You Can’t Always Come Back, Baby—Because YouTube Never Forgets
But to govern is to choose, and between his words before and during the 2008 campaign and once in office, Obama now has a substantial paper trail — several trillions of dollars worth, as the above clip tacitly highlights– and more importantly, as Moe writes, a video trail as well. If you’re a politician whose promises invariably come with expiration dates, YouTube and its competitors present a problem:
It never goes away.
This is a problem because politicians have been operating under the paradigm that you can make inconvenient things from your past go away, if you really, really need to. And I’m not talking about the big things, like a dead girl in your bed or a federal conviction for racketeering; I’m talking about embarrassing statements from the past, flip-flops that you don’t want to dwell on, inconvenient votes, or just taking out your bad day on somebody who happened to be in range at the wrong moment. In short, anything that looks bad in a campaign commercial; but before February of 2005 it was a lot harder to show that sort of thing to people without the assistance of a professional video editor. And even then there were set media channels for that sort of thing, that typically cost money to get on, and you had to pick a time to air it, and…
Well, you see where this is going: we are now living in an universe where those assumptions are not only false, but they’re kind of naive. This is, of course, a self-correcting ‘problem:’ in 2010 we saw how viral footage and instantly accessible records somewhat dramatically resulted in requiring a startlingly large number of politicians to seek a second career as lobbyists. And that will happen in 2012 as well (2014, to a lesser extent); the easy targets will be hammered most powerfully.
The problem for the President? He’s one of those easy targets, as the above video shows. It was not a good idea to yell about the debt incurred by your predecessor when you’re going to end up beating his record in half the time; but Barack Obama is very much an old-style politician – and, at that, one not used to being called on his record (this is where a lack of re-election campaign experience hurts). He’s thus got four to six years of potential gaffes to explain away… and the worst bit (for him)? Everybody has access to those gaffes.
Everybody.
You can’t always come back, baby — because YouTube never forgets.
(And Download Helper, Replay Media Catcher, and similar applets help to ensure that it doesn’t.)
Update: No sooner did I drop the hammer on this post, than the following clip appeared at Hot Air to illustrate the above points, marred only by the horror — the horror — of Hobo Sans:
Wait? Isn’t Obama at the women’s tee in the last clip showing him taking a bow for his gold drive? What’s up with that?
What if Obama isn’t so smart? By: Noemie Emery | Examiner Columnist | 08/23/11 8:05 PM
http://washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/columnists/2011/08/what-if-obama-isnt-so-smart#ixzz1VyjeIY6L
There is a sea of video producers on the right salivating over the plethora of material (lies) Pres. Obozo and VP Bite-me have driveled from their respective lips over the past three years. The 2012 presidential race ads will be very interesting and entertaining indeed.
Too bad McLame put the horse collar on Sarah Barracuda back in 2008. She’s had three long years to focus her sights (warning…un-PC allusions) and reload for her inevitable 2012 run.
Should be fun!
The Democrats’ tactic has been to run someone with no record, thus Barack O’ Stupid. This may not be the Manchurian Candidate, but it has certainly answered well for the Dims. Beside the Dims, the media at large has no soul, therefore no irony, an essential part of a truly great society (think Arabs and Russians, who have no sense of irony at all. Literalism is their creed.) No irony? No need to defend anything we don’t want to defend.
If you are wont to dismiss this, it abounds on the internet, in the comments section. If I say Obama is a jackass, some lib will point out that he doesn;t have four legs, or a tail. If I mention that his ears defy their thesis, they act as if I’m crazy. Yet, they can get from rioters stealing valuable stuff for no reason except that they want it, to glorifying it because they’re poor.
I’m beginning to think it’s all very simple. Liberals are simply children. Only a retard (or a bad parent) argues with children. Children need to be kept away from sharp objects. Children need to be told what to do. Trying to reason with a child who decides that his poop should be smeared all over the house, because it would be pretty, is pointless. Liberal arguments are always along the line of “I find the easiest answer that makes me feel good, and that must be it, because I want it to be.” Just like a child.
Notice that any slight inaccuracy in your thesis makes it inoperative, while any and all magic unicorns employed to make them right, is just fine. Stop getting in the weeds with liberals. As Samuel Johnson so wisely said, “There is no point in arguing the preeminance of a louse and a flea.” Liberals are simultaneously both lice and fleas. Best to be done with them. They don’t fight fair, and neither should you.
AMEN John J,
The dem strategy in 2008 was to elect Hillary. They turned on the Clinton’s and voted for the black guy, because nobody in the democratic party could live with themselves if they hadn’t voted for the first black presidential candidate. It would be such poor form. Unfortunately, we are now stuck with a conscience vote for a president. Eventually, and hopefully after this disaster of a presidency (yes libs, it’s far worse than the Bush presidency ever was – even in your wildest nightmare), democrats will nominate someone other than a lying fraud like Gore, a faux war hero like Kerry, (yes I read “Unfit for Command” and still believe every word of it) or a do-nothing, no-voting, vacationing, partying, teleprompter-reading suit.
Obama thought all that would never catch up with him? And he was supposed to be hip. Tsh.
All it took was a few black and whites to pin Jane Fonda. The President will be done in by American ingenuity and American technology. Youtube is almost like green jobs, but not quite.
This is just another example of technology killing the progressive political machine. I think that Obama will be our last progressive President.
The Rove effect breeds a more conservative electret and the progressives have to import gullible voters from abroad. With the Internet the progressives may find it is too hard to find gullible voters abroad and will have to abandon their sacrament of abortion in order to start breeding gullible voters.
Will this be Obama’s YouTube Waterloo?
http://politicalclownparade.blogspot.com/2011/08/king-of-debt.html
Mr, Driscoll, with all due respect, SOME blame can be directed at the compliant make believe media and other areas regarding Uhbama’s rise. The information highway or library at our fingertips is available in most households.
This past year alone internet news sources surpassed newspaper sales. Immediate information is available.
It was the gullible public who ate up Uhbama’s fictitious speeches, supposed accomplishments and fictional autobiography.
As for Uhbama’s voting record, the following: http://www.ontheissues.org/Barack_Obama.htm has been available for years.
Exactly. Obama wasn’t devoid of a record. He had one of the most liberal voting records in the Congress (when he wasn’t voting “Present”). The problem is that the majority of people don’t care about someone’s voting record. They listen to their speeches and seem to think that’s what they’ll do. Some base their vote on race (why else would 98% of African-Americans have voted for Obama?). Women seem to care more about how attractive a candidate is. There are all sorts of intangible reasons for selecting a candidate, and these things have nothing to do with a candidate’s voting record. Other factors, such as a person’s character, seem to be way down on the priority list, as well as a candidate’s political ideology. You’d think that would be #1.
I’m sure that a few people will snicker when they see the YouTube video “Gotcha!,” but I doubt that it will change more than a few votes. Those that are concerned with the deficit issues already know that Obama has made these matters worse – so the YouTube video just adds “hypocrite” to the list of reasons not to vote for Obama, but the list was already long enough.
I think that those who were excited about Obama in the last election will just stay home, no longer excited about Hope and Change. They’ll just be discouraged. I think they really believed that Obama was going to be something different, as if “different” instead of “Original Intent” is what we needed. They believed the Charlatan.
I’d prefer that folks were voting FOR someone rather than sitting it out, but at least it will mean we’ll get rid of Obama and have the opportunity to have the grown-ups in the White House again. The rebound in the economy will restore the hope that people have lost, so there’s some salvation in that. (But only if we take both Houses of Congress.)
All but a few of the Republican candidates would be miles ahead of Obama in carrying out the duties of the President… that’s not difficult to do.
The economy will rebound quickly… but man-o-man, November seems so far away. But Obama is right about one thing… those deficits ARE unpatriotic and he’s made them so much worse. They’re ruining people’s lives – people are losing their homes and businesses. Regardless of what happens in November, what’s done to those people’s lives can’t be put back. Their homes are gone. Their businesses are gone. The emotional scars to their families are permanent. They may recover financially, but they’ll never recover fully.
I’m not sure which group disgusts me more: the Democrats who’ve caused the mess or the Conservatives who stayed home to “teach us Republicans a lesson for nominating McCain” and allowed it all to happen. I think I’m still leaning towards Door #2, because they KNEW how bad Obama was, and they did it out of spite. Now THAT’s “Unpatriotic.”
because YouTube never forgets only in the case where YouTube does not pull the video.
This is one election where I hope the right uses everything in their power to take down Obama and his destructive Presidency. Rick Perry is the only one in the race that can compete with Hussein AND the totally biased lap dog media. He can get under the thin skin of the crybaby pretender and keep him on the defensive till November. Perry/West 2012
Or Perry/Rubio 2012
I certainly hope that many people are archiving videos like this privately, and not depending on YouTube to keep them available. We already know how much Google adores Obama. Who owns YouTube? Google. I wouldn’t be surprised if by the time the campaign gets in full swing, these videos suddenly vanish. Obama almost HAS to get rid of this stuff somehow. There’s just too much to expose him for the fraud that he is.
Even if a youtube video comes out showing Obama in bed with a horse, he will still win because he has the most effective weapon known to mankind in the PC western world: elevated epidermal pigmentation. Anything and everything said in negativity or in contradiction of the O will be deemed racist, and after the 2008 campaign, I do not have high regard for repub campaigners. The MSM made McLame/Palin out to be the second coming of the Nazis, and the RNC was painted as a Nuremburg rally. McLame was reduced to a doddering old fool walking on eggshells when he spoke of Obama, to the point that he said at a rally “Obama would make a good president”.
Whites are so programmed with guilt and indoctrination from preschool to seeing themselves as “oppressors of people of color” that they will vote for Obama to prove how they are not racist. For those whites so presumptuous so as not to vote for Obama, the new black panther party will be waiting for them at polling places. They already know the Holder won’t bring charges against “[his] people”.
Once the first R word is thrown at the repub candidate, he or she will be rendered discombobulated and broken.
I disagree with you, ‘wreck. The race card is maxed out; fewer and fewer whites twitch with reflexive guilt when a progressive rears up on its hind legs and squeals, “Raaacism! You’re nothing but a raaacist for daring to criticize His Obamaness!”
That includes the mass of viable Republican candidates. Of them all, only Mittens might knuckle under; the reactions of the rest will range from a laugh to a sneer.
The Obama we heard in 2008 actually made a lot of sense. No debt limit increases, no added debt, no individual mandate, build bipartisan concensus, health care deliberations on CSPAN, openness and transparency, no cronyism, end racial divisions, end Guantanimo. Too bad that he was lying through his teeth, and the reality of today bears no resemblance to these promisses. Thank God for videotape, or he would have gotten away with these lies. We know any president will violate at least some of his promisses, but this guy has set a record. Bush 1 caught hell for one single violation, the read my lips promise. But for Obama we have countless hours of various statements and promisses that were completely ignored. And I am not talking about things he tried to do, but could not, but things he actually had the power to do, and purposely chose to violate. At some point a president must be held accountable for his pre election statements. If Obama is not held to account, we are basically saying we deserve one kind of president, skilled and constant liars. Some cynics will say that is what we have always had, but Obama is in an entirely new degree. As i said, most presidents violiate some promisses, but Obama is the first I remember that has violated almost every promise he has ever made.
I’ve been re-watching Band of Brothers this week and I found that Episode 7, The Breaking Point, especially resonated with me. The parallels between Easy Company’s plight as they were fighting to get past Bastogne are uncannily similar to America’s problems as it fights to get past progressivism.
The biggest problem the good men of Easy Company face is their own leader, Lt. Dike. They actually refer to him as an “empty uniform”, which obviously recalls the “empty suit” remark so often thrown at Obama. He is hardly ever around, constantly taking walks or insisting he needs to go to some other command post for meetings. As their First Sergeant, Carwood Lipton, says “He’s not a bad officer because he makes bad decisions, he’s a bad officer because he makes no decisions.” The men universally despise him and talk about him behind his back.
Finally, Dike is ordered to lead Easy Company on an assault against a German position and told in no uncertain terms that he must move quickly and keep going straight forward. The minute the Germans start shooting at Easy Company, Dike folds like a cheap tent and is literally a mass of quivering jelly hiding behind a haystack. His men ask what to do and he just barks stupid orders or whines “I don’t know! I don’t know!”. Finally, the batallion commander orders another officer, Spiers, to relieve Dike, which he promptly does.
The difference between Dike and Spiers is stunning. Whereas Dike is a clueless buffoon, Spiers immediately issues orders that get his men back on the original plan. He aggressively leads from the FRONT, not from behind a haystack, and Easy Company soon triumphs over the Germans. Dike dies during the course of the battle and his former subordinates say sarcastically that it couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy.
It’s hard to think of a closer parallel in film than the Dike/Spiers one when thinking about how a competent president with real leadership skills will be, compared to the hapless and helpless Obama.
You should really see the whole episode to get the context but there is a YouTube clip of the assault on the German position here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=os8l-CggUzg. Spiers first appears at about 5:15.
The irony is that Band of Brothers was produced by Hollywood liberals Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks and the episode was written by Canadian Graham Yost.