When I last visited our nation’s capital, it resembled a trip to Lourdes, with the Obama memorabilia replacing souvenirs of you-know-who. How fast things changes. Only a few short months later, you can still purchase an Obama t-shirt or mug with ease, but it’s not in your face with a makeshift stand erected every twenty feet or so. Or maybe it’s just my imagination. Maybe a lot of it’s still there and I’ve become inured to it. Typing on the Acela from Washington to NY, this trip to DC already seems a blur, having spent most of it either in the house office buildings or the PJTV studio on M Street from which we broadcast last night’s healthcare forum with Reps. Eric Cantor and David Price, among others.
One thing we’re wrestling with at PJTV is how to strike a balance between CSPAN wonkiness and some measure of show biz. Sometimes you get it right as in Steven Crowder’s investigation of CanadaCare, which manages to be both funny and informative. Steve’s video has attracted a fair amount of MSM attraction and garnered Crowder appearances on Hannity and Beck. [I thought you were opposed to mainstream media.-ed. Well, I am, but I am also a hypocrite in case you haven't noticed. You mean like Nancy Pelosi? Are you accusing of Botox injections? Low blow. Well, you have been appearing on PJTV a lot lately.]
But back to Obama. It’s interesting to see how much he has aged in the short time he has been in office. He looks haggard. This is a man who has lived a remarkably charmed life in some ways, especially in the professional sphere, rising with amazing rapidity, so fast that whatever defeats he has suffered were but glancing blows. It’s hard to think of anyone quite like that in the political world. Even JFK, born with the “silverest” of spoons, went to war. So Obama may be ill-prepared when things don’t work. And right now they’re not. I know some commenters on here have suggested he may be on the way to a nervous breakdown. I wouldn’t go that far. Furthermore, nervous breakdown is a term of art, really, not of science. We may have all had one, or something similar, from time to time. Another way of looking at it, however, is the ability to deal with the stress in front of us, the stress that’s always there and sometimes turns into a big hairy monster that doesn’t let you sleep. How do you deal with that? Well, Barack Obama has his way and it reminds me of an old song. Remember this one from Joe Jones?
You talk too much
You worry me to death
You talk too much
You even worry my pet
You just talk
Talk too much
You talk about people
That you don’t know
You talk about people
Wherever you go
You just talk
Talk too much
Or to paraphrase Jules from Pulp Fiction, “Well my name is Pitt and you’re not talkin’ you’re way out of this $#!+.”
If you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail. If you are a world-class talker, everyone else’s smily face looks like a camera, and every question triggers a lecture. Talkers of the world, unite! Doers of the world, disperse, we don’t need you anymore!
Last week, John Galt was summoned to the white house, but he did not bother to come. Next thing on the agenda, Girlie-O-prima-donna will insult us all on prime time TV for our irredeemable obtuseness. The wheels were already coming off last night. The tax-payer-friendly blue pill was an anti-leg-tingle prescription for MSNBC vicarious big mouth in hard-ball foot.
There’s still plenty of time for him to grow in office. Clinton’s first couple of years were a disaster but his presidency as a whole (whether you give hiom credit or not), was a pretty good time to be an American.
Of course, as you note, Obama has led a charmed life and there hasn’t been much opportunity for growth through adversity. We’ll see.
Barack Obama has no interest in performing the so-called boring stuff. It is obvious that he is ignoring the everyday ho-hum responsibilities required of the top elected official in the United States. Obama is the only president in the last one hundred years minimally that has virtually no executive experience. This is a sure-fire recipe for a disaster. Obama basically wants to only go around and shoot his mouth off. That’s just not good enough. I cannot imagine Obama completing his term in office. Will he even finish out the year?
I am somewhat appalled that the American voters in 2008 selected two U.S. senators to battle for the presidency. What were they thinking? Senators basically only flap their jaws. Governors actually do something. Let us hope we learn from this awful mistake. Only those with proven executive experience should ever get close to residing in the White House.
The polls will continue to go lower. Few pay attention during the summer, although the administation better not have too many more press conferences in prime time or the polls will go even lower. Unemployment will remain high for a while. The healthcare bill will either not pass (and then one must deal with defeat on a signature issue) or it will pass and folks will be up in arms about tax increases during a recession. The administration is working in a manic way. Hyper-rapid decision making and pronouncements of changing the world (15% of th economy and setting the globe’s thermostat) speak of grandiosity. That balloon will get punctured by circumstances. One could then get depressed or highten manic denial or become quite erratic. It’s what happens next that is important. Can the administration be down to earth and be OK with that?
@4 David Thomson
Agreed. A governor, a businessman, anyone who has balanced a budget and kept a payroll, but not a senator, and even less a professor. Obama is supposed to have been a constitutional law scholar, only to ignore it once in power. Some scholar!
Ronald Reagan the actor? Well yes, but he also was a 2-term governor of the huge and unwieldy state of California. Anyway, we are learning to stay away from
agitatorscommunity organizers!If I had to bet, I’d bet on denial. It’s not that rare on the Left.
The alternative is to realize that the Left’s treasured dogmas don’t work, and deal with reality. At which point, Obama would no longer be a liberal. Not an impossible shift to make, as our host demonstrates, but a tremendous challenge to Obama’s entire worldview.
I wouldn’t be shocked if Obama is impeached by 2011 as being ‘unfit for office due to manic depression’. Whatever you want to say about GW Bush, that guy was a ROCK.
Tim McGuire: Clinton’s first two years were a disaster because he had a Democratic Congress. What saved him was the big influx of Republicans into Congress and Newt Gingrich leading the way for him. It will be the same with Obama, I fear. We’ll have a big Republican turnaround in Congress and Obama will take the glory when the economy turns around because the grown ups have come back in the house.
Maybe so, number 9, but as a fan of divided government, I’m ok with that
Obama: like the loan shark telling us his program is going to solve our problems and even cost us less while selling us a federally backed note we can’t possibly afford. Sound familiar?
Obama with a GOP congress = gridlock and the economy breaths a sigh of relief.
You forgot the last verse, Roger:
You talk about people
That you’ve never seen
You talk about people
You can make me scream
MDPSM:
The difference, as of now, between Clinton and Obama is that Clinton had already campaigned as a centerist and then governed to the left during his first term as Arkansas governor and was tossed out of office in 1980. He returned to power in 1982 by hiring Dick Morris and moving towards the middle, where the swing voters he needed were located. So when the same thing started happening after the 1994 health care debacle, he knew enough to quickly move towards the middle and throw his most liberal advisers (who were more sold on Hillary, anyway) under the bus.
Obama has Clinton’s history as a guide, but other than Rahm Emanuel, he doesn’t have anyone in the White House who isn’t a hard-line ideologue on domestic policy (Rahm being only semi-hard, in that he was willing to recruit and run moderate Democrats in purple and red states to regain control of Congress in 2006 and 2008, but then apparently thought they’d abandon their own self-interest and vote for all of Obama’s far-left proposals when told to). So there’s a question of whether or not he and his staff will be willing to swallow their ideological pride and move towards the center to remain politically viable, or double down and try Chicago style politics (like last week’s having the DNC run negative ads in Blue Dog Democrats’ districts).
He’s still got 15 months before the midterm elections, but if Obama & crew really think hardball against their moderates combined with Barack’s (ever-shrinking) persuasiveness with the voters is going to turn things around, knowing what they know about 1994, they may end up with a bunker mentality attitude that would put Richard Nixon’s paranoia to shame.
If 00bama were smart, he’d spend the rest of the Summer on Martha’s Vinyard with his good friend, Skippy Gates. They could commiserate about white racism while the girls played on the beach.
Kerry could zip by from Nantucket and teach our wunnerful postracial prez how to windsurf.
The administration still acts like local politicians and not national politicians at this point. However, the gaffes made so far have not ignited much, except among McCain voters. But the gaffes will continue to come, and something is going to stir up a hornets nest IMHO. It will seem trivial or small at the time but will become emblematic of something of something larger that hits home.
The president made a mistake commenting on the Gates’ arrest, although I do not think this will catch fire beyond a few days. Curiously Bill Cosby had it right, namely the president, meaning any president, should decline to answer such a question and indicate that he hopes the situation will be resolved in a productive way and a clear accounting attained or other such non-content content. What was he thinking weighing in on that situation without knowing anything about it? He’s speaking as if to a Chicago TV station, not a national audience. The underlying issue of privilege (famous Harvard professor who counts the president among his friends vs. working stiff police officer who teaches courses about racial profiling) is not something he wants to highlight when he’s going to raise taxes on everyone who pays them.
Barry, there may not ever be a single dramatic incident that decisively turns the nation against BO. As you say, the gaffes will continue to come, providing a steady drip-drip that erodes his popularity and mystique. His comment on Gates is one of the drips.
“except among McCain voters.”
“His comment on Gates is one of the drips.:
Barack Obama’s foolish comments have severely damaged his presidency. He has alerted the politically middle-of-the-road white community that he has unresolved issues concerning them. Obama has clearly shown that he is not beyond race. This issue will not be forgotten.
It seem in the Peoples Republik of Massachusetts that Obama bumper stickers are less and less these days.
Gary
Point taken. I don’t think one incident will bring down a presidency or something like that. I think there will be something that more clearly crystalizes the concerns that many are expressing about something being not quite OK here. I read a columnist’s comment finding it “strange” that Obama would weigh in on the Gates issue without really knowing anything about it. I have a feeling that the administration will do something (not sure what that is) that will be seen by the public at large as a clear sign of needless desparation and therefore inexplicable, except in pscyhological/emotional terms. The polls have slid and yet to date the administration enjoys kid-glove treatment from the press.
Journo’s are interested in ratings even more than they are interested in Obama. If becoming more adversarial gets better ratings, they will head in that direction. I don’t see this administration as up to the job of handling that kind of adversity.
I would be content with a Republican take over in 2010 followed by evidence that they learned their lesson after 1994. Then Obama could preside over a gridlock and prosperity, fulfilling his destiny as the first black president. The fly in this ointment is that the president runs foreign policy and this is where he scares me.
I don’t think the MSM will ever abandon Obama even if an adversarial relationship might be reap a bonanza of ratings points. It has long since surrendered its credibility regarding this mountebank. Trustworthiness ultimately is the source of its revenue stream. Once that is gone, Fox prospers and the layoffs elsewhere begin.
Seems to be a thread of delusional optimism that Obama will melt down and
the midterm elections see a sweep of Republicans into power.
Not from where I sit. What Republicans are going to be swept into power, on what platform? The GOP remains bereft of that “vision” thing. They are still afraid of the One. It was funny that DeMint got castigated from the right, for calling health care Obama’s Waterloo. “Just shut up and don’t get in the way of him committing political suicide” was Krauthammer’s take.
If Obama and the hard left is going to lose, it will only be by a principled strategy mounted by the Republicans. Because there is an absence of principled Republicans (Lindsay Graham, for some reason, comes to mind), I think we’re screwed.
No telling how Obama and his pals from Chicago, not to mention his many tsars, will react when they are cornered by “the vast right wing conspiracy.” We have never had a full blown Marxist who hates America as our President before.
Republicans (the Rinos currently “leading” the surrender, won’t defeat Obama. Obama’s radicalism will defeat Obama with a lot of help from internet bloggers and talk radio folks who cover that which Obama’s media hide from the public.
Oh my gosh, Roger remembered that song?! That was the first 45rpm single I ever bought, at a G.C. Murphy store in a small town when I was quite young. I thought I was buying another record I had heard on the radio, but at the last minute apparently pulled Jones’s song instead. Much abashed when I got home and played it, but came to like it a lot. Big sister made sure to tease endlessly about buying the “wrong” record, but I had the last laugh, since she talked too much…
HaH!! “..like a visit to Lourdes..” Their savior is Elmer Gantry/Bernie Madoff, and they had such faith, and, and, he was so..so..tingling!! I don’t think he going depressed, though; the man came up in the Chicago way. I think he’s dodging the/our hit and planning the hit on his targets. Roger, I think you need a food taster/car starter as well as your editor. The Chicago Way.