‘Something Weird Happens When Presidencies Go Wrong’
On Friday, John Podhoretz wrote, “Something weird happens when presidencies go wrong — presidents become incompetent at doing the things they were always able to do in their sleep, and their aides follow suit.”
I noted this when I wrote my first book, Hell of a Ride, about the decline and fall of the first President Bush, back in 1993. When Bush spoke, it rained, and his advancemen weren’t quick-thinking enough to move his events indoors. When he went to Japan on a state visit, he vomited. He was so intent on getting out his message of the day that he referred to it as “Message: I Care.”
Obama is heading in that direction right now. It’s hard to imagine what could have possessed him to take to the microphones this morning to claim that the unemployment numbers released this morning were “positive news” and that the “economy is moving in a positive direction” when the unemployment rate rose a tenth of a point.
And that was before Obama’s “they talk about me like a dog” whine today, and before a more permanent gaffe was spotted by Jamie Stiehm of the Washington Post on Saturday:
A mistake has been made in the Oval Office makeover that goes beyond the beige.
President Obama’s new presidential rug seemed beyond reproach, with quotations from Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. woven along its curved edge.
“The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” According media reports, this quote keeping Obama company on his wheat-colored carpet is from King.
Except it’s not a King quote. The words belong to a long-gone Bostonian champion of social progress. His roots in the republic ran so deep that his grandfather commanded the Minutemen at the Battle of Lexington.
For the record, Theodore Parker is your man, President Obama. Unless you’re fascinated by antebellum American reformers, you may not know of the lyrically gifted Parker, an abolitionist, Unitarian minister and Transcendentalist thinker who foresaw the end of slavery, though he did not live to see emancipation. He died at age 49 in 1860, on the eve of the Civil War.
At the American Thinker, Thomas Lifson opines on what such a gaffe says about the president:
Apparently, Obama himself believed the quotation to be from King. Stiehm writes:
My investigation into this error led me to David Remnick’s biography of Obama, “The Bridge,” published this year. Early in the narrative, Remnick, the editor of the New Yorker, presents this as “Barack Obama’s favorite quotation.” It appears that neither Remnick nor Obama has traced the language to its true source.
The error perfectly encapsulates the shallowness of Barack Obama’s intellect and his lack of rigor. Obama is a man who accumulated academic credentials while giving no evidence whatsoever of achieving any depth. He was the only president of the Harvard Law Review to graduate without penning a signed article in that esteemed journal. His academic transcripts remain under lock and key, as do his academic papers.
For the sort of people like David Brooks of the New York Times, who are impressed by fancy degrees and a sharp crease in the trousers, Obama may appear to be the smartest-ever occupant of the Oval Office. But, as the old joke goes, deep down, he is shallow. Underfoot, literally, there is woven into his background a prominent vein of phoniness.
For some reason or other, Obama has been able to skate through academia and politics without ever being seriously challenged to prove his depth. A simple veneer of glibness has been enough to win the accolades of the liberal intelligentsia. But now that he has actual responsibilities — including relatively trivial ones like custodianship of the inner sanctum of the presidency — his lack of substance keeps showing up in visible, embarrassing, and troubling ways.
Meanwhile, Bookworm Room explores the opposite of hauteur and pretension — basic common sense.
But while journalists from both parties have debated the authenticity of the quotes in the Oval Office, some of the more reactionary have even questioned the timing of the president’s redecorating efforts themselves, particularly on the eve of an epic midterm struggle, and with a flat-lined economy and massive unemployment. Get a load of this quote:
“There are times where you can afford to redecorate your house, and there are times where you need to focus on rebuilding the foundation.”
How dare they talk about the president like he’s a dog! Who was the evil rethuglican rightwing neocon deathbeast who would trash the leader of the free world in such a fashion?
Newly-elected President Barack Obama, in February of 2009.
Update: Welcome Instapundit readers, and fellow Ricochistas!
“For some reason or other, Obama has been able to skate through academia and politics without ever being seriously challenged to prove his depth. A simple veneer of glibness has been enough to win the accolades of the liberal intelligentsia.”
Just a wild thought…maybe because he was created specifically to appeal to the liberal intelligensia?
After all, there aren’t that many multi-racial, muti-religion, multi-cultural, muti-national, multi-sexual guys out there who are conversant in radical marxism, disciplined enough to hide and lie about his background and expertly trained to con the masses into convincing a country that destroying a country is just “hope” and “change”.
From http://easyopinions.blogspot.com/2009/04/richard-epstein-discusses-barack-obama.html:
“Robinson: You are quoted in the Boston Globe, “I like Obama but I reject the suggestion that he is an intellectual. He is an activist merely mimicking the mannerisms of an intellectual.” How good is Obama’s mind?
“Epstein: His mind is pretty good, but it is a clever “means-ends” mind. He has never written a scholarly article in his entire life. ”
Richard A. Epstein is the James Parker Hall Distinguished Service Professor of Law at the University of Chicago.
The problem with his presidency is that he is a true believer. He really believes that government is the source of progress and wealth. He became president so that he could finally be the one to implement top down plans that worked. He was going to show all of us how wrong we all were for talking about free markets and personal liberty. He was going to show us how government could really work. Unfortunately, he didn’t bother to read any history, because instead of his view of himself as the first one who really gets it, he is actually the latest in a long line of statists who continually try to make their plans work. He honestly doesn’t understand that the more he tries, the worse it’s going to get.
Thank you, Matt. Very well put. He does truly believe government is the answer. His government! It is easily identifiable evil his soul will not allow freedom. It is apocalyptically creepy that his ego — in the history already written in his mind — will not allow his name to be lower on the marquee than Marx and Mao.
Uhm, hey guys….have you sat in a college classroom lately? How ’bout a Law School classroom? If you haven’t, then let me spell it out for you: Dude is black. He flips between talking white and talking black at will. He’s well dressed, but “down with the masses.” There isn’t a law professor in the Ivy League who is gonna touch that…not with a 10 foot pole.
Seriously. Obama is moderately intelligent and utterly unaccomplished. It should be as clear as day that he skated through high school, through college, through Harvard Law, through the US Senate and right into the Presidency because there are way too many liberal white folks with liberal white guilt who go weak at the knees when they see a marginally competent (and clean and well-dressed!) black guy running for office. They can’t bring themselves to think critically, given the chance. A black guy (or gal) could say the sun rises in the West and sets in the East and these folks would bend over backwards to explain how “brilliant” that observation was, how it was a metaphor for the upside down world this black man/woman must find themselves in…blah, blah, blah.
If Obama were white and named John Edwards, or John Kerry he’d be NOWHERE. But he’s not. He’s black. With a groovy-hipster counter-culture name. Liberal white folks get all wet at the very thought of being able to vote for him.
Simple as that.
+100
I can only imagine the frustration and horror of Obama’s handlers when he decides to go off message.
Of course it’s only when Obama goes off message like this that we get any true picture of his inner self.
And from what I’ve seen of that inner self, we are in deep, serious trouble until this man is no longer in the Oval Office.
But, as the old joke goes, deep down, he is shallow.
That old joke was a 1960s media cheap shot against a successful governor and CEO who was qualified for the Presidency.
Barack Obama is no George Romney.
Ed -You are spot on when you mention Obama’s veneer of glibness. Glibness ranks number one on Hare’s psychopathy checklist in the aggressive narcissism section:
Factor1: Personality “Aggressive narcissism”
Glibness/superficial charm
Grandiose sense of self-worth
Pathological lying
Cunning/manipulative
Lack of remorse or guilt
Shallow affect
Callous/lack of empathy
Failure to accept responsibility for own actions
Based on a number of characteristics Obama has displayed, it is likely that we elected at least a narcissist and, possibly, a borderline psychopath into office. It is something I touch upon in this post: http://johnquincy.blogspot.com/2010/08/brand-obama-spider-and-fly.html
He can easily fool the liberal ntelligentsia because they are predisposed to buy into the victim mentality.
Wizkid.
I don’t see the superficial charm. My guess is the panting desire of his listeners to be charmed is what is happening.
Two further items. He won two elections by getting divorce proceedings unsealed, illegal as hell, and one by challenging his opponent’s ballot petition signatures. Not the record of an electoral avalanchist.
And there is some discussion that the new rug in the Oval Office has the VPOTUS seal on it. Not sure I know enough to tell. Anybody?
In the Sixties, I did two summers in Mississippi in the civil rights movement. Although I don’t think I’d be afflicted with white guilt anyway, I figure I have paid my dues and can call it as I see it. That tends to confuse me to a certain extent. Since I am, as it were, inoculated to white liberal guilt, I have no idea how I’d feel without the inoculation. I think I’m clearheaded enough, or pigheaded, anyway, for it never to occur to me. That means I have no capability, none, zippo, to be able to follow the white liberal guilt conceptually.
IMO, the bigger group was voting for zero in order to signal to themselves that they weren’t of the lower orders, the rubes, the hicks, the racists, the people who think arugula is something you call the vet for.
Hell, a year or so back, on another blog, somebody referred to republican voters as wine conoisseurs who know “red” and “white”.
Rather doubt that a cold-eyed analysis of campaign positions was taking place in that mind.
Richard A.;
Not to worry. There’s plenty of vicarious white guilt felt on your behalf by liberals, just because you exist and aren’t cheering them on.
Yeah, things get seriously weird when presidencies go wrong, but no presidency in living memory has gone everything so wrong or gotten so weird. This guy is so bad he is making Jimmy Carter look good, at least by comparison.
I forgot to add, that he also make Jimmy Carter look less unworldly, at least by comparison.
For some reason or other, Obama has been able to skate through academia and politics without ever being seriously challenged to prove his depth. A simple veneer of glibness has been enough to win the accolades of the liberal intelligentsia.
What, this is different from regular academia how? I don’t remember being seriously challeneged to prove my depth. “A simple veneer of glibness” is the coin of the realm in academia anymore; Obama is merely the apotheosis of what academia has become.
WizKid is right that Obama is a textbook narcissist (not rare in politics OR academia) who, as he himself confessed, is good at being a blank slate that people project their dreams on.
However, he is not “a borderline psychopath.” Psychopaths are a subset of narcissists and are dangerous to society at large, living socially deviant lifestyles and displaying obviously predatory behavior. (Think of most the “unsubs” on Criminal Minds).
If Obama were “borderline,” he’d have fallen apart emotionally many years ago and would have been useless as a candidate (“borderline” in shrinkspeak means not “almost” but “emotionally unstable.”); were he a psychopath, he’d have been jailed as a juvenile for violent or other criminal behavior.
Obama is only dangerous when he’s got his hands on the levers of power. If he were a campground attendant, he’d be perfectly harmless.
dicentra, you speak of “campground attendant” as if it were an unworthy field of endevour.
Fire.
Yeah. Picture a campground with an incompetent attendant.
My fantasy:
It’s January 20th, 2013. Washington DC. Sarah Palin is delivering her presidential inaugural address after having defeated Obama by 20 points the previous November. Just before Sarah begins, she pauses, a sly grin spreading across her face, and then launches into her speech with:
“My fellow evil rethuglican rightwing neocon American deathbeasts….”
“They don’t about me like a dog…”
How does a dog talk?
In his master’s voice, of course!
I denounce myself.
A shallow intellect does not think, he only pretends to do so to impress others. Therefore, he will tend to say thinks he knows will impress those around him, like his Marxist professors.
A deep intellect thinks for the fun of it. He does NOT care what other people think about what he opines; he finds his way through his thoughts by logic and his experiences, not by reading the lips of others. He thinks for himself, in more senses than one.
“Obama is a man who accumulated academic credentials while giving no evidence whatsoever of achieving any depth.”
Obama’s great talent has been the ability to strike the pose of the thoughtful intellectual, and walk through doors that others have opened for him. I suspect he’s allowed himself to believe he’s as smart as those around him have told him he is.
cracking good story! – regards m8te! =)