‘What we have here is a failure to communicate.’ This is what the White House thinks is at the root of its current political difficulties. Jeff Zelany of the NYT writes that sources in Washington say the President will not change course. He will simply try to explain it to an obtuse public in a clearer way.
When Mr. Obama presents his first State of the Union address on Wednesday evening, aides said he would accept responsibility, though not necessarily blame, for failing to deliver swiftly on some of the changes he promised a year ago. But he will not, aides said, accede to criticism that his priorities are out of step with the nation’s.
As Mr. Obama navigates a crossroads of his presidency, a moment when he signals what lessons he has drawn from his first year in office, the public posture of the White House is that any shortcomings are the result of failing to explain effectively what they were doing — and why.
Advertisement
But there is concern among some pundits that the President may have put the cart before the horse. According to Kate Pickert of Time, a majority of Americans believe that the health care system isn’t broken enough to require the kind of fix that President Obama proposes — even if it were a “fix”. The lessons drawn from the earlier Clinton attempts was that the problem wasn’t explained thoroughly enough. They confidently believed that with a little more education the public would get it. Unfortunately, they still have not.
A new survey from the highly respected Robert Wood Johnson Foundation indicates that slightly more Americans are confident in their ability to access and afford health care than they were in May 2009. Despite all the town halls, the rallies organized by pro-reform progressive groups, the pro-reform television ad campaigns, the Congressional hearings featuring Americans injured by a flawed insurance apparatus, the public is simply not convinced that the health care system is broken enough that it needs to be changed dramatically. (And I might add, despite all the reporting that’s been done about how broken the U.S. health care system is.)
In conversations with pro-reform policy experts and Democratic political aides throughout 2009, I heard it said that one reason Bill Clinton’s 1994 health reform efforts failed was that things weren’t bad enough back then. But fifteen years later, I was told, enough people had had negative experiences with their insurance companies over denied claims. Enough people had seen their premiums skyrocket. Enough people had found themselves suddenly and terrifyingly uninsured. But this turned out not to be true. Most people in America are still happy with their health care coverage and their health care. And most believe they will continue to be happy, despite Democrats’ effort to convince the public that the system is buckling and will eventually cost Americans far more than they can afford. Nope, this message did not get through.
All the way up to the State of the Union speech, the President’s aide’s were debating which parts of the health care proposal to use as sales points to a dubious public. The New York Times article says they are poring over the polls to see what items have support and which items do not. They will change their message to suit.
The White House press secretary, Robert Gibbs, on Tuesday pointed to public opinion polls that showed a strong majority of Americans support many of the specific proposals inside the overall health care plan, but opposed the plan because of the messy legislative process surrounding the bill. …
The State of the Union address, which is Mr. Obama’s third appearance before a joint session of Congress, offers an opportunity for the president to restate the goals of his administration as he tries to turn the election-year conversation to the economy. The speech will be punctuated with a handful of new ideas — calling for a spending freeze on a portion of the domestic budget — but aides said it would largely be an opportunity for Mr. Obama to return to the proposals that swept him into office.
“Democrats are really looking for that spark again,” said David Young, chairman of the North Carolina Democratic Party.
And they figure they’re going to get that spark with a little more emphasis and a little more repackaging.
Tip Jar or Subscribe for $5
Off topic, but really good column by The Anchoress:
http://www.firstthings.com/blogs/theanchoress/2010/01/27/obamaporta-prompta-symptom-of-distress/#comments
The best analysis I heard of the healthcare debacle was that almost everybody wanted healthcare reform that would lower cost, but Obama’s priority was expanding coverage even though that probably meant more cost for most.
Addicting 43,000,000 more people to the government teat was the priority because they would likely vote for the party that handed out this largesse.
On January 23, I tried to guess what President Obama would say in the State of the Union Address in a Belmont Club comment.
That looks pretty much like what he’s going to do. The ease with which one can predict his policies is scary and that indicates the opposite of his assertion. It’s not that he’s not being understood. If you can forecast his moves so effortlessly its a sign that on the contrary, he all too well understood.
What’s really interesting is that he’s discounting the possibility that the negative feedback he is receiving has any basis except in misunderstanding. But what happens if after speaking more loudly in the SOTU, nobody still gets it? I wrote then that:
I read that a 6% increase in ‘education spending’ is on Obama’s State of the Onion agenda.
Wow, a 6% increase in education spending; yeah, that’s the ticket to reviving the economy in the short term!
As most posters here know, the U.S. spends more per capita on education than anyone in the world, and we know where that has gotten us, right? Millions of candidates for ‘Jaywalking’ on the Tonight Show is where.
Years ago, Edsall [of the WaPo] and Edsall [Mrs. Edsall] wrote a book on liberalism. They were generally for it.
They figured it had not been adequately sold, although I don’t recall they used that word.
They had an accidental brain glitch describing the folks for whom the promises of liberalism hadn’t yet worked:
The young mother whose children are bussed to distant and unfamiliar schools.
The white patrolman passed over for sergeant by a black patrolman with lower scores.
The night-shift nurse raped by a felon released early.
The early shift workers riding the subway with the deinstitutionalized demented.
Then they picked themselves up and hurried on as if nothing had happened.
Slightly off topic by just concentrating on one or two aspects, but written by one of the best examples I know of our younger Americans.
Liberty Chick has her own blog but is now blogging also at Big Government.
Click the link and see if you agree she does a bang up job.
Papa Ray
P.S. OH..Gibbs is lying through his teeth again and again or maybe I should say ‘still’. He is just like Obama he has lost all credibility and is fast becoming a laughing stock.
But fifteen years later, I was told, enough people had had negative experiences with their insurance companies over denied claims. Enough people had seen their premiums skyrocket. Enough people had found themselves suddenly and terrifyingly uninsured. But this turned out not to be true. Most people in America are still happy with their health care coverage and their health care.
Reminds me of the dynamics of the Global Warming debacle. The true believers were convinced, and were certain that they could convince most people, that a cataclysm was in the offing if we didn’t acceed to their demands for drastic action and increased control. Use fear to generate a phony crisis that needs “managing.”
PJM’s running a poll right now on how many will be watching the SOTU and the number when I responded was 84% won’t. So he’s preaching to the choir, feeling good about himself and continuing to waste time, money, resources and opportunities. Ho-hum. Next story?
5. RA: That’s bused [transported] not bussed [kissed], I think.
Here are two articles that imho tell two sides of the same story.
Gold Chart is Ugly in Multiple Currencies (paper money is now outperforming the precious metal)
Fed Starting to Unwind Loose Monetary Policy, Could Trigger Secondary Recession
Don Rodrigo: Wow, a 6% increase in education spending; yeah, that’s the ticket to reviving the economy in the short term!
The President is going to spend those billions of dollars because he found out that as many as 50% of American schoolchildren test below normal.
Wretchard: All the way up to the State of the Union speech, the President’s aide’s were debating which parts of the health care proposal to use as sales points to a dubious public. The New York Times article says they are poring over the polls to see what items have support and which items do not. They will change their message to suit.
Yeah, that’s the way to lead a country. I was quick to get excited about the “discretionary spending freeze” they leaked the other day, but now I’m thinking the White House has been throwing all these trial balloons out there to see how they poll. So I’ll come back to this thread after Obummer gives his actual STFU speech and then pick apart his actual proposals.
I am touched, truly deeply touched, by how magnanimous Obama is toward us recalcitrant, angry folks out here. He’s going to retain his preternatural cool, array his teleprompter, and take the time to explain to us all why his agenda is the best possible tonic for what ails us. He hasn’t given up on us. We’re still worthy of him. If only we will LISTEN, once again, while he explains. What a transcendent figure.
What is that saying? “To the man whose only tool is a hammer every problem looks like a nail.”
We have a similar problem here. For Obama every problem can be solved by a new PR campaign. The very notion that there are problems that can’t be solved by painting a happy face on them and pretending is an alien notion to him, but after all, that’s all he’s ever done throughout his life. That’s all he knows how to do.
Scary, sad, and pathetic.
Looks to me like we’re still in
Stage 1 of the Kubler-Ross model of grieving over impending death. Stage 2 could be a bear with these people:
1. Denial — “I feel fine.”; “This can’t be happening, not to me.”
Denial is usually only a temporary defense for the individual. This feeling is generally replaced with heightened awareness of situations and individuals that will be left behind after death.[1]
2. Anger — “Why me? It’s not fair!”; “How can this happen to me?”; “Who is to blame?”
Once in the second stage, the individual recognizes that denial cannot continue. Because of anger, the person is very difficult to care for due to misplaced feelings of rage and envy. Any individual that symbolizes life or energy is subject to projected resentment and jealousy.[1]
3. Bargaining — “Just let me live to see my children graduate.”; “I’ll do anything for a few more years.”; “I will give my life savings if…”
The third stage involves the hope that the individual can somehow postpone or delay death. Usually, the negotiation for an extended life is made with a higher power in exchange for a reformed lifestyle. Psychologically, the individual is saying, “I understand I will die, but if I could just have more time…”[1]
4. Depression — “I’m so sad, why bother with anything?”; “I’m going to die . . . What’s the point?”; “I miss my loved one, why go on?”
During the fourth stage, the dying person begins to understand the certainty of death. Because of this, the individual may become silent, refuse visitors and spend much of the time crying and grieving. This process allows the dying person to disconnect oneself from things of love and affection. It is not recommended to attempt to cheer up an individual who is in this stage. It is an important time for grieving that must be processed.[1]
5. Acceptance — “It’s going to be okay.”; “I can’t fight it, I may as well prepare for it.”
This final stage comes with peace and understanding of the death that is approaching. Generally, the person in the fifth stage will want to be left alone. Additionally, feelings and physical pain may be non-existent. This stage has also been described as the end of the dying struggle.[1]
Like a lot of things that go on in DC, quite a few people are finally figuring out that the Devil is in the Details of “Hope and Change”.
Kind of like “War on Terror”.
My fellow citizens, and tonight, I’m talking to those of you who are generally a little too thick to comprehend things at regular speed, so I’m going to talk a little slower, about all the problems I inherited and your anger at those problems, that I inherited, eight years worth of overwhelming, exhausting, insurmountable problems I inherited…and have taken head on, for your welfare. Even though you don’t recognize it or really understand it.
You are angry and frustrated at my inability to work miracles fast enough to correct the problems I inherited, and you are frustrated at your own inability to formulate any coherent thoughts about it. I understand, but there is no need to worry your little pea brains about it…you got me.
Now ordinarily I would simply speak over your heads and address only the “educated class”, but tonight’s address is more…well…remedial in nature. I am going to fight to have you mainstreamed into the discussion, it’s the least I can do. Literally.
Some of you disagree with what you think are my policies and that’s ok, I don’t hold it against you. Unless you’re Joe the Plumber. You can’t be responsible for holding notions about cap and trade, because most of you think that’s how to identify Curt Schilling at a baseball card convention outside of Fenway Park.
We tried to give you health care, and I mean tried and tried and tried. We bribed people, we gave Cornhusker Kickbacks, bought off the unions…if we had brought in a couple deep dish pizzas, I would have sworn we were at Daley Plaza, waiting for a Greylord bagman.
The stimulus package was an attempt to keep the greedy, rotten, capitalist bankers on Wall Street alive, so that we would have someone to blame, in case no jobs appeared miraculously on the horizon. Well, it worked. I don’t expect you to understand high level economics, who does? But we lost less gainage that we anticipated while driving consumer confidence into a more deliberate cycle of downturn, while saving jobs of those not fired. See, it’s easy when we go slowly.
The deficit is just a number, like a truck is just a truck. Anyone can buy a trillion dollar buyout. And the CBO says that while the path may be unsustainable, it’s the right one to be on, if that’s where we want to go.
So, all you middle class independent types who voted for me …you got me. And that’s all you need to know.
STFU speech. Good one. I really hope he tries to revive that old time religion schtick that got him this far… It would be a beautiful thing to see…
Obama, that Latter day Elmer Gantry in June 2008:
“We will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal; this was the moment when we ended a war and secured our nation and restored our image as the last, best hope on Earth. This was the moment – this was the time – when we came together to remake this great nation so that it may always reflect our very best selves, and our highest ideals. Thank you, God Bless you, and may God Bless the United States of America.”
(Upon clinching the 2008 Democratic Primary)
Every time a tinkle runs down Chris Matthew’s leg, an angel gets his wings…
… they are poring over the polls to see what items have support and which items do not. They will change their message to suit.
No wonder Obama likes Chavez. He is like the Latin American Dictator who wants to know where the crowd is going, so that he can get there first and lead it.
Teresita,
… he found out that as many as 50% of American schoolchildren test below normal
You get the prize for quote of the day.
maineman,
Kubler-Ross is very linear and defeatist. It assumes that an episode is part of a terminal process and if followed as a predictor will always result in less contact and resignation. That may not always be the best idea. Sometimes it is a good idea to fight, deny, seek or receive unbidden support and attempt to explore alternatives. That is how progress happens. Support is not only of aid to a person who may recover but it also is a social good in its own right. We become more human when we show that we care and that knowledge will stay with the living. KR is 100% accurate at describing what happened before an event but only after termination has occurred.
Peter Grinch,
The payoff in Health Care for the Democrats wasn’t in the shifting number of millions who would get “free” care but in the hundreds of thousands of health care workers who would be signed up by the SEIU. Similarly the payoff for stealing the auto companies wasn’t in cheap cars for the masses but jobs for the UAW.
The medium is the massage
We may have to start calling BHO “Soapy.” He rubs me the wrong way.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kgNef0mgOeI
For as long as I have been listening to liberals bray they have been saying that we the unwashed don’t understand the program, pick one, that they, the learned, have proposed as we the unwashed refuse to vote for it. The whole arrogant bunch of donkeys need to go home and God willing will soon, so that the adults can run the asylum again. They kind of remind me of the bunch that ran Enron.
We just don’t seem to understand how much they want to help us live our lives as they see fit.
Hey, c’mon Life. Where’s your sense of humor?
Or maybe I just wasn’t funny.
Bleachers, on the other hand, was drink-spittingly perfect, no?
maineman,
cfbleachers hit the ball out of the park on this one. As I droned on about at length a couple of threads back it is really hard to communicate irony, humor or sarcasm in a text based medium. It’s OK, I’m not in depression just a healthy grieving process.
How can he say that healthcare wasn’t communicated well enough to Americans when in fact he and the dems were keeping everything behind closed doors? He makes it sound as though he was really trying to communicate the bill, but it some how got lost in the process. Truth is, he and the dems were purposely keeping it hidden!
You know, he identified the people he had not reached before the general election — the bitter people clinging to guns and religion (and apparently, their health insurance policies). I wonder if that 52% popular vote number had him convinced that he had a 1.9% margin of bitter clingers to play with.
Now, he hasn’t taken so much as a step toward gun control or religion (aside from disallowing it as a motivation in crime, other than Christians, of course), but there’s been precious little to appeal to anyone who was bitter before the election and a fair number of people who are bitter at his results in the past year. It does make me wonder who he believes his audience is, and how he pictures them in his mind.
Who is this crap actually supposed to appeal to? Union leaders, some on the anti-capitalist front, lower class people who think the game is rigged against them, I guess. He’s lost most of the anti-war left, he lost the Firedoglake brigade before Christmas, the conservatives are digging trenches and the independents seem to be doing the same. It makes you wonder if he sees himself as being perceived apart from the sausage-making in the Congress that has become the main refrain against the health insurance reform effort, and if he feels he’s being unfairly lumped in with the Congress, on what grounds?
The people with the closest feel for the mood of the American public right now actually seem to be the Tea Party folks, and he dismisses them (behind closed doors) as “teabaggers”. His peripatetic youth robbed him of much understanding of the mainstream of American life, I really don’t think he believes that he doesn’t “get” us at all. He’s not talking to people when he talks, he seems to be talking to a polling artists’ stained-glass impression of the American people composed of facets from various interest groups. This projection just does not superimpose on reality, thus the disconnect. No matter what he says tonight, he just doesn’t gestalt the nation as it is right now and for that reason the subsequent implementations of the policies announced tonight, if they ever come to fruition, will be chronically wrong-footed and tone-deaf. This is a huge problem, because it’s a rather basic step where the calculations have gone wrong. It may be why he is perceived as distant, aloof, uninvolved, inauthentic. He’s not talking to us, he’s talking to a concept of us that is not congruent with us at all, or off just enough that his words create subtle cognitive dissonance rather than acceptance.
Bringing back Plouffe is a great idea if he’s running for reelection, that move is two years too soon. If he was smart he would bring back Dick Morris. He doesn’t need better packaging, he needs more accurate targeting and it’s awful hard to call shots from within his echo chamber.
If the locals don’t understand you, you must simply speak slower and louder.
If that doesn’t work, show a lack of patience, get red in the face, and mutter aloud. That’ll do it.
He’s on the wrong course, and beautifully he’s decided not to alter course. No course corrections for this fellow, that’s a sign of weakness.
We couldn’t ask for more. He’s reteaching America a few forgotten lessons. My great fear is he will implode and somehow they’ll think of a way to make him a martyr.
He’s rapidly making Jimmy Carter look like a political genius.
Looks to me like both Fat Al Gore and Obama are melting down for similar reasons. Two many people have learned too much about the BS they were peddling.
And both had tremendous institutional and media support. Guess those institutions are melting down too.
“what lessons he has drawn from his first year in office”
They have already explained in ways that they just didn’t let the public know with enough clarity that it was all GWB’s fault.
If the American people can be credited for one thing over the last year it is they have collectively, after putting it under a microscope, determined that the health care system is not broken, only our government is. As a symptom of this malaise, the government has taken away that they are just fine and the electorate is broken and all they need to do is explain this in easy to understand propositions to the victims of class warfare then vigorously defend them against the majority who have the most wealth. It works for the Supreme Court, it works for the EPA, and it should work for two other branches of government.
‘What we have here is failure to communicate.’
It’s generic, not specific, no article ‘a’.
I’ll wait for the actual speech rather than guess about it – I doubt he knows himself at this early time of day, what he wants to say.
Mark Levin was absolutely on fire this afternoon, talking about it.
“but opposed the plan because of the messy legislative process surrounding the bill. …”
This is total BS too. People are outraged by the two thousand page “messy” plan itself. Sure the process stinks. But that has to come back to the pols themselves as well; the system did just fine for a couple of hundred years or so.
See, Darren, the problem is that you’re trying to apply logic to an irrational process. What it is that he/they are thinking can’t be the right question anymore, because if they were thinking they wouldn’t be acting like the world still revolves around them.
Now, we’re all assuming that his Hate of the Union speech will be what they say it will and what we think it will. I suppose there’s the million to one shot that it’s a hip fake and we’ll get something different. But even then, what would that be?
So we have to assume that this sad state of affairs is just that, sad, but also VERY bad news. This misread of reality indicates that he really is the Wicked Witch in Snow White AND that he’s surrounded by people who are too sycophantic or frightened to stop the train.
This speech is apparently to be yet another effort to get the mirror to tell him he’s the fairest of all, and the mirror has figured out that we should have believed the unbelievable two years ago, that he really did spend 20 years in a Marxist cult because he either bought into it or was just using it as a means to an end — neither of which is less despicable or pathological than the other.
The jig is up, and only he (and a few true believers) have not yet figured out that he’s a complete fraud. My hunch is that even his handlers see what’s going on but won’t tell him. Morris wouldn’t get near him unless threatened with death, I would guess.
No. This is a very bad sign, and it’s going to be very ugly from here on out. Hopefully, we’re gaining enough strength and self-confidence to start cleaning up the mess soon.
“The State of Confusion address by Barack Milhouse Obama” – Mark Levin
I expect it to be a bunch of confused pap and imitation Clintonian smallball, and lots of blaming it on others.
Levin was playing excerpts from Reagan’s first SOTU speech – great stuff. Of course Barack will blame it on Bush, on bankers, and call for Republicans to stop playing politics. He will make noise about jobs but do nothing, or use government money he doesn’t have to crowd out yet more private sector activity. And he will include several lines that will make me howl, where he assume the worst of society, and the best from his ability to snap his fingers and pretend someone, somewhere, will implement change.
my state of the union:
A Servant When He Reigneth, Rudyard Kipling
Three things make earth unquiet
And four she cannot brook
The godly Agur counted them
And put them in a book –
Those Four Tremendous Curses
With which mankind is cursed;
But a Servant when He Reigneth
Old Agur entered first.
An Handmaid that is Mistress
We need not call upon.
A Fool when he is full of Meat
Will fall asleep anon.
An Odious Woman Married
May bear a babe and mend;
But a Servant when He Reigneth
Is Confusion to the end.
His feet are swift to tumult,
His hands are slow to toil,
His ears are deaf to reason,
His lips are loud in broil.
He knows no use for power
Except to show his might.
He gives no heed to judgment
Unless it prove him right.
Because he served a master
Before his Kingship came,
And hid in all disaster
Behind his master’s name,
So, when his Folly opens
The unnecessary hells,
A Servant when He Reigneth
Throws the blame on some one else.
His vows are lightly spoken,
His faith is hard to bind,
His trust is easy boken,
He fears his fellow-kind.
The nearest mob will move him
To break the pledge he gave –
Oh, a Servant when he Reigneth
Is more than ever slave!
Rudyard Kipling
Strange to say, but I think the callowness of the electorate (that infamous 52% at least) may have saved the Republic: Obama’s year was 2012, not 2008. The Left, whether it knew it or not needed four more years of “miserable failure” before the country was ready for the man on the white horse. No matter his age, McCain was fated to be a one-termer, as Hillary(!) would have been. Can you imagine the eschatological longing Obama would have engendered in those brutal four years, waiting (already) tan, rested and ready like some modern day King Over the Water?
Fortunately for us all, the country was anxious in 2008, not yet immiserated.
The science of psychiatry would suggest that you can apply logic to an illogical process, though subsequent developments in psychiatry since the DSM-IIIR would argue against that in some quarters. As for armchair psychiatry…well, I’ll cop to the illogic (or at least fanstasy) of that.
I think BHO is a smart guy. He’s gifted in oratory and at assessing people individually in some respects, and I think he’s a well-educated and bright fellow. The disconnect is not a lack of intelligence, it’s a lack of insight, and those are not the same things. Somehow, somewhere, the guy that had the public dialed-in has completely lost the beat and it’s interesting to speculate why he thinks more of the same circa 2008 will work better in 2010. Palin has a brutal takedown of him on her Facebook page, and she’s dead on-target in a way that BHO has rarely been. It begins to look more and more like BHO’s genius during the election was more coincidence with a series of other situations that vaulted him into office rather than the media’s opinion, that he’s a born genius. Now we have to play with the cards we have, a Joker instead of the King that 52% of the public believed they were getting when they turned down a Jack and a Queen (so to speak).
It’s just interesting to speculate where he went wrong, did he ever understand that he was a nearly-passed fancy and not a predestined ambassador from the Eschaton? Is he getting it yet? If so, is he going to double-down on his ideology or crawl back to the center and make lemonade out of lemons the way Clinton did? I don’t believe he has it in him. Clinton was happy to be the good ol’ boy rogue that lunchpail folks could understand and maybe forgive, but Obama hasn’t every really been middle class. Punahou to Occidental to Columbia to Chicago to Harvard, he’s either been lower class or upper class but never in between. A lot of whiplash there. Obama doesn’t have much in the way of an inner Regular Guy to fall back on, and I wonder if he’s even able to mentally model Regular Guy in any kind of accurate way.
Sertorius, I think “Obama’s Year” might have been more like 2024.
Darren, I don’t know that Obama “had the public dialed in”. He had a particular dog and pony act that just happened to fit the times a little better than the competing acts. Nothing more.
Oh, you said that, two sentences further down.
Limpet6 @ 24 – I too share this fear. If he is a one term president, as looks more and more likely, the narrative will be sure to focus around America’s “racism” in rejecting the One. Not, as would be the case, rejection of socialist philosophies.
krontekag – how about rejection of an inexperienced dilettante academic fraud?
and
Holy sons of irony! The president believes that he needs to make his message clearer by telling Americans what he thinks they want to hear. Is it any wonder that many of us who live in “flyover country” have such a deep-seated revulsion of Washington elitists?
BTW, I meant to ask whether the Tocque has helped enhanced this site in any way. What would you really like to see it do?
23. Darren:
That’s because Obama doesn’t believe that he needs to appeal to them in the first place. His plan was to bring those uneducated rednecks, dragging them kicking and screaming if need be, into the 21st century and they would be grateful for it in the end.
38. wretchard:
I gave it a shot, but it appears that the Tocque.com server has a problem with internet connections that have a high latency (I live in the sticks and I’m stuck in satelite internet.) If I were to continue using it, I would have to restart and log in to their server every time I did a page refresh.
Darren @ Jan 27, 2010 – 6:31 pm:
[W -- the tocque works great for me -- see?! I really like it.]
Darren, I think you have a key point there. Does a narcissistic sociopath lack a capacity for empathy?
Kae Arby @37: Holy sons of irony! The president believes that he needs to make his message clearer by telling Americans what he thinks they want to hear.
Great observation, had me laughing out loud.
I suppose this means they’ll be poring over the polls in an effort to pinpoint and identify any possible sliver of sentiment that matches up with The Program. There’s just gotta be a way to meld what The One wants with what most Americans want. If there’s not, then he and his whole crew of czars and socialists/marxists/communists might as well resign right now. Or else resign themselves to the perpetual disappointment of being forced to govern in a way that doesn’t ignore the consent of the governed. The latter just isn’t any fun at all.
Wretchard – love the Toque. Definitely an enhancement.
49er Ref “bused”. Correct.
I believe the phrase is “failya ta c’munnicate.”
i can eat fifty eggs
Buddy. So after that, you get one cold drink.
That was *such* a radical movie –really, after forty years, its time has come ’round again.
I enjoy it when people tell me what I want to hear.