Robert Reich on “The Empty Bully Pulpit” (link safe, goes to the Brothers Judd):
Barack Obama is one of the most intelligent and eloquent people to grace the White House, which makes his abject failure to tell the story of our era all the more disappointing. Many who were drawn to him in 2008 were dazzled by the power of his words — his speech at the 2004 Democratic convention, his autobiography and subsequent policy book, his insights about race and other divisive issues during the campaign — and were excited by the prospect of an “educator in chief” who would use the bully pulpit to explain what has happened to the United States in recent decades and to mobilize Americans to do what must be done.
But the man who has occupied the Oval Office since January 2009 is someone entirely different — a man seemingly without a compass, a tactician who veers rightward one day and leftward the next, an inside-the-Beltway deal-maker who does not explain his compromises in light of larger goals.
Advertisement
Given Reich’s own issues with honesty when crafting an autobiography, no wonder he was suckered in by the presumably ghost-written words ( just words) by the man who would be president.
The kid never did impress me.
Just goes to show, the predictions of liberals are usually wrong. It is rare for a liberal to ADMIT his prediction didn’t turn out so lets give Reich credit where credit is due.
Did Mr. Reich ever stop to think that the reason Candidate Obama was appealing is the same reason President Obama seems so unseemly (“tactical”) and incompetent–because he is a very good proxy for an entire political class, including Mr. Reich.
And that the values of that class, while seeming admirable, simply aren’t practical. Hence the present state of affairs.
If the One-Third Reich was suckered by Obama’s words on the campaign trail, the One-Third Reich is admitting that he is a seriously gullible fool.
Reich is wrong in both cases — about Candidate Obama and about President Obama — for exactly the same reason. Obama spoke no dazzling words, offered no grand insights about race or any other subject; nor is Obama a compromiser.
He is what he always has been: an narcissistic empty suit of a man with no real accomplishment or abilities, save one and one only: he is a grandmaster of using the Left’s own rules against them to promote himself through the system. The affirmative action educational system (Harvard Law Review editor), the race hustler system (ACORN and gaining street cred by attending Wright’s church), and the Chicago policital machine system.
What separates Obama from the other Leftist hustlers who tried this is that he took great pains NOT to define himself. He let everyone else define him in their own minds — a blank projection screen, as he stated himself. He’s spent his adult life ducking any situation that would pin a solid definition of who or what he is.
He refuses to put out an actual debt deal because that would pin him down, he could no longer hold himself out to be (simultaneously) the only one above the fray, the only one willing to compromise, the only one seriously addressing the problem.
Reich heard dazzling words and insights from Candiate Obama because Reich projected them onto the screen himself. He projected a Greek God (complete with styrofoam columns), the ideal Man of the Left up on the Obama drive-in moviescreen. He’s still doing it. He’s still projecting the Leftist Apollo onto the screen, only now he’s realizing there’s something wrong up the projection booth. The words coming out of the Dolby speakers isn’t in sync with the mouth flapping up on the screen.
Obama isn’t living up to Reich’s impossible expectations. No one could, not even Apollo himself. Because Obama isn’t doing erverything Reich wants done — Veruca Salt-style — Reich sees a trimmer veering with the prevailing breeze (As if! Would that Obama could emulate Clinton and do something sensible. Obama couldn’t really triangulate to save his life.).
The reason that the film projector is out of sync is because for the first time, Obama, who’s sole skill is manipulatiing the Left, has to contend with non-Leftist opponents. His tantrums any time somebody dares stand up to him (Joe the Plumer, Chamber of Commerce, GOP. Isreali Prime Minister) are most revealing. He’s floundering.
The only reason he’s still in the game is the compliant media. And, whoops, as of the Carney press briefing, they may not be so compliant anymore.
Y, Reich and the rest of the Democrat/media complex basically saw what they wanted to see. The fact that Obama wasn’t, isn’t and likely never will be the intellectual giant they imaged him to be is really THEIR fault, not his. But Reich and the rest of the pinheads are blaming Obama for their foolishness. C’est dommage.
Words (just words) indeed.
These last few days Obama hasn’t even been ‘present’ and poor Jay Carney’s been haplessly flapping around like a fish, high water everywhere; oceans — oddly enough — still on the rise.
Reich is of course, mistaken. For King Putt has done a *fine job* telling the story of our era. The walls of the electoral burial chamber will confirm it for posterity…just nothing on papyrus!
Reich is literally delusional, as in clinically insane. I mean this a statement of fact, not an insult. He is also entirely representative of our political class, which is why problems only get worse. Our ruling class is truly frightening.
Obama is who he is in part because of his natural personality of a cautious, take-no-chances-unless-someone-else-takes-the-blame beta male, but combined with the fact that his handlers (Axelrod, Plouffe, etc.) knew that it was only that type of candidate who could get elected with Obama’s liberal ideology. Not even Democratic primary voters would have gambled on alpha male Obama with the same sort of liberal ideals — had he been the aggressive, in-your-face type of person the left wanted him to be as of 1/20/09, primary voters would have had their Jesse Jackson/Al Sharpton alarm bells going off and would have gone running to Hillary or that other paragon of honesty, John Edwards (who in hindsight, got almost as big a free pass from the big media in 2008 as Obama).
The fact that Reich is disappointed in the fact that President Obama isn’t who candidate Obama was in Reich’s mind obscures the fact that either Reich saw what he wanted to see in Obama, or secretly thought Obama was hiding some sort of cutthroat personality from voters in ’08 in the same way he hid the most liberal parts of his ideology, and is simply irked Obama didn’t crush the left’s enemies like they thought he would. That makes people like Reich today one of the two options they always try to pin on Republican presidential candidates — he’s either stupid for fall for the hype, or evil, for supporting the hype of Obama as a “bring us all together” candidate while expecting him to be a “grind the right into dust” president once he got into office (based on the same sort of liberal mindset that now calls on Obama to invoke the 14th Amendment on the debt ceiling and just bypass House Republicans completely).
When you’ve lost Robert Reich, you’ve lost…
Wait, who does Reich represent again?
…the Clinton’s.