“With less than an hour before President Obama’s scheduled speech, 75 seats remained empty in the recreation center at Cuyahoga Community College’s Western Campus,” the Cleveland Plain-Dealer reports today:
So organizers went around campus and recruited more students to fill the seats.
Student Jennifer Rahal, of Parma Heights, whose class was canceled today, was working on her art work in the coffee shop in the basement of the building when the call went out for more guests.
AdvertisementAfter dropping off their stuff at a bag check, the newly invited guests cleared security and filed into the gym.
And then there was this moment, when the POTUS and TOTUS were more than a little out of sync:
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YouTube Direkt
Both of those elements ring a bell; flash back to President Obama’s big rally in January at Northeastern University to support Martha Coakley, the would-be Democratic successor to the seat held by Teddy Kennedy seemingly since the days of the Coolidge Administration:
We are repeatedly being told over the last week or so that President Obama is still wildly popular in Massachusetts. The White House must have believed this since Obama decided to expend some capital and make a pitch for Martha Coakley on the ground yesterday in Boston.
But if Obama is so popular, why was the hall at Northeastern University where the president was scheduled to speak not bursting at the seams with good Democrats? Carl Cameron of Fox News reported that there were perhaps 2000-2500 people in attendance in a venue that sat 3000.
Then there was the heckler. Of course, he was drowned out by Coakley supporters but our president seemed a bit taken aback that anyone would dare interrupt him and not be struck by a bolt of lightning.
Watch Obama wait…and wait…and wait not quite knowing how to handle the situation and then, tellingly, losing his place on the teleprompter:
He actually had at least two flubs during that speech back in January; for what it’s worth, here are the gist of the gaffes:
It did seem like Obama had teleprompter trouble at the 2:45 mark of this video when he appears to draw a blank on what state he was in: “I want to thank the great senior senator from … this … (laughs) … I know where we are–Massachusetts–the great commonwealth of Massachusetts.”
Then later around the 16:30 mark, Obama discusses the stimulus package and accidentally says, “Martha’s opponent would have voted against those taxes.” (YouTube here.) He immediately realizes he meant to say that the $700 billion stimulus bill is a tax cut rather than a tax hike (he was closer to the truth the first time) and adds: “he would have voted against those tax cuts–would have voted against those tax cuts.”
These are not big gaffes by any means, but for a politician known for a silver tongue, Obama certainly seemed off his game.
But let’s return to today’s speech, which includes Obama finally finding a new Republican worthy of demonizing after exhausting all of the previous attacks on President Bush, John McCain, Sarah Palin, Joe the Plumber, Rush Limbaugh, Scott Brown, conservative and Hillary voters in general, etc. Or as Allah puts it:
Alternate headline: “Confirmed: Obama all but admits that Boehner will be Speaker next year.” This is vintage Barry O in a number of ways: (1) The giggle-worthy salute to “lean government” [vividly illustrated here -- Ed] as a way of framing himself as a centrist pragmatist (hey, it convinced David Brooks during the election); (2) the lame straw man about the GOP having proposed no ideas of its own (Boehner and Cantor are firing back on Twitter); (3) the endless bashing of the conservative villain du jour, which today meant Boehner even though, er, most voters don’t know who he is; and (4) of course, of course, the more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger lament about the politics of fear forever being practiced by those darned wingnuts.
In his latest post at Pajamas, Victor Davis Hanson has an interesting thesis on why the One seems so off his game these days:
Throughout the Obama presidential odyssey, an enthralled media variously dubbed him a “god,” confessed to tingling sensations when he spoke, and in vicious fashion turned on any politician who tried to question Obama’s actual record of achievement — whether Hillary Clinton or Sarah Palin.
There is no need to pursue the journalistic malfeasance that allowed the President of the United States to be inaugurated without any real past scrutiny. Suffice to say that any future presidential candidate who promises to cool the planet and lower the rising seas will be laughed out of contention — even if he puts “yes, we can” into Latin on his pre-presidential seal.
Race was a factor. Here the Left is correct in assessing its importance in evaluating Obama, although not quite in the way they think. At various times, a disturbing racialist trope emerged that suggested white liberals were enthralled almost solely by Obama’s mixed heritage, his diction and comportment. Not to mention the overall sense that he was a moderate and charismatic African-American that knew precisely how to put anxious well-meaning folks like themselves at ease — and that this was simply not true of the majority of other African-American politicians, and that this in and of itself would suffice.
Promoting Obama offered blanket exemption from even the suggestion of prejudice — a sort of cheap flip of a ‘get out of jail free’ card than ensured liberal elites could otherwise pursue their sheltered lives without guilt or worry over demands for daily interaction with most African-Americans. Elect Obama, worry not what he did — and at last live guilt free lives in seclusion.
That is a serious charge that should not be made lightly, but the emphasis on Obama’s diction, pigment, and appearance—rather than his actual record—is not my own.
Joe Biden, for example, blurted out, “I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy I mean, that’s a storybook, man.” Apparently Biden meant that the antithesis of Obama’s profile — a non-mainstream African-American, who spoke a southern patois, who did not appear bright and clean and handsome — most definitely was not to be a storybook candidate and perhaps likely to put off white liberals like Biden. (Note that Biden did not mention any particular achievement of Obama, merely the impression that he made on those like himself.)
Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid was perhaps cruder even than Biden. It was reported that he had characterized Obama as a ‘light-skinned’ African American ‘with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one’. Again, Reid’s implied antithesis — a dark-skinned African American who spoke with a Negro dialect all the time — would probably offend progressives like Reid. (Note here that Harry Reid seems to have been the first serious observer to publicly describe one of Obama most off-putting characteristics — the near cynical fashion in which he turns on not slightly, but entirely, different cadences and intonations to cater to particular crowds.)
Progressive Condescension
In short, Obama seems aware that a particular cadre of influential white liberals has traditionally accorded him deference not warranted by actual achievement, but rather by his projection of a progressive persona, as crudely outlined by a Biden or Reid — and that this by now is a normal course of events rather than an aberrant experience: Hence his anger that all that has at last begun to end.
It is hard to think that an Elena Kagan, Dean of Harvard Law School, would have gushed over the rather undistinguished legal record of Barack Obama, had he been either a well published, but obese white Harvard Law graduate, or a conservative African-American antipode to the Biden-Reid stereotype, perhaps in the Clarence Thomas mold. After all, it was not just Obama’s appearance or skin color or cadences that so impressed Biden and Reid and won over liberal Americans, but his politics as well that earned him an exemption not accorded even to an equally professional appearing Colin Powell or Condoleeza Rice.
Now What?
But enough speculation over motives for the origins of Obama’s strange and growing petulance. All that matters for the country is that the current president of the United States seems surprised that as our chief executive he is earning scrutiny not previously accorded him — and that he finds that demand for accountability both exasperating and abjectly unfair. Thus this week’s latest “like a dog” whine.
For some reason, Obama believed that those who expected after his campaign promises a real upturn in the economy, or fiscal responsibility, or inspired foreign policy would be satisfied, as they had in the past, merely with soaring rhetoric and superficial reassurance. When they were not, and voiced such displeasure, as ingrates they had supposedly reduced Obama to canine-like status.
On the other hand, even without that level of analysis, some administrations are simply snakebit, or as John Podhoretz recently wrote, “Something weird happens when presidencies go wrong,” but then, few previous administrations were tasked by their supporters — and themselves — with creating Heaven on Earth.
Oh, and speaking of Deja Vu all over again…
Related: James Lewis on “Obama, Alinsky, and Scapegoats,” at the American Thinker.
Well, thanks to the idiots who were convinced they were electing Superman but only now are finding he’s Clark Can’t. If there’s anybody to feel sorry for, it’s the 47% of us who were smart enough to see thru this loser but are stuck with him for two more years anyway. If he’s this bad now, what’s he gonna be like when he has a Congress that is in no mood to play nice with him?
How did Boehner become the default Speaker -to-be? Why not someone who has a history in such a job? How about Rubio? GBUSA
First, Rubio has be elected. Second, Rubio is running for Senate not House, where Boehner currently resides. Third, I believe and I might be wrong, but the torch is usually passed to the person that is serving as minority House leader. Usually. I can’t imagine them voting someone else in, but I could be wrong.
Other than that, though … great idea
Ego, self-centeredness and probably a little ADD when it comes to focusing on one issue for a long period of time probably go a long way towards explaining why Obama has to rely on POTUS so much, and why he chronically can’t remember what state he’s in at the time. He’s bored with the mundane tasks of the presidency and only perks up for the perks, or when he gets to do what he wants to do. Flying out to Ohio to back some representative he couldn’t pick out of a police line-up, or give a speech on an issue he’d prefer to let others hash out until it’s ready for him to take the credit, are parts of the job he finds boring … as he’ll probably deem triangulation to be, since that will require actual compromise efforts with Republicans if they grab the House and/or Senate. It’s way more fun to just think the GOP is Beelzebub and toss out boiler plate attacks at them before highly partisan crowds, the way he did on Monday in front of the union folks in Wisconsin.
It’s like the Special Olympics or something.
http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2009/03/president-ob-15.html
Anyone think the Fresh Prince of Bill Ayres is going to run for a second term?
Sadly, I do.
He’s proven he’s THAT deluisional so far, I see no cure on the horizon.
Mr. Obama will be so disliked by the end of his term that it will be the turn of the next Alinsky acolyte, Mz. Clinton. She will not have an easy time of it like Obama had, the main stream media has been outed as a JournaList propaganda machine for the progressive/communist party, won’t work a second time; they will have to wait for at least 20 years for another socialist/communist grab.
His appeal is becoming more selective.
But I hear he’s really big in Japan.
Stay way from the pods, Barry.
‘They talk about me like a dog.’ Aside from the misleading grammar, did anyone else notice how far from most Americans this comment from the Whiner-in-Chief places President Obama?
Most Americans LIKE dogs. They LOVE and DOTE on dogs. Most Americans would never mistreat a dog. We’ve heard the old phrase, ‘they treated him like a dog’, but today it’s largely in the Muslim world that dogs are considered ‘dirty’ (thanks, Prophet) and treated miserably. . .
Obama is going to be best known as the INCOMPETENT “ping pong” President for his inability to speak extemporaneously on any subject.
Without a teleprompter, this President is a stumbling, mumbling doofus.
If things go on the way they have been, it’s the Democratic Party itself that will pressure Obama to step down in 2012, “to spend more time with the family”. They won’t depose him for fear of alienating the black vote, and they might not even be able to persuade him, given his massive ego, but they’ll try in a desperate bid for self-preservation. But if all they can come up with in 2012 is Hillary, they might as well not bother.
At whatever time is appropriate (’12, or ’16), the MSM will happily take up the cry of Hillary and her “35 years of experience (TM) – Now New and Improved, with 4+ years of SecState added on!!” They will exhibit no shame in regards to how spectacularly wrong they have been with Obama (nay, they will not even admit that) and will simply undertake to do again what they did in 2008, that is, fool as much of the population as possible. And quite likely, they will succeed at it. A substantial percentage of the ‘Independents’ in this country are flat morons and will easily fall for another candidate whitewashing.
Ed, I love ya and all, but criminy, couldja have copied a bit more of VDH’s column today? Just sayin’
Like all the academics and career govt and NGO types with whom he surrounds himself, he has never actually been held accountable for results… in those circles, you just talk a good game and everyone goes along because they are all the same. There is no accountability to reality, just to your like-minded peers.
And he has not a clue that anyone might expect actual accomplishments or results, that’s just so far from where he and his peers have been their whole lives. When someone objects about lack of results, they figure that person must be mentally ill, racist or have some other dark motive, because actually expecting results is just not in their cognitive universe.
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