the Democratic Party from within.
And thus - while anything's possible, of course - I am hard pressed to see how the Obama administration is anything but finished.
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Of course, I don't give a **** about Barack Obama anymore, other than my desire that really ugly things happen to him as payment in kind for the grandest act of betrayal we've seen since Benedict Arnold did his thing.
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I try pretty hard every day - and it takes some work - to keep my most apocalyptic totalitarian nightmares for this country in check. But think about this chronological sequence for a second: The Democrats get killed in November for doing nothing while the public suffers. But they are still seen as the party in power in 2012, so they get killed even worse, with Obama sent packing and Palin or her equivalent moving into 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. But the new radical GOP regime's policies are even more detrimental to voters than Bush's or Obama's. Maybe the public is distracted for a year or two by some bullshit foreign policy ‘crisis' or another, but pretty soon they're getting real restless. After about six years now of suffering badly, they're getting real surly, and ‘anti-incumbent' doesn't begin to describe the mood of the country. Now they really want some serious change.
Of course, anything can happen - but which part of that sequence seems improbable? And if the answer is none, then the salient question becomes: What does the regime do at that point, faced with an angry mob? What are the Dick Cheneys and Sarah Palins of this world committed to? What are they capable of when pressed?
I don't think those questions really require a response. I think we all know pretty well the answers.
This is the country that Obama - the great Hope guy - is bequeathing us.
Dante said "The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who in times of great moral crises maintain their neutrality".
Better stock up on the mist sprayers, Barack.
David Michael Green is a professor of political science at Hofstra University in New York.
Very unfair to call him Conan! It’s not Conan’s fault that he is out in less then a full year.
Conan is a good guy. Obummer is not!
Hah! All they've done is unveil "progressivism" for what it actually is! And lo and behold, not too many people are liking it.
That's pretty funny! Maybe put an apostrophe in there: "Conan O'Bama."
This guy may be a real clymer, but his analysis is spot on.
Wish we could pay him off with 30+ million to just disappear.. like NBC has done with Conan.
30mill to GTFO
It's almost as if he were a Republican sleeper politician in some party politics version of the Manchurian Candidate, planted to arise on cue and destroy the Democratic Party from within.
I LOL'd
This guys is a professor?
As usual with these things, this piece says much more about the author than his target.
Whatever his complaints about Obama, and I am sure many if not all are justifiable, whether from the authors point of view or ours, whats so striking about this is the plain viciousness of this man. He hates his enemies beyond reason, and there is not an ounce of charity in view.
He hates the man who failed him. I just don’t understand that sort of rage. Sadness, yes indeed. Anger, yes indeed. But this is just hate.
And he is a senior academic besides ! Of history ! This from a man who should be pickled in perspective ?
Not really . A senior Lecturer , whatever the heck that is . I doubt taking his class satisfied the Con-Law requirement . I almost wish I cared enough to check in to it . .
OK, he lost me on that one. Does he really think that Obama catered to the Republicans? He refused to meet with Republicans. He refused to give them a voice in what was going on. His opposition was within his own party. Blue dog Democrats, trying to save their own hides, were the problem for him. The Republicans might as well have not even shown up.
"Everyone in the WORLD is an IDIOT but ME!"
$30M to go live in Cuba or something?
We’d be getting off with a bargain
Oh ! lord the 6 month long funeral would be painful..
It would eat up 20 hrs of the 24 News as literally every TV show would honor the marxist creep..
AND then they switch to the Hildebeast.. and the ex-felon in chief..
It would extremely painful.. I'm tempted to pray for him..
Perhaps some hystorical perspective will help?
Jesus!
You've started to believe
The things they say of you
You really do believe
This talk of God is true
And all the good you've done
Will soon be swept away
You've begun to matter more
Than the things you say
Listen Jesus
I don't like what I see
All I ask is that you listen to me
And remember
I've been your right hand man all along
You have set them all on fire
They think they've found the new Messiah
And they'll hurt you when they find they're wrong
Even though David Green is looking at the problem from the completely WRONG angle, he sees the most important part: the Obastard is a fraud. But Green is also part of the problem because he was stupid enough to guzzle the Hopey Changey- flavored Kool Aid.
However, the way Professor Davit "Dumbsh*t" Green views Americans- as mere sheep looking for a 'daddy-president' to lead them, and eager to follow no matter the direction- shows the world just how completely and irremedially stupid this loser professor from Hofstra (I mean, come on: Hofstra!) is, and how overdue the Halls of Academe are for a total bowel cleansing.
I believe he was talking about the author of the column, not Obama.
“Conan O’Bama” -— ROTFLMBO!!
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