He is, after all, a relatively young man raised and insulated by a poisonous intellectual monoculture, outside of which there are only class enemies. That monoculture he shares with a large portion of the mainstream media, who appear to be realizing, albeit dimly, that they're only in front of the zeitgeist parade and not really leading it. That monoculture he has brought with him into office, and it's costing him dearly.
One could not imagine Sarah Palin, to whom VDH refers somewhat obliquely in his comment about the electorate desiring a representative who lives like them - us - one could not imagine her bringing an entire staff of Wasilla housewives into DC to running the government, although it wouldn't necessarily be all that bad an idea. But 0bama has surrounded himself with a cage of parrots fledged exactly like him, who respond to opposition only by shrieking louder. It just isn't healthy.
In January 2010 I wrote, somewhat in despair, that I hoped he would grow in office, and he still might, although he isn't showing many signs of it at the moment. The office could also kill him, and I'm not joking, nor would I wish it to happen, but despite a predilection for the philosophical calm brought on by the well-groomed golf links, he has to be in the office at some point, and it turns out to be a very stressful place. Whether he understood Bush's gasp, as he embraced him at the inauguration - "so relieved" - he understands it now.
But along the way he has used a seldom-precedented majority in Congress to push (1) the sad, old-school party-first porkfest that uses money that is increasingly scarce to reward party supporters, (2) a program of progressive nostrums with regard to health care and environmental routes to the acquisition and centralization of power, and (3) a paralysis in foreign policy that is not helped by the least competent Secretary of State we've had in a century. A clever political operator could adjust in the face of an epochal lack of success; an unreflecting ideologue cannot. And for all the talk of 0bama's intellectual powers, he displays a facility of rehearsed expression more adept at getting him through the finals at Harvard than any deep understanding of the canon he is apt to cite.
In short, he may be a bright enough fellow - I'll take that on credit rather than demonstration - but he isn't in the least learned, and with that comes a lack of humility and humor, and a concomitant arrogance, that is a major character flaw. It is annoying when present in a lecturer; it is disastrous when present in a policy-maker. And that's the real problem. The mistakes he has already made, the catastrophic policies he has already put in place and that his party will defend to the last, have robbed him of the ability to triangulate as Clinton did. The damage he has already done to his country is like a set of self-imposed handcuffs.
There is, however, someone who might pull him through this thing, although I don't see it happening. He needs to call his predecessor, the one he's been blaming the fall of the sparrow on, whose policies he has had to continue even as he has continued the same tired criticism. Because what happened to 0bama was that he went to the briefings, and he heard what Bush had been hearing, and realized at last why what has been done, has been. Were he man enough he'd admit it. He isn't yet, and perhaps he will never be, and it is the country who will suffer for it. All IMHO, of course.
That’s January 2009, dummy. Sheesh.