After noting that Obama and the Pelosi Democrats alienated Maureen Tucker of the Velvet Underground, Mickey Kaus tries to explain some of the reasons why:
A friend of mine says he isn’t certain that if you woke Obama up in the middle of the night and told him foreign troops had landed on the beach in Florida, Obama’s first reaction would be “Sh–, we’re under attack.” He might jump right to worrying about the root causes. Well, how hard is that uncertainy to counteract? You pick an America-bashing lefty, or a Hugo Chavez type, and you put him down. Then don’t apologize.
(Isn’t that basically Michael Dukakis responding Spock-like at Bernard Shaw’s question at the 1988 presidential debates regarding how he would respond to a hypothetical attack on his wife writ large?)
Which is one reason (among many) why Obama is a considerably different — and less reflexively American president — then either Bill Clinton or FDR.
Let’s start with the former man. At the Washington Examiner, Mark Hemingway explains “Why Bill Clinton is a much better politician than Barack Obama:”
Why is Bill Clinton a better politician than Barack Obama? In a word, triangulation. Bill Clinton was always seeking opportunities to emphasize his political independence from Democrats and liberals, particularly on cultural issues. After all, Clinton was the man that brought “Sister Souljah moment” into the political lexicon.
Since getting elected, Obama and his administration seem to have reflexively expressed the doctrinaire liberal position more often than not. But in a center-right country, where an increasingly small number of the electorate identifies as liberal, that doesn’t get you very far.
Neither does acting like a Daily Kos-style blogger rather than deal with those icky Republicans in Congress — which is what makes Obama the anti-FDR, Peter Wehner writes at Commentary:
Jen references Michael Gerson’s devastating Washington Post column in which he calls President Obama an intellectual snob. Equally interesting, I think, is a front-page article in today’s New York Times, with its simply astonishing opening sentence: “It took President Obama 18 months to invite the Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell, to the White House for a one-on-one chat.” Who was it who ran for president as a “post-partisan,” and who was going to bring a new way of doing things to Washington?
The Times notes that, “Mr. Obama came to office vowing to reach across the aisle and change the tone in Washington, a goal he quickly abandoned when Republicans stood in lockstep against his stimulus bill.” The Republicans, of course, “stood in lockstep” against the stimulus bill because they were completely frozen out of any role in shaping it. (By the way, my inner copy editor shudders at the metaphor “stood in lockstep.” “Lockstep” is a mode of marching, not standing, but…) It was needless, counterproductive, and, alas, typical behavior on Obama’s part.
As Gershon points out, Franklin Roosevelt was an aristocrat to his fingertips, complete with Mayflower ancestors, a mansion overlooking the Hudson, a large trust fund, the right schools, the right clubs, and a “Park Avenue Oxford” accent. But he ”was able to convince millions of average Americans that he was firmly on their side.” Obama has convinced millions of Americans that he regards them as fools, too scared to think straight.
So it’s not true, as Jonah wrote last week when linking to Gerson’s WaPo essay that “The Only Thing We Have . . . Is Fear Itself.” There’s also plenty of condescension and anger towards the American people. Like Obama, FDR occasionally lost it with conservative reporters and politicians, but at least he somehow managed not to project his inner snobbery onto the America people themselves, which is toxic.
(How toxic is he? This toxic. And it’s contagious.)
All of which is why, “This is not an election on November 2. This is a restraining order,” P.J. O’Rourke wrote this past weekend.
(H/T: 5′F)
It’s a mistake to think of Obama as a politician.
Just saying the word makes you think of Clinton or Nixon or any of hundreds of other Americans whose primary goals were to acquire power, exercise it and retain it as long as possible. A typical American politician has an ideology, but is more a slave to power than any political philosophy. FDR turned reflexively to free enterprise to win WWII. Nixon repudiated the anti-communist ideology that was his mother’s milk to deal with Red China. And Clinton, well you know….ideology was less important than most anything to him.
Obama is a marxist revolitionary, not a politician at all. Everybody knows this now, although most won’t say those words. They weasel around the words. But anybody with half a brain knows that he sees himself as a Lenin-like figure put on earth to destroy free markets in America.
Of course, his masters see him as a blabbering fool that they created in order to destroy the middle class in America, the key step in reviving the age of kings.
Funny you should mention the Age of Kings. Obama is taking up a couple of Mumbai hotels, including the entire 570-room 5-star Taj Mahal Hotel, as well as instructing the United States Navy to maintain a 200-mile exclusion zone, for his and The Bitter Half’s 2-day visit.
Clinton did a good job of triangulation. But look at Arnold Swartenegger – he tried the same maneuver but that left him a worthless and powerless shell, an irrelevancy in the the politics of California.
Why? For Clinton, he moved in the direction of the bulk of the people – he gave us more of what we wanted.
For Swartzenegger, his move was toward the entrenched Democratic party interest groups. Yes, the controlled the legislature and many of the local governments but the voters routinely vote conservatively when offered specific issues on the ballots.
So far, there is little indication that Obama will even try to please the center-right nature of American voters. I expect him to dig in his heels and continue to govern, as best he can, as an eager, dedicated progressive.
If you woke Obama up in the middle of the night and told him foreign troops had landed on the beach in Florida, Obama’s first reaction would be to sue the state of Florida. The man would not stand up for this country until the barbarians reached the gates of his mansion. Even then, he’d probably offer the enemy nuclear weapons in exchange for safe passage to some place that would have him.