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A Storyteller Loses the Story Line, By MAUREEN DOWD
NY Times ^ | June 2, 2010 | By MAUREEN DOWD

Posted on 06/02/2010 4:52:53 AM PDT by Oldeconomybuyer

It’s not a good narrative arc: The man who walked on water is now ensnared by a crisis under water.

One little hole a mile down on the ocean floor, so deep it seems like hell spewing up its sulfurous smoke, has turned the thrilling saga of “The One” into the gurgling horror of “The Abyss.” (Thank goodness James Cameron, the director of “The Abyss,” came to Washington Tuesday to help the administration figure out how to cap the BP well. What’s next? Sending down the Transformers and Megan Fox?)

With as much as 34 million gallons of oil inking the Gulf of Mexico, “Yes we can” has been downgraded to “Will we ever?”

It’s impossible not to feel sorry for President Obama, pummeled by the cascading disasters, at home and abroad, unleashed by two war-mongering oil men — plus scary escalations by Israel, Iran and North Korea. (Dick Cheney’s dark influence is still belching like the well. BP just brought on a new public relations executive: Anne Womack-Kolton, who served as Cheney’s campaign press secretary in 2004 and worked in W.’s White House and at the Energy Department.)

Obama wanted to be a transformative president and now the presidency is transforming him.

How does a man who invented himself as a force by writing one of the most eloquent memoirs in political history lose control of his own narrative?

This president has made it clear that he’s not comfortable outside whatever domain he’s defined. But unless he wants his story to be marred by a pattern of passivity, detachment, acquiescence and compromise, he’d better seize control of the story line of his White House years. Woe-is-me is not an attractive narrative.

(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Editorial; News/Current Events; Politics/Elections
KEYWORDS: dowd; maureendowd; modo
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To: subterfuge

My son has attended two speeches by TheOne in the last five months. His summary: boring and more boring.


61 posted on 06/02/2010 7:29:15 AM PDT by Rummyfan (Iraq: it's not about Iraq anymore, it's about the USA!)
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To: subterfuge; Haiku Guy

She’s beautiful and plays golf - I wouldn’t care if she liked football or not. Two out of three ain’t bad!


62 posted on 06/02/2010 7:31:38 AM PDT by Rummyfan (Iraq: it's not about Iraq anymore, it's about the USA!)
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To: rlmorel
http://www.jrnyquist.com/media/FifeLeary_Int-1.mp3

yo14 said:

Wait: Obama is a Marxist???

Who doesn’t have friends that are domestic terrorists and committed Marxists?


Who doesn’t go to a Marxist church where the head fool says God Damn America and blames the world’s problems on rich white people?


Who hasn’t gone to Pakistan on Spring Break while in college?


Who didn’t actively seek out Marxist professors and write about it?


Who didn’t have a your terrorist buddy write two autobiographies for you when you haven’t done a thing?


Who doesn’t work with union leaders that want the workers of the world to unite?

It is no different than when some other Megalomaniac wrote a book about “my struggle” and yet people didn’t want to believe him. If anyone can’t see that Obama is a Marxist then well you are totally stupid and maybe the government should help you.

http://www.jrnyquist.com/media/FifeLeary_Int-1.mp3

Yeah, he’s a red but who installed him?
I thought this was a ‘on the money’ observation.

Sure, Hussein’s backstory didn’t stand much scrutiny. Sure, none of our finest Finemans ever explained who backed the Quisatz Haderach’s remarkable glide from Punahou to Occidental to Columbia to Harvard to Chicago to the state senate to the U.S. Senate to the White House.

True, there was some oblique acknowledgment of his family’s radicalism, his strange mentoring by a Communist, Frank Marshall Davis, his admitted drug use, and the curious case of the editor of the Harvard Law Review who never quite managed to publish anything, although he probably shot plenty of hoops.


David Kahane

63 posted on 06/02/2010 7:51:58 AM PDT by DontTreadOnMe2009 (So stop treading on me already!)
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To: MNJohnnie

This could be bad for Øbozo. Apparently he’s never had had to endure a spurned dowd..;-)


64 posted on 06/02/2010 12:41:51 PM PDT by rockrr (Everything is different now...)
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To: Oldeconomybuyer

If Obambi has lost Doud, well he’s lost..........

....hmmmmm


65 posted on 06/02/2010 12:57:51 PM PDT by ha maker (Sanity for lurkers)
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To: DontTreadOnMe2009

Bwaahaaahaaa! Quisatz Haderach reference!

Well said...


66 posted on 06/02/2010 5:56:25 PM PDT by rlmorel (We arYoue traveling "The Road to Serfdom".)
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