Mort Zuckerman has figured out that he was one of the rubes:
Obama clearly wishes to do good and means well. But he is one of those people who believe that the world was born with the word and exists by means of persuasion, such that there is no person or country that you cannot, by means of logical and moral argument, bring around to your side. He speaks as a teacher, as someone imparting values and generalities appropriate for a Sunday morning sermon, not as a tough-minded leader. He urges that things “must be done” and “should be done” and that “it is time” to do them. As the former president of the Council on Foreign Relations, Les Gelb, put it, there is “the impression that Obama might confuse speeches with policy.” Another journalist put it differently when he described Obama as an “NPR [National Public Radio] president who gives wonderful speeches.” In other words, he talks the talk but doesn’t know how to walk the walk. The Obama presidency has so far been characterized by a well-intentioned but excessive belief in the power of rhetoric with too little appreciation of reality and loyalty.
Well, I suppose he wishes to “do good,” by his definition of “good.” Of course, that’s kind of meaningless. So did Adolf Hitler, after all. And we know what the paving stones of the road to Hell are. Of course, I’ve never thought his speeches were particularly wonderful, either, unless by “wonderful” one means gaseous if not vacuous.
[Late afternoon update]
Bill Quick isn’t very impressed by Peggy Noonan’s and Zuckerman’s uptake speed:
Listen up, you punked, chumped boobs: We looked at Obama not through your rose colored hallucinations, but through the cold, clear spectacles of reality. None of what he’s done since has surprised us one bit. In fact, many of us, myself included, predicted it even before his coronation by people like you. Yes, it’s nice that after a year and a half of horrible examples, the truth about him is finally beginning to penetrate your skulls. But why, for the love of god, couldn’t you see it at the beginning, when it was no less obvious, but your understanding of it might have done some good?
Though, as he points out, useful idiots like them did prevent a McCain presidency, which would have been a disaster for small-government libertarianism. I wish that I were as optimistic as Bill, though, that Obama has wrecked the socialist project for decades.
Yeah, I too am one of the Rubes. I voted for the man . . . in the Wisconsin Primary, and that may have put him “over the top.”
Way back in March 2008 or whenever that was, a person could see that the pendulum was about the swing, the worm was about to turn (Shakespeare’s term for a dragon — the dragon was about to change heading and start breathing fiery destruction in the other direction), or whatever hackneyed phrase one would care to use. This was long before the full extent of the Financial Crisis was known. You could kinda tell by the way all of the Conservatives and Libertarians had lost enthusiasm for President Bush and the War in Iraq that it was the Democrats’ turn.
You see, the choice was between Mr. Obama and (ahem, cough), Hillary Clinton. Now we, the two or three Republicans within the Madison city limits, were not trying to “spoil” the election, to put forward the weakest candidate to be beaten by the Republican. And we paid little attention to Rush Limbaugh and his “Operation Chaos.” No, we genuinely believed that it was a Year of the Democrat, and it was a question whether we could stand four years of The Cackle without ending up in Mendota (the mental hospital or the lake, take your pick).
It was a hard choice. After Hillary Clinton let down the guard of her outer left-liberal and brought forth her inner lawyer for criticizing Barack Obama for wanting to talk to the Iranian fellow, whose name I cannot pronounce let alone spell, and do this without preconditions, I told myself that if my back was ever to the wall, I would want Hillary as my attorney rather than Barack. Hillary seemed like “the kind of lawyer who would go to the mat for her client”, or at the very least, not give away the whole store before the settlement negotiations on the lawsuit have even started. Barack seemed like the kind of attorney who would sell you out and that he was doing to ethical thing to do that.
Even in hindsight it was hard to tell which of the two would be less worse. For all of my praise for Hillary Clinton’s “inner lawyer”, there was that finding of her inner angry feminist in one of the countries in West Africa. A real “lawyer’s lawyer” doesn’t get all angry feminist, that is, unless that is a tactic. I don’t think I would make a good litigator or negotiator because I get all Near Eastern emotional in a high moral dudgeon with the least provocation, and a good lawyer needs to have the thickest of thick skins, kinda like ol’ Bill Clinton, and not like either of Hillary or Barack.
I still don’t know if I made the wrong decision because I think we could have done worse.
We could have done worse? I can’t imagine President McCain supporting an $800 billion “stimulus,” bailing out private corporations, or a health care reform law without letting us know what is in it. Would Hillary have done this badly? Probably. McCain would not have been a great president, but he wouldn’t have sped us headlong toward bankruptcy?
For those who imagined that Obama would be the new JFK, let the word go forth that if this is the best his generation has to offer, we’re in really big trouble.
As for the criticism of Zuckerman and Noonan, I couldn’t agree more. If I, a nobody, could see what a counterfeit Obama was, what excuse does the rest of the country have? Certainly they both should turn in their “Elite Opinion Leader” badges and shut up for a good while.
Remember Obama comparing himself to a guy trying to clean up someone else’s mess and complaining that nobody wanted to “grab a mop and help out?” I haven’t heard even that about this oil spill, where it might have been an apt metaphor. He’s not even mopping. He’s golfing!
Obambi’s supporters have often compared him to the cerebral Mr. Spock of the first Star Trek series. This is an insult to Mr. Spock and his Vulcan heritage. In one Trek episode, the usual pesky aliens had captured Captain Kirk and his landing party. Spock, left in command of the Enterprise, was also having his patience severely tried by an idiotic, pacifist Federation diplomat. After the annoying dimwit had left the bridge, an exasperated Spock turned to Chief Engineer Mr. Scott and said something like this; “I have come to believe that sometimes the best diplomat is a fully charged phaser bank!”
To which Mr.Scott replied with a smile on his face “Aye, Mr. Spock.
Very non-Obambi.
Bill Quick is on the right track. Politicians are what they are. Voters are just trying to live their lives.
The problem is this country relies on journalist to ferret out the truth and if a majority can not or are unwilling we get college kids deciding our leaders. You can get college kids to do anything with the right bandwagon.
A journalist that can’t see daylight needs to lose their jobs and find another. This is too important. We need to call them out and ridicule them like they do everybody else. This is a fight that has to be won and we need to take it to each and every boob and numb skull (when it comes to politics. In other areas being an idiot isn’t so critical.)
I’ve very encouraged by these kids with their hidden cameras.
Why not, when he suspended his presidential campaign to vote for a $700 billion bank bailout?
I well remember the sinking feeling that I had back in early 2008, when I realized that this superannuated traitor* to the Constitution was going to be the Last Best Hope…
*As the author of McCain-Feingold, a blatant violation of the First Amendment
The main problem is that the election laws are rigged so as to only present the voter with two choices, forcing the voter to deal with the devil they think they know in hopes it is a lesser evil than the devil they don’t know. Any time a real alternative is presented, the media goes about systematically destroying him. Folks need to wake up and realize we dont live in a republic OR a democracy any more. It’s time to water Jeffersons tree of liberty again.
Week after week, Peggy Noonan laments Obama. But I pay her no mind.
Before anything else, Peggy must “own” Obama. She has a duty to admit that she herself was a sucker. She helped cause this foolishness by purchasing snake oil when many of lesser intellect could easily tell it was snake oil.
Until then, her lamentations do nothing for me.
—Tom Nally, New Orleans