Posted on 08/26/2009 11:32:41 AM PDT by Uncledave
The Tingle is Gone? [Victor Davis Hanson]
Many of Obama's problems are in the future.
Aside from the rendezvous he has with mega-deficits, rallying support for Afghanistan, health care, selling cap-and-trade in the Senate, etc., there is a more fundamental problem with Obama's modus operandi itself. I don't think he will any longer be able to "hope and change" his way out of tomorrow's controversies with mere rhetorical flourishes, since he has already exhausted his capital of credibility, and squandered his "this is our moment" trust.
Watch the faces of the press corps and the town-hall throngs when he evades, and instead starts in with the cadences: The collective expression is to roll their eyes and sigh "not this again." And yet the alternative to hope and change is off-the-teleprompter pauses, and "inflate your tires/they're taking out our tonsils" folk mythology.
When Obama said he would be fiscally prudent, we got near $2 trillion deficits. When he said the debt would grow to $7 trillion over his tenure, you should nearly double that estimate. When he said Bush shredded the Constitution, he adopted most of the Bush plan from rendition to tribunals. When he said that he wished to move on, we got investigations of the CIA and the previous administration. When he said we'd have all combat brigades out by March 2008, we knew we could not. When he said anything about health care — it would save money, would not alter private plans, would not go to illegal aliens, etc — we already assumed all that was mendacious. When he says anything, we know now that it is either not true or will not be true or at best will only be partially true.
And in the first seven months, there was a crass edge as well, whether measured by the jokes like ridiculing the Special Olympics or demagoguing those who go to Las Vegas or the Superbowl, or stereotyping the police who act "stupidly" and "profile."
Apparently, Obama grasped (and he hints at this in his memoirs) that his rhetorical powers, and singular heritage, allowed him to achieve things not commensurate with the facts of the matter, or prerequisite knowledge and prior experience. But on a global stage, it is not so easy to wing it with just "forget the details and what I said in the past — now just trust me, since I'm young, charismatic, and different."
Proof of all this is not just the waning polls and the grassroots anger of hoi polloi, but a strange and sudden end to last fall's elite-left puff pieces that used to run the gamut from women dreaming of seducing Barack, desire to change the law to allow him to begin governing almost immediately in November, worry over a Bush coup to abort the dreamy Obama presidency, and all sorts of personal testaments about how suddenly the world will be a utopia. That entire genre of liberal therapeutic Obama musings in print and on the screen has quite incredibly simply vanished.
Instead, on the Left, we are seeing two common themes — Obama is in over his head; Obama is duplicitous in promising us things he never intended to deliver.
When moderates and independents are leaving your cause in droves because you misled them by falsely cloaking your unwelcome partisan ideology in a moderate veneer — at the same time the fervent base is doing the same because you misled them by falsely cloaking your unwelcome moderation in a partisan ideological veneer, you know you are simply not telling the truth by saying, in cynical Nixonian fashion, irreconcilable things all the time to almost everyone.
For anyone with two brain cells hooked together it is a shudder ... or hair standing up on the back of your neck.
Crass doesn't quite do it. What would be the word-- BOORISH. And add juvenile "wee-weed" vulgarity. He ain't the elegant guy Jon Stewart said he was.
Ping !
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Such a crassy man.
Obama is in over his |
It has gone from tingle to tinkle...Obama has wee-weed on his supporters and is still trying to convince them it is only raining.
I remember the lefties claiming Bush would declare martial law to remain in office after the election. Now it’s pretty obvious who’s setting himself up as a dictator.
"Apparently, Obama grasped (and he hints at this in his memoirs) that his rhetorical powers, and singular heritage, allowed him to achieve things not commensurate with the facts of the matter, or prerequisite knowledge and prior experience. "
He learned that at Columbia and Harvard. They taught him that and the media enabled him. This is the product of a corrupt system of quotas and preferences which pampers the Obamas, making them think they can get away with this kind of behavior. When they get in trouble they whine and play the color card. Everyone has to play by the rules, even Obama. It has taken the media a while to face up to this.
Mandingo!
Anyone who did a little legwork starting back in 2007 could have learned all he or she needed to know about Barack Obama, his views, his politics, his style, that would have set off alarms and red lights. This man is a fraud from the get go, a product of Affirmative Action policies that went horribly awry.
damn I like Hanson!!!
Yes I agree. I did some legwork last year and a bit in 07 and I knew he wasn’t to be trusted. The moderates and independents are seeing his true colors now. A bit too late. He is doing everyone I expected which is just horrible.
remember, there are 59 dims in the Senate and another 250+ in the House. All of the House dims were elected in 2008...and +7 in the Senate.
the country fell for the dim lies, hook, line and sinker. They could have run Bozo the Clown for President and won...perhaps by more than 53-46.
This majority is the direct by-product of GOP corruption and abandonment of principle.
And that problem rests with the entire GOP, not just GW Bush.
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