A Little Late for the Third Way
While the Democrats’ civil war rages on, an Instapundit reader quips,”You know, I didn’t vote for Barack W. Bush, but I’m starting to like the cut of this man’s jib:”
- Leaving Gitmo open.
- No trials for terrorists
- 30,000-soldier surge in Afghanistan.
- Extending tax cuts.
- Re-upping the Patriot Act.
And of course, George W. Bush ran in 2000 with the explicit promise as more of a continuation of Bill Clinton’s post-’94 “Third Way” policies than Al Gore, who was much further left than the American mainstream, even then. (And Bush was a continuation of Clinton’s policies in more ways than one of course.)
But perhaps because of Clinton’s southern good ol’ boy persona and salesmanship — and sheer lust for to remain in power for another four years — he could pivot to the center relatively seamlessly in retrospect. It helped that he ran as a centrist; his tack to the hard left after taking office is what led to the Republicans winning in 1994 in the first place.
No such luck with Clinton’s Democrat successor having as smooth a pivot towards the center, as Allahpundit noted yesterday — he’s willing to go there, but he’ll remind you how ever so painful it is for him to compromise his grand Chicago ideals:
Ace’s co-blogger DrewM had the best take on this afternoon’s presser turned mini-meltdown: “Man, if Obama is Spock, he’s in the middle of the Pon Farr.” Two clips for you, the first of him snottily reprising Bob Menendez’s terrorist analogy by comparing Republicans to “hostage-takers” on taxes — and then using that to justify his decision to negotiate with them(!). Note to The One: Probably not a good idea for America’s top law enforcement officer and military commander-in-chief to broadcast the fact that he’ll come to the table only if you play rough enough with him.
Or as Peter Wehner wrote at Commentary yesterday, “He has met the enemy, and they are him:”
It appears to me that Obama is a man of tremendous internal contradictions. He fancies himself as a post-partisan, post-ideological figure who alone can elevate public discourse. He obviously took great pride in presenting himself as America’s Socrates during the presidential campaign.
At the same time, Mr. Obama is a man of unusual arrogance who, if things don’t go his way, becomes prickly. He lashes out. And he begins to feel sorry for himself. Notoriously thin-skinned and accustomed to worshipful treatment by those around him (including the press), Obama is now clearly disquieted.
On some deep level, Obama must understand that, at this moment at least, his presidency is coming apart. It’s not at all clear to me that he’s particularly well equipped to deal with the shifting fortunes, the hardships, and the battering that a president must endure. Difficult circumstances seem to be bringing out his worst qualities rather than his best. And that may be what was on display this afternoon.
Scroll down the Commentary house blog for John Podhoretz’s near line-by-line blogging of Obama’s speech and its often Olbermann-esque rhetoric. As Rich Lowry wrote yesterday, “We’ve learned today that what really gets under his skin and makes him boil is criticism, and especially criticism from progressives.”
Wait, there are actually Americans to his right? This always seems to be news to The Won.
On a purely partisan level, there’s plenty of schadenfreude to be had watching the second coming of Lincoln, FDR, JFK, Spock, Caesar and Christ melt down. On the other hand, the last two years have done enormous damage to the fabric of the nation via the endless internal conflicts from the man sold to the American people as “no drama Obama.”
Will the White House begin to affect a more grownup tone beginning next month when the GOP Congress takes office? Why should we hope for change now?
I think the guys mental development stopped when he was about 17 years old, perhaps even before.
Since that age, he has been given everything on a silver platter, has had to work for nothing, has been told he is the second coming of the messiah and that he is the smartest person to every hold office in the country, perhaps the world. He has the best abs, the best crease in his pants, the best disposition, the best speaking style, the best…. …. …. …..
Imagine facing adversity for the first time in your life at the age of 49.
He may be in the midst of a mental breakdown.
Add to that the fact that he’s spent his entire adult life within liberal Democratic enclaves, from Hawaii to New York to Boston to Chicago — all places where a person can simply treat the Republican Party and conservative ideas as a mere annoyance or some strange dementia suffered by the less sophisticated out in scary flyover country.
Not only did Obama have everything handed to him by people who sought to use him as a vessel for their own ideological goals, he lived in a world where that ideology was never challenged (Bill Clinton grew up and governed in an Arkansas that even in the 1980s was still solidly Democratic, but it was a far different type of Democrat who would throw Clinton out of office as part of the Reagan landslide in 1980). So he’s never had to work hard to be given credit for things he didn’t do, he’s also never had to defend his beliefs against anyone or any group that could be a threat to sway voters away from his side. No wonder Obama and his staff seem frustrated and perplexed by the turn of events over the past year.
Clearly Obama is the poorest prepared – emotionally, intellectually and politically – president of the last 100 years, if not of all time. So much for his campaign narrative that “judgement” is a viable substitute for experience.
a man that claims superior judgement must eventually actually judge something and make a decision. The first two years of the Obama presidency have shown that he is incapable of actually making a decision and living with it.
He outsourced the Stimulus Package and ObamaCare and FinReg and refuses to accecpt the responsibility of actually being the President.
There’s a saying that goes, “Good decisions come from experience. Experience comes from bad decisions.”
Through most of his political life, Obama voted “present” rather than make a decision. Before becoming president, he had almost no experience doing anything in life. Seriously, what had he accomplished? What decisions had he made, good or bad?
Bad decisions – if they don’t kill you – can be a wonderful teaching tool. But you have to be willing to do more than vote present. You must make a decision and live with the consequences.
If Obama had to face 1% of the criticism that Sarah Palin has faced (with a smile, I might add), he would have a complete meltdown.
Palin has gotten stronger from the storm of criticism, while Obama has become weaker from the mere mention that he might not be a messiah. What a joke. Unfortunately, the joke is on America.
We’ve seen and heard a lot of critical adjectives applied to Obama: “Narcissistic,” “Arrogant,” “Socialist,” and so forth. But none of them quite captures his utter rigidity about his positions. Not rigidity in negotiation, but in expressed conviction. When he has to give in for some reason, it’s not because he was wrong, but because he had to “save the hostages,” which required him to compromise with the evil Republicans.
One could say many things about a man who simply has to have the rhetorical high ground. However, one must observe first and foremost that there’s a considerable distance between the rhetorical high ground and the moral, Constitutional, and intellectual high ground. Which brings us back to all those nasty adjectives in the paragraph before this one.
Is anyone ready to consider Mike Hendrix’s and Andrew McCarthy’s diagnoses yet?
“At the same time, Mr. Obama is a man of unusual arrogance who, if things don’t go his way, becomes prickly. He lashes out. And he begins to feel sorry for himself. Notoriously thin-skinned and accustomed to worshipful treatment by those around him (including the press), Obama is now clearly disquieted.”
Nixon?
Nail on the head, Boyd. Obama’s “Let me be clear . . .” and “Understand this . . .” prefaces remind me of Nixon’s “Let me say this about that . . .” wind ups. Except Obama’s have an extra helping of arrogance to make his verbal tic all the more irritating.
To me it seems pretty simple, unlike most of his peers, Pres. Obama has turned out to be a not-so high-function sociopath.
I hadn’t even carried it that far Vinnie, but the similarities are getting to be uncanny, aren’t they? Next question – what did the plumbers do last night and what does the President know about it?
I recall watching the Nixon Gang show on TV every afternoon with my radical friends in the 70′s and still remember how entertaining it was. I’m buying a new plasma TV this week just to be ready for the new show.
You forgot Gilgamesh and Ozymandias.
I’ll say it again. Obama is a ventriloquist’s dummy. His petulance reminds me of the staged arguments between Charlie McCarthy and Edgar Bergen. The question remains: who’s Obama’s ventriloquist? Who is writing the script for his teleprompter – when he remembers to use one? Who picked him in the first place? And why?
So now the extreme Left has found out what everyone else has known for along time; the emperor has no clothes.