The Week Obama Jumped the Shark
At Commentary, Peter Wehner runs down the president’s assorted recent miscues:
- Goofy ahistoric lectures on the Supreme Court from a man who sold himself to the public as “a constitutional law professor.”
- Claming that ObamaCare was passed by “a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress,” when it barely squeaked through, with no Republican support.
- “Then there’s Obama’s confusion about judicial activism,” Wehner adds, before concluding:
What the president said, then, was so ill-informed, so ignorant, that people assumed he must know better. There’s no way we can know. But whatever the case, this has been quite a bad stretch for the president. His comments about the Supreme Court, when combined with his astonishingly dishonest attack on the House GOP budget (see here for more), portray a president who is living in a fantasy world — a place where facts and history are inverted, lies become truth, where everything is subordinated to ambition and you simply make things up as you go along. Nietzsche referred to this mindset as the “will to power.” In American politics it’s known as The Chicago Way.
I don’t know what the political effect of all this will be. But intellectually, this is the week where Barack Obama jumped the shark. In a deep, fundamental way, he is no longer a serious man. Nor an honest one. His public words are now purposefully bleached of truth. And that is a painful thing to have to say about an American president.
While he’s not too keen on the sovereignty of the Supreme Court, fortunately, the president obviously respects the independence of his self-described “non-official campaign staff” the Fourth Estate:
“This bears on your reporting,” President Obama said to journalists. “I think that there is oftentimes the impulse to suggest that if the two parties are disagreeing then they’re equally at fault and the truth lies somewhere in the middle. And an equivalence is presented which I think reinforces peoples’ cynicism about Washington in general. This is not one of those situations where there’s an equivalency.”
“As all of you are doing your reporting, I think it’s important to remember that the positions that I am taking now on the budget and a host of other issues. if we had been having this discussion 20 years ago or even 15 years ago … would’ve been considered squarely centrist positions,” Obama said a few moments later.
And in turn, the AP isn’t afraid to Speak Truth to Power:
“Why is Obama so rattled?”Andrew Malcolm asks at Investor’s Business Daily. While Malcolm has plenty of thoughts on the topic himself, Elizabeth Scalia (aka the Anchoress) responds, “Seems to me, [Obama is] having a hard time hiding his anger. And the angrier he gets, the more he struggles. Any creature trapped in a net knows that flailing about only further ensnares. No-Drama Obama needs to chill; if he can’t relax, he’s toast.”
Or as the Professor responds, “He knows he’s in over his head, and he’s lashing out.”
Related: “Don’t get distracted by all the fancy tonguework,” Michael Ledeen writes. “Election Year 2012 is all about power (his) and freedom (ours).”
More: At the Tatler, “Former Obama Con Law Student Embarrassed by His Former Teacher’s Ignorance.”
Since nobody has shut down more major newspapers in the United States over the past 30 years and put journalists and other support staff on the unemployment lines than William Dean Singleton, he’s actually a very appropriate person to introduce Barack Obama (and like politicians who have ‘grown in office’ according to the media by moving to the left, Singleton has also rehabilitated his image among media types over the past decade by showing them he’s not just a heartless, newspaper-closing, job-killing media baron — he’s a kind, caring pro-Obama newspaper-closing, job-killing media baron).
See, the main thing is not to care but to keep up appearances, mouth the right pieties, and buy the right indulgences.
It makes all the difference, while we’re getting reamed, if we get told in a convincing voice “I feel your pain”…
“In a deep, fundamental way, he is no longer a serious man. Nor an honest one.” Was he ever either?
Never, SD. The emperorer was always naked.
It’s just, as Ed pointed out in this post, that we’ve finally(!) reached the point in the story where the little boy’s pointed out that fact and His Maj’s desperately (and unscuccessfully) grabbing for fig leaves, legs crossed for dear life.
The illusion of nonpareil finery has shattered and cannot be regained. Not when even the Danish media types are “punching above their weight” to laugh at the naked bandy little legs of the shivering monarch.
That handful of responsible adults in the Democrat party must be reeling.
You can say he is jumping all you want, but he still is ahead in the polls.
““In a deep, fundamental way, he is no longer a serious man. Nor an honest one.” Was he ever either?”
He never was, and anyone who ever thought so shouldn’t be able to have their opinions trusted.
He was and is a typical leftie, which this paragraph describes very well:
“a president who is living in a fantasy world — a place where facts and history are inverted, lies become truth, where everything is subordinated to ambition and you simply make things up as you go along.”
This is what the left does. They will change facts around to fit their current narrative, and they will change them again the next day if that suits them better. Or even the next sentence. Facts aren’t worth anything against compared to their current opinions, and their feelings trumphs both.
AP Chairman, Dean Lickspittle.
Let’s face it: The Won made it to his 40′s without ever encountering any serious opposition. After that much reinforcement, he has to be utterly gobsmacked at any opposition to his will.
From a non-intellectual perspective: just want him gone! I want the whole Che loving, ostensible ‘truth to power’ crowd defeated so completely at the ballot box that the victors will not buckle under the shallow media critiques and develope a solid, fundamental fix to the fiscal disaster which is congressional budgeting & spending.
No too mention bolster our kick-ass stature as a world power again.
It was more than 1 shark:
The week started with the Mexico-US-Canada summit, where Obama ignored the Trans-Pacific oil, trade, and security issues to warn the SCOTUS. This Summit story reflects The Won’s incompetence in so many levels:
- the “smart diplomacy” of alienating Mx and Cn
- the oil/Keystone aspect
- the gadawful press conference
- the media complicity
- and the Constitutional ignorance.
Ah yes, Dean Singleton… the man who said the internet was nothing more than the modern-day CB radio and proclaimed his Denver Post won the newspaper war against the Rocky Mountain News because it weighed more. Pardon me Mr. Singleton, if I do not take what you — or anybody in the media, for that matter — have to say too seriously.
When Fonzi jumped the shark (IIRC) it was a momentous event, a sudden departure from the narrative. This past week for Obama, though cringe-worthy, is only a continuation of the dishonest, self-serving, unconstitutional manner of doing business Obama and his minions have employed since he began to run for office. This might be a noteworthy week for the number of examples and their rapidity, (and you forgot his total ineptitude with Harper and Calderon — our closest and probably most important neighbors — but it is certainly not a departure from his modus operandi. In terms he himself made popular recently, this president is punching well below his weight. If he were a prizefighter, the coach would long ago have sent him to the showers with the admonition that he take up a different sport.
We need to be prepared to fight back. The battle is starting and it is going to get far worse. Many are depressed that Mitt Romney cannot defend against Alexrod and his media allies unleashing the attack on LDS/Mormonism we all know is coming (heck O’Donnell started it just a day or so ago). Why not fight back? Barack Obama was going to Jeremiah Wright’s church only four years ago. Mitt and the GOP have to be prepared to fight this sort of attack when it occurs.
Here is an example: Ann Romney was accused of supporting child prostitution? The Village Voice back page attack on Ann Romney was so over the top, so ridiculous in theory, that it actually is a gift to beat the media with. Talk about hypocrisy and a war on women? It was an insane attack and we should be attacking the media for this crap.
> Claming that ObamaCare was passed by “a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress,”
Obviously he was misquoted. What he really said was that ObamaCare was passed by “a stromg majority of the Democrats elected to Congress.”
Regarding Obamas attack on the Ryan plan.
1. Spending vs GDP under the last year of clinton was 18%, and we had a balanced budget. I dont hear dems today decrying that year as one of heartless social darwinism.
2. Spending vs GDP under Obama has risen to an unprecedently bloated 24%, more than any previous administration since WW2.
3. Neither the Obama budget, nor the house dem budget, bring that unprecendented level of spending down significantly. Rather they attempted to support this unprecedentedly high spending with tax hikes. And the dem senate has no budget at all (and note that since the budget only requires 51 votes, and cant be filibustered, if they blame repub opposition they are lying).
4. Compared to Clinton, the Ryan plan brings spending down to a relatively high 20% of GDP, 2% of gdp more than clinton. Yet now the ryan plan is decryed as huge cuts and heartless social darwinism.
5. Does Obama really think we will beleive this crap, and that nobody is capable of looking at the historical record, and doing simple math? Of course maybe he does think 51% of us will beleive it, since he knows the MSM will support his lies, and too many of the rubes wont check out the simple numerical truth, and wont beleive it when they hear it.
6. This is the most consequential election in history. The choice will be whether we remain as america, or become greece.
I wonder how many times President Obama’s {remarkably ill-informed) comments have been revised and “explained” over the last 5 years?
President Bush was never a gifted speaker, but you always knew what he meant.
I thought the new phrase was “nuked the refrigerator.”
At the rate things are going, tar and feathers is starting to look like a best-case scenario.
I thought he jumped the shark back in 2008 or 2009