Real Clear Politics’ David Paul Kuhn asks, “Is Obama Becoming a Joke?” (found via Orrin Judd, who quips, logically enough, “Becoming?”):
Most presidents become a joke at some point. It’s a matter of when and how. Both points should concern this president. In Winston Churchill’s words, “a joke is a very serious thing.” Or it can be, when the joke is about a very serious thing.
“Saturday Night Live” has long been a comedic benchmark. Last weekend, SNL took its first hard hit at President Obama. Fred Armisen, who plays the president, gave an Oval Office address questioning why some critics were distraught with him transforming the country: “When you look at my record it’s very clear what I’ve done so far and that is nothing. Nada. Almost one year and nothing to show for it.”
Political satire matters when it is larger than the joke. The growing rap on Obama is that he is a man both ineffective and meek; a man who is loved by all and feared by none.
Bill Maher hit the punch line first in mid-June: “You don’t have to be on television every minute of every day. You’re the president, not a rerun of ‘Law & Order’… TV stars are too worried about being popular and too concerned about being renewed.”
Soon Maher came to his key point: “You’re skinny and in a hurry and in love with a nice lady, but so is Lindsay Lohan. And just like Lindsay, we see your name in the paper a lot but we’re kind of wondering when you’re actually going to do something.”
Jon Stewart has been in on the joke all week. On Monday, Stewart hit Obama for “appeasing” the health care and energy industries. On Tuesday, Stewart showed clips of Obama’s repeated campaign promises to allow gays to serve openly in the military.
Stewart to Obama: “I know you have a lot on your desk plate. But as a thin man who smokes, you may not understand the concept. All that stuff you’ve been putting on your plate, it’s f-cking chow time, brother. That’s how you get things off of your plate. ”
The Olympics only helped reinforce the punch line. The president went to Copenhagen to rally for his hometown. Analysts assumed that the White House was in on a secret. The president could tip the vote? But Chicago lost on the first round. The president looked powerless.
Many Sunday political shows touched on Obama’s Olympic failure. Was it a metaphor? On ABC’s “This Week,” George Will said yes. He listed Obama’s big initiatives abroad and the absence of progress. “Saying no to the president is a habit,” Will argued. “The world adores him and ignores him.” The digs came from all sides. But SNL brought the point home.
Wow — who on earth could have seen that happening last year on the campaign trail?
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Obama’s primary priority seems to be his legacy. He isn’t worrying about the current situation as much as he is what happens in this country after his term(s) as president are over.
I think what he worries most about is the next minority Democrat to have a shot at the presidency. Will the majority of Americans think, “Yes, I should vote for him because he might be another Obama” or “Jeeze, I better not vote for him, because he might be another Obama.” Will Obama’s presidency be viewed as successful, as mediocre, or as a disaster, and how will voters react to that?
I think that’s one of the reasons why he has a thin skin for criticism.
And I think one of the reasons it’s beginning to feel like he’s starting to panic is because everything is going to hell and it’s increasingly looking like his legacy will be the worst possible.
Steve,
If that’s true, it’s the worst sort of identity politics. If, for example, Colin Powell or Condi Rice decides to make a run for the presidency in 2012, 2016, or later, I have faith that voters will judge them — for better or worse — by their own accomplishments and worldviews, not by the track record of President Obama.
Of course. But that’s because the Republicans don’t “do” affirmative action. Any future Republican candidate who isn’t a white male will be understood to have gotten their nomination the same as a white male candidate would have.
The Democrats definitely do affirmative action, though, and it’s not too much of a secret that a hell of a lot of people voted for Obama because he’s not white, but not really for any other reason.
And he needed that in order to win. But if he louses up royally, he may deprive future Democratic minority candidates of that same benefit. I think that prospect haunts him.
One of the differences between any future Republican minority candidate and Obama is you would have to assume the GOP hopeful will have no choice but to run as who he or she is, since any attempt to run as some sort of stealth candidate would quickly be revealed and trumpeted by the big media.
In contrast, Obama ran not only as a stealth candidate, but as a non-threatening one. He didn’t say what he really believed except by accident, while at the same time his wonkish personality kept both Democrats during the primary and general election voters from fleeing to Hillary or McCain, as a more confrontational African-American liberal Democratic candidate who didn’t hide his beliefs would have done.
Obama can change the focus of his efforts from what he said during the election and what he’s doing as president, but he can’t change his personality — two years of campaigning would have revealed that sooner or later. So he’s more liberal than what the swing votes hoped for, yet outside of challenging conservatives when his special interest groups are all united behind him, he’s loathe to challenge either the far left or the Blue Dogs of his party directly, let alone the leaders of the Taliban, Iran, Russia and other foreign powers. He got all the way to the White House by voting ‘present’ kicking the can down the road and letting others do the hard work while he takes the credit, and is getting frustrated now that there’s no one left to hand off the hard jobs to for at least the next 3 1/2 years.