Education, Media Criticism, Political Commentary

What Has Happened To Obama?

17 Comments

…absolutely nothing:

…the question on every lip is—as the title of a much quoted article in the New York Times by Drew Westen of Emory University puts it— “What Happened to Obama?” Attacking from the left, Mr. Westin charges that President Obama has been conciliatory when he should have been aggressively pounding away at all the evildoers on the right.

Of course, unlike Mr. Westen, we villainous conservatives do not see Mr. Obama as conciliatory or as “a president who either does not know what he believes or is willing to take whatever position he thinks will lead to his re-election.” On the contrary, we see him as a president who knows all too well what he believes. Furthermore, what Mr. Westen regards as an opportunistic appeal to the center we interpret as a tactic calculated to obfuscate his unshakable strategic objective, which is to turn this country into a European-style social democracy while diminishing the leading role it has played in the world since the end of World War II. The Democrats have persistently denied that these are Mr. Obama’s goals, but they have only been able to do so by ignoring or dismissing what Mr. Obama himself, in a rare moment of candor, promised at the tail end of his run for the presidency: “We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America.”

This statement, coming on top of his association with radicals like Bill Ayers, Jeremiah Wright and Rashid Khalidi, definitively revealed to all who were not wilfully blinding themselves that Mr. Obama was a genuine product of the political culture that had its birth among a marginal group of leftists in the early 1960s and that by the end of the decade had spread metastatically to the universities, the mainstream media, the mainline churches, and the entertainment industry. Like their communist ancestors of the 1930s, the leftist radicals of the ’60s were convinced that the United States was so rotten that only a revolution could save it.

And now they’re disappointed that they’re not getting one.

[Late evening update]

Sorry, went up to Lancaster to see the JetHawks lose big to San Jose (but we got a bobble-head doll of Fred Haise). There was a large contingent of XCORians who drove down from Mojave for the game.

Link was missing, but is there now.

17 thoughts on “What Has Happened To Obama?”

  1. I used to believe that Obama had an ideology. I have become convinced that the only thing he believes in is a puffed-up view of himself.

  2. And now they’re disappointed that they’re not getting one.

    Maybe I’m a pessimist, but I think they did get it and are getting it.

    If a conservative Republican wins the Presidency in 2012, he or she is going to have to systematically root out every Obama appointee from the federal bureaucracy, and every single person hired by his appointees. It’ll be worse than curing a termite infestation.

    I think we’re pretty much stuck with his judicial appointees until they die off.

  4. I think the link to the cited post is missing. I’d like to read the whole thing!

    Obama does have an ideology – that the US is too wealthy, too influential in the world, oppressive of foreign nations and of domestic minorities and too destructive the natural world. He is pure-bred statist who believes in “nothing outside the state.”

    At the same time he sees himself as the transformative leader of the modern time, and why would he not, since he has never been resisted until now?

    But something has happened to Obama. Remember that famous photo taken early in his term of him looking into a mirror? Now it seems to me he knows that no one capable of the office is looking back. His public appearances of the last few months have been bereft of vigor, inspiration or forward planning. This is a man who no longer believes in himself. I really do wonder why he seeks a second term, and other than ego and the perks of the office, I can’t think of other reasons.

    The problem is, he has already damaged the country so badly that putting his presidency into neutral now means it will coast a long, long way. So no matter what else of his overarching agenda happens, or doesn’t, he can truthfully say, “Job done!”

  6. “Michael Gersh Says:
    August 13th, 2011 at 2:13 pm

    I used to believe that Obama had an ideology. I have become convinced that the only thing he believes in is a puffed-up view of himself.”

    Yup. It’s not hard to figure out Mr. Obama. What a waste of time by the rubes who are finally trying to understand what makes their hero tick. He’s simply in it for himself, first-to-last.

    In my opinion, he only says and does what he knows will get him immediate admiration and applause from those whose opinion he values: hard-left-leaning people like himself. And if some Wall Street bankers and others who don’t lean as hard left want to chime in with adulation (and campaign donations in hopes of some favors later), it’s gravy and he’ll take it.

    He knows he and his family are now financially set for life. So in my opinion he decided on election night 2008 he’s not going to break his b@lls in tough negotiations about anything, nor sweat or pull an all-nighter coming up with a concrete plan for ANYTHING. He out-sourced to Congress all the detailed work on the Stimulus, Cap-and-Trade, ObamaCare, etc. Why should he change his approach now? (Not that he knows how to formulate or lead the formulation of a detailed plan for anything at his current job-responsibility-level!) As I said, he’s set for life even if the S&P 500 fell to 400 on Monday, so what does he care if 9-plus percent of the citizens are out of work, the economy is barely growing, and gasoline is 3-plus $ per gallon?

    I admit I cannot figure out why he’s running for re-election. He could make a lot more money and play a lot more golf out-of-office. He could get his ego stroked whenever needed by giving speeches for several-hundred $K a pop to carefully selected audiences at thousands of locations around the world. I assume that like any career politician who becomes The Most Powerful Man on Earth, he simply wants to ride that ultimate power-trip for as long as possible.

  7. Obama has pretty much continued the George Bush economy by maintaining huge tax cuts for the wealthy while continuing to spend titanic amounts of money on foreign wars. Trying to privatize NASA’s manned space program is an extremely conservative philosophy. And passing laws to force folks into the arms of the evil private health insurance companies is a plan originally conceived by the Republicans.

    Obama is far more conservative in his policies than Roosevelt, Truman, and Kennedy. He may even be more conservative than Nixon:-)

  9. “Obama is far more conservative in his policies than Roosevelt, Truman, and Kennedy. ”

    you’re right: conservative communist.

  11. What rickl said. Only I think it’s worse than just a couple of years of work. This has been going on for decades (the long march an all that), and this is just a kind of resonance peak.

    The only consolation is that like a resonance, it is about to tear the system apart.

  12. Growth based economy is hitting a few early rocks under surface, and the figurehead gets crucified. The ghost of Thomas Malthus looks smug.

  13. I admit I cannot figure out why he’s running for re-election.

    First, trying to figure out the thoughts of the tweaked can only lead to a headache.

    Second, Obama really has only one belief… in himself. The reason he’s running for re-election is not the money. It’s because ruler of the world isn’t available yet. Now if he can collapse the entire world economy it may become available.

    If it ever actually occurred to Obama that he is ineffective (not possible actually since the fault is NEVER within himself) he would become a drooling vegetable. He really is stupid, but in a very focused way.

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