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Posted on 06/21/2010 4:42:55 AM PDT by SJackson
In thinking of Barack Obama’s presidency, I can’t help recalling the Comte de Lautréamont’s definition of Surrealism as the quintessence of the Absurd: “the encounter of an umbrella and a sewing-machine on a dissection table.” For this is certainly the most surreal presidency since Jimmy Carter’s, or even Andrew Jackson’s—or, more likely, the most implausible and Absurd administration in the entirety of American history.
Let us see how Lautréamont applies. It is raining debt and joblessness on the United States, but Obama and his crew are protected by an umbrella so vast it resembles Muammar Gaddafi’s tent. Obama enjoys the top job in the country and avails himself lavishly of all its perks, posting as well an annual income in the millions of dollars, over five million in 2009 alone. His cohorts and backers are doing quite proudly too, not to mention Democratic godfather George Soros, one of the world’s richest men. Home foreclosures and job terminations are not an issue for these people, who are good at theoretical empathy and not much else, apart from making the situation even worse than it already is. As for the sewing-machine, it is busy at work stitching a fabric of lies and subterfuges, from global warming to Green energy to cap-and-trade to socialized medicine. And on the dissection table an entire nation is being cut to shreds to the jubilant disbelief of America’s dedicated enemies. The borders are porous, military spending is being reduced, terrorists are Mirandized, geopolitical adversaries are regarded as aggrieved friends-in-waiting and real friends are given the cold shoulder. On the domestic front, genuine popular movements seeking beneficial change are slandered as an army of thugs and seditionists. All this is Surrealism with a vengeance.
Carter and Jackson serve as theatrical analogies. Jimmy Carter, as we all know, was (and is) the archetypal wimp who never met a theocrat he didn’t like and gave us the Iran we know today while eventually selling out to the Saudis, the principal funders of his misnamed Peace Center. Carter was conceivably the worst president in POTUS history until the present incumbent appeared to bring the highest office in the land into turmoil and disrepute. Andrew Jackson, according to his biographer James Parton, was a bundle of contradictions: “A democratic aristocrat. An urbane savage. An atrocious saint.” Founder of the Democratic Party, Jackson was one of the most interesting and selectively dynamic in the almanac of presidential characters, but also one of the most problematic, especially with respect to the institution of slavery. Both Carter and Jackson, each in his own unique way, were spectacles that almost defied credence. Both were made for the Theatre of the Absurd, one a grovelling clown without an iota of reason to his credit and the other a blustering commander who dominated the political proscenium with his personal eccentricities.
They have now been pre-empted by Barack Obama, aided and abetted by an apostolic media that refused to examine his tainted past and divinized him as someone rather more than merely human. One remembers that old joke about the media’s relation to George W. Bush. If he had walked on water, the headlines would have read: “Bush can’t swim.” But with Obama it’s exactly the other way round. If he went for a swim, the headlines would read: “Obama too modest to reveal messianic powers.”
What many have failed to recognize until recently is that Obama is no wonder-worker, no farsighted statesman, no honest broker, no competent chief executive, no bipartisan healer—and in point of fact, he is simply not presidential material at all. Obama has absolutely no idea of how to go about running a country. But it would be a mistake to assume that he is nothing more than an untalented bungler, for he is blessed with thespian aptitudes that none of his predecessors could have mustered. Obama is a man with a résumé so thin it would look sideways head-on, but he is unexcelled as a performer.
Obama is essentially an actor in a kind of Brechtian drama promoting a neo-Marxist ideology, say, The Caucasian Chalk Circle, mixed with robust elements of Beckett’s Waiting for Godot. As with Brecht, Obama believes in the redistribution of income as the central program of the welfare state—although Brecht, who wrote in the service of the East German regime, deposited his substantial profits in West German banks, a rather salient item in the current context. At the same time, there is a sense in which Obama resembles Beckett’s elusive Godot who is eagerly awaited but never actually arrives. He intends to show up later in the day, tomorrow, the day after tomorrow, but the promise is never realized. Similarly, Obama doesn’t “show up” in any meaningful acceptation of the phrase, as his tardy response to the BP oil spill makes pretty obvious. But it’s more than that: he just doesn’t seem “there” to meet the major challenges of the time with insight, knowledge, intelligence and courage. Obama also mirrors the character Estragon whose trousers fall to his ankles without him noticing it, a fitting end to the play in which the character’s naked ineffectualness and perpetual dithering is finally exposed.
America is now living under the simulated presidency of an impressive actor for whom all the world’s a stage and all the people in it merely suckers. Displaying the quirkiness and ostentation of the inveterate ham, he soliloquizes in Cairo, postures in Copenhagen, preens in Oslo, orates in Washington, warbles “Hey Jude” with a merry singalong gang in the White House, awarding Paul McCartney the Library of Congress Gershwin Award for Popular Song “on behalf of a grateful nation” while the real, neglected nation groans, looks fetchingly troubled when examining oil slick on the Gulf coast, relishes photo-ops and relies on a teleprompter the way actors depend on the souffleur beneath the planks. As president, he manifests on the one hand the futility and ineptitude of Jimmy Carter taken to the nth degree, in particular with regard to the Iranian threat, and on the other the idiosyncratic behavior of Andrew Jackson—though it must be acknowledged, without Jackson’s native gumption and profoundly held convictions.
Indeed, Obama is a weird bird. To be fair, he does bring a parcel of convictions with him, albeit of a distinctly socialist stamp, which he seems determined to impose on a once-largely unsuspecting public. These convictions, however, seem like a kind of ideological stuffing without which he would fold, buckle and collapse on himself. It is as if he needs to have something controversial, something startling to say in order to convince himself, as well as others, that he exists, and requires a platform on which to exercise his repertoire of roles. An utter prima donna, he is so consumed with his own histrionic self, and his ability to adopt whatever pose the situation demands, that he seems nothing so much as an absence made concrete, a flamboyant nullity inadequate to the problems he confronts, adept only at speeches, monologues and striking gestures. As a result, the time inevitably comes when he begins to look inauthentic and faintly ridiculous, and ultimately as unreal as a typical character in an Absurdist play who faces alarmingly incomprehensible predicaments before which he remains helpless and unbuttoned. Such, of course, is the nature of the genre, as it is of this presidency.
The long and the short of it is that Obama’s tenure in the White House will be remembered as a national aberration, a piece of avant-garde theatre and a surreal installment in the far more serious drama of unforgiving realpolitik. Meanwhile, the umbrella is open wide, the sewing machine keeps humming away and a country is laid out flat on the dissection table.
I was thinking the other how much he reminds me of Zaphod Beeblebrox.
Last year I thought he would be gone by July 23 which was 6 months + a day or two.
Looks like I was wrong by about a year. The drumbeat is getting loud in Early June. Late July this year is looking better and better.
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And by what means, pray tell, is he gone a month from now?
Loser Humma Kavula confronts Zaphod Beeblebrox for the first time after losing the Galactic Presidential Election to Zaphod: “The election is ancient history, Zaphod. If memory serves, you won, proving that good looks and charm win over brilliance and the ability to govern. And for the record? You *are* stupid.”
I think he has some element at least of Bartleby the Scrivener, “I would prefer not”. He would prefer to play golf, party and make a few speeches and not attend to his job at all.
Carter was not a good president but in large part his presidency failed because of the politics of the time and because his premium on being seen as an honest Bible believing Christian took precedence over doing things that politicians do.
If all things had been held equal and the Carter like figure had taken office in 1985, said figure probably wouldn’t be remembered as a failure. Carter also had real problems with being led around by his advisors like a dog on a leash. With Obama, its different.
Obama would have been a failure in good times too but he was simply ill-suited to do well in times like ours. The times were in call for a president like an FDR or a Reagan, someone who can actually inspire people with personal charisma and who can actually make people positive.
The economy was worse in January 1983 then it was in October 1980 but none of us remember that because Reagan wasn’t the downer that Carter was and because ultimately the summer of 1983 was when we finally pulled out of the slump.
Obama’s problem is not a problem of being whipped by his advisors or of having some deep seated belief system that won’t let him engage in standard Washington politics. If anything, Obama has represented the worst in Washington politics. His problem is that at heart he is an aloof, empty suit more interested in the trappings of being president then the actual governing.
It was also obvious that it was going to turn out this way because he ran on some vague slogans and had this habit of avoiding every controversial issue that he could.
In this respect he’s actually worse then Carter. Carter bumbled and made mistakes but Carter actually stood for things. He may have given us the malaise speeches and all of that but they weren’t pretty BS designed to flatter us and he gave them knewing it could un-elect him. Obama’s whole term has been fluff and nothing else.
I think after all of us who lived through the 70s are in our retirement years Carter will probably be re-evaluated and moved up from F- to C-. Obama will be an F for all time just like Hoover (who he shares so many similarities with its uncanny)
Ha!! “Waiting for Godot”... THAT’S rich!!!
“...aided and abetted by an apostolic media that refused to examine his tainted past and divinized him as someone rather more than merely human”
Actually, though I think “O” is dumb as dirt, empty and spineless as a rag doll... I do think that he is cunning.
And to tell the truth… it’s my personal belief that evil people are just individuals who have lost their sanity yet retained their primordial human cunning and that this is what makes evil people SO dangerous… they are dangerous in direct relation to the level of cunning they have retained and have been PERMITTED to exercise.
You say “O” is ignorant, inexperienced, incompetent and unprincipled but he is really just NUTS! (The entire element which supports him and brought him to the WH, is equally aberrated and just as gratuitously indulged.)
When “O” is gone, America will have a further and more ingrained problem having conditioned an entire generation to facile and unconditional government excesses and to the most selfish, short-sighted and irregular political expedients. The damage is done.
I agree with much of what you said, until the very end. 0bama's term has not been fluff, he has accomplished much towards his community agenda goals with the help of his behind the scenes czars. The takeover of GM, health care, bail-outs and slush funds of the mortgage industry and FM/FM, impending financial reforms, and cap N tax, and whatever will he exploit/extort from the oil companies?
No, it is not a term of fluff.
You’ve mentioned a whole bunch of things that are unpopular with the American people. They were political victories but political victories only and he completely squandered all his political capital in doing them. I wouldn’t qualify them as having accomplished something.
Obama has not had one positive political achievement that people support or that will be remembered as positive in a historic light in anyway. Carter had the Camp David Accords and SALT II.
I don’t think its a coincidence the Obama administration has been hunting for another SALT type agreement with Russia as of late. He knows foreign policy is the only way he might be able to compensate for his lousy domestic policy and even that can break both ways. Carter lost in 1980 as much for his foreign policy mistake of deciding to not try and keep the Shah as anything else. 1980 wouldve been far closer if there hadn’t been ribbons tied on trees across the country.
THis article so nails my idea of Obama on the head that I gasped.
I keep saying “this is surreal”, hubby keeps saying “I can’t believe this”.
He is nothing made concrete is my favorite idea.
This writer, I googled him, has nailed this malignant president. What he doesn’t touch is the angry, hostile man who is giving us the finger daily. I think that is what moves Obama even more than his desire to perform and ham it up.
The the Gaddafi tent reference is brilliant.
I think he is pursuing his own agenda, regardless of the realities or what the public thinks.
I’m beginning to think that Barack Obama is not going to run for reelection in 2012. If he was, he’d have to act like he gave a damn about the American people, which he doesn’t. It’s all golf and parties and one hundred dollar a pound waygu beef with this guy.
He’ll probably retire after one term and get a gig with Goldman Sachs or someone like that who will keep him in the lifestyle to which he has become accustomed.
he is pursuing THE agenda, regardless of the realities or what the public thinks OR how much damage it does to some democrats.
But then, Obama could be known as the only president to have his major legislation repealed by a newly elected congress.
How about move straight to Jail and do not pass GO?
The image I attach to B.O. is that of a huge wrecking ball unleased on America every single day. He does it because he CAN. But even wrecking balls can stop if met with a force bigger and more menacing than itself. He just hasn’t met that force yet.
“and not attend to his job at all.”
It is too much like real work, which he has managed to avoid all his life.
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