If your first introduction to Michelle Obama was the speech she just delivered-as it is for many Americans-she hit a home run. She started off nervously, which made her later performance more impressive. But she came across as likeable, approachable, and someone whose experience was not very different from millions of middle class Americans.
Say what you will about Michelle’s liabilities-tonight she helped herself and her husband.
You’ve nailed it!
Obama’s vision of bipartisanship is like Bart Simpson’s vision of interfaith harmony: “Christmas is the time of year when people of all religions come together to worship Jesus Christ.”
I thought that dissent is the highest form of patriotism…..
I believe that during the last eight years of Republican rule, American liberals have underestimated the power that conservative media have amassed since the Clinton administration. Now that they are in power, and are on the receiving end of withering commentary from conservative talk radio and blogs, they will quickly learn that they cannot rely on empty rhetoric, spin, and a compliant media to achieve message control. Atrophied Democratic muscles need to be exercised so that strong arguments can be delivered and defended, else the current government will continue to appear incompetent and untrustworthy. Meanwhile, the Republicans are getting their bearings and rallying a cohesive opposition, proving that reports of the party’s impending doom were quite inaccurate. It is quite amazing how much the political pendulum has swung in the last month.
File under “American Demagogue”
Obama, with his endless vapid rhetoric, reminds me of the ‘young aristocrat’ at Joseph Conrad’s Central Station.
“I let him run on, this papier-mache Mephistopheles, and it seemed to me that if I tried I could poke my fore-finger through him, and would find nothing inside but a little loose dirt, maybe.
#6,jrb Says:
February 6th, 2009 at 1:26 PM
Obama, with his endless vapid rhetoric, reminds me of the ‘young aristocrat’ at Joseph Conrad’s Central Station.
And Bush is Kurtz. You opened the door on that one.
Wonderful observations, Mr. Greenwald! Unfortunately for the country, I don’t think Obama can self actualize beyond his vapid campaign slogans.
This may seem cruel, but all Obama seeks is the approval of a father he never had. Now we’ve got this guy for POTUS!
RCAR:
While I disagree, I couldn’t help chuckling.
I don’t get your beef. Obama’s simply giving America some straight talk about the stupidity of conservative Republicans. It’s not like it’s a big secret that they created the mess we’re in. Why do you think Republicans are the minority party? (Hint: It’s not because they weren’t conservative enough.)
More reason to love our President:
“Obama seeks nuclear disarmament deal with Russia”
“Hillary Clinton to head US efforts to reduce warheads to about 1,000″
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/feb/06/nuclear-disarmament-russia-us
“The Obama administration is looking for a quick deal between the US and Russia to more than halve their nuclear weapons stockpiles, reversing the Bush White House’s refusal to be bound by international treaties.
“Diplomats and officials say they are optimistic Washington and Moscow can quickly agree to cut warheads to about 1,000.”
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. I can hear Max Boot’s head exploding. Bye bye nukes. Hello Pell grants. I’m giddy.
Gee, Charles, this political stuff has to be a distraction. Why aren’t you thinking about who you’re going to ask to the Prom?
Whoever believe that they can deal with the Russian are complete idiots. The goal of Russia is to eclipse the USA of world dominance. Putin has nothing to latched unto but his own arrogance that he can be absolute power.
Unfortunately, ther are alot of idiots …
@11, Charles: “I’m giddy.”
It shows.
Goodness gracious Charles.
We share a name. Thankfully not the same brain.
Stop reading the Guardian it’ll rot your cognitive faculties. (However, I suppose having you on Commentary is a good sign that you may growing up.)
#12
Chuck Martel
What a beautiful Islamophobic screen name! Shouldn’t you be defending Christian Europe from the Muslims? Seems you are losing ground. I read that Charles Martel had a thing for young boys — took them on all his campaigns. Is that true?
#16
You’re just too witty for me.
I’m listening to the WH press briefing and apparently Obama is also headed back out on the road to hold Town Hall Meetings – the campaigning definitely has not ended.
#11 Charles
Still applying childlike emotionalism to real world situations? You sound like a desciple of Neviile Chamberlain.
Do you live your whole life that way? I would think that the inconsistencies would generate unresolved internal conflict.
(For example, “I really should be a vegan, but these Birkenstocks are sooo comfortable.”
I’ve been asking myself why I’ve been so surprised–and why other conservative observers seem to surprised–at how swiftly and completely the Obama administration has lost control. I think I’ve begun to figure it out, at least for myself. Although I was critical of Obama during the campaign, and for all my suspicion of popular media, I think I had begun to believe, at least a little, the campaign and media rhetoric that Obama was enormously talented and competent and that he would truly seek to establish a higher tone. I never downed the Kool-Aid entirely. But I must have had a few sips. Probably during the transition, when it seemed as though he had outgrown the petulant, ultra-left liberal I saw in the primary. Perhaps during the inauguration as well.
Otherwise I don’t know how to explain why I feel such surprise, anger, and genuine disappointment. The language he used is so tempting, and many people I love and respect believed in him; I must have begun, at least, to hope that he was for real. I also feel a certain amount of pity. I think he ever expected to win this time around. He is in way over his head, and the deer-in-the-headlights look in his speeches the last few days is not reassuring–unless you wish the United States ill.
I am going to remember this. The next time he offers honey-tongued words of ethics and post-partisanship, I am going to remember how he is behaving right now. “Don’t come to the table,” he says, “with the same tired arguments and worn ideas that helped to create this crisis,” that “doubled the national debt and threw our economy into a tailspin. We can’t embrace the losing formula that says only tax cuts will work for every problem we face, that ignores critical challenges like our addiction to foreign oil…the soaring cost of health care…failing schools and crumbling bridges and roads and levees.” These kind of “phony arguments and petty politics” are “inexcusable and irresponsible.” And to those who object that this is not stimulus but spending, he says, “What do you think stimulus is? That’s the whole point!”
The dishonesty and hypocrisy in these statements is breathtaking. The man who got elected with promises of tax cuts for 95% of Americans now says that his victory was a rejection of low-tax economics, and that low-tax economics caused the current financial crisis. The man who repeatedly denied that he was a tax-and-spend liberal, who deceived the electorate into voting for him on the pretense that he would fight for lower taxes and cut out wasteful spending “line by line,” now claims a “mandate” for the largest and most wasteful spending bill in American history. The same person who promised honesty and transparency characterizes the opposing viewpoint as one that “only tax cuts will work for every problem we face,” when nobody, nobody is claiming this–and presenting himself as the defender of infrastructure spending, when the problem with his bill is that so much of it has nothing to do with infrastructure–and claiming that a “stimulus” is simply “spending,” when he knows full well that it must be spending that swiftly *stimulates* market growth. Finally, the same person who promised a more noble government, a move beyond partisan bickering and accusations, now accuses Republicans and moderates in his own party, who are fighting to craft the *right* bill, fighting to save the American taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars, of indulging in partisan posturing and leading the nation into irreversible economic catastrophe.
Shock, anger, and disappointment, but shame on me for believing in him. *This* is Obama.
I am all for change. Obama apparently is too, but he never specified at any point in time what that change was. He could have meant a light bulb for all I (we) know. I agree… it’s all rhetoric! I want to know what this change is and if it’s worth while! I didn’t vote because I don’t want to be part of the PROBLEM, which (I think) is politicians in general saying one thing and doing another. I can and will bet that Obama’s presidency will be no different than anyone else’s term. Regards!
The problem is that we have brought up an electorate to consider only the glitz and not the substance.
“This may seem cruel, but all Obama seeks is the approval of a father he never had.”
Never underestimate this psychological handicap. We went through this already with Bill Clinton who never knew his father and had good reason to believe that William Blythe was not actually his biological father (in “First in His Class,” David Maraniss reported that Blythe was not in Arkansas at the time of Clinton’s conception–Virginia Kelley then claimed that Clinton was an eight-month baby which was a little hard to swallow since he was of normal birth weight and development). Obama’s obsessive pursuit of the “dreams” of his father was an early warning sign, at least for me. I was not interested in having the presidency be the final chapter in his life-long search of self.
#20, Ahithophel:
Excellent post, as usual.
Although I never even sipped the Kool-Aid, every time I heard PBO give a nice speech, I’d remind myself that all his deeds over his political career point in exactly one direction: left. And deeds trump words.
But, like you, the scope of PBO’s mendacity these past couple of weeks over the stimulus bill has shocked even me. Give his op-ed in the WaPo, and his recent partisan rants, it’s clear that PBO knows full well that the “stimulus” bill is nothing of the kind, but rather he’s trying to use it as a subterfuge for his liberal education, health care, and energy reforms. It’s really disappointing, and scary for our country.
And he’s still an empty suit. Who is pulling the puppet strings?
#24, I never sipped the Kool-Aid as well. I, like most conservatives, wanted Barack Obama to succeed. In fact, I *still* want him to succeed. For example, if he is considering reversing mark-to-market as NR’s The Corner is suggesting that would be a positive development. He is also continuing the Drone attacks on terrorists in the Afghan/Pakistan region. However, he muddying that up with all kinds of economy damaging moves: capping executive pay (read Andrew Napalitano’s excellent WSJ piece on this), signing executive orders that expand union power, giving states that ability to set environmental policy, this stupid spending bill being disguised as “stimulus,” signing Lilly Ledbetter into law, expanding SChip to cover the middle class. I thought that I could live with a split and allow a liberal that kills terrorists the ability to wreck the economy because the economy can be saved. However, Barack Obama is slowly becoming the liberal that I always thought him to be: soft on our enemies, hard on America, and clueless on economics.
Obama’s just another leftist, Democratic party hack, too bad. Too bad Judd Gregg is allowing himself to be used for nothing but show.
#24, RFM, you’re absolutely correct. Deeds trump words. Records trump promises. And apparently experience, executive experience, really does matter. To an extent, at least, Obama is acting exactly as one would expect a Senator to act, making overtures, vacillating, equivocating, then stabbing people in the back. This is why we’ve tended to favor Governors.
I never thought that I had even sipped the Kool-Aid until I observed my reaction to this fusillade of pork, evasions and accusations coming out of the White House. My disappointment and anger must be because I simply hoped that I was wrong, or hoped to be proved wrong, because I feared so much the consequences for our country if I was (if we were) right. But my surprise must mean that I believed he would at least be minimally competent and minimally ethical. I didn’t expect much, because his record didn’t support it. But I expected more than this. I should have listened to my deeper instincts, much though I hoped they were wrong.
Except for the junior Senators from NY and IL, all the members of Congress were elected … just like POTUS Obama.
When they vote for or against something, they represent their various constituencies.
They are also the change as elected by these various constituencies.
They, just like POTUS Obama, are “business as usual” as proscribed by the US Constitution.
Get used to it .. Mr. President.
I know it’s hard to avoid hoping, and it’s therefore hard to avoid reading every small sign as pointing to a positive. But the outstanding fact about Obama during the campaign was his mendacity, combined with an arrogant belief that he could not, should not be challenged on it. Thus when Rev. Wright’s rants first made their way into the presss, Obama smoothly stated that he did not know that Wright had said such things. When probeed (ever so gently) about his dealings with Rezko, he smoothly admitted that this was a “boneheaded mistake.” His deeds have always pointed far left, and his “moderation” has always been a camouflage for those deeds and for his dishonesty.
As for the incompetence, I think this may be the natural result of Obama’s ideological blinders. They have a natural tendency to keep people from learning from experience, on matters of policy. But when you are president, everything you do is policy. If Obama keeps on defaulting to his leftist axioms about the world we can expect a mishmash of policies that actually conflict with each other as well as with their announced goals, as in the “stimulus” package.