In Focus: The End of the Obama Honeymoon?
Barack Obama has glided along from long-shot to heir apparent with nary a scratch on him, writes Michael Weiss. All that is likely to change if and when he's the Democratic nominee. Here are five random Obama follies to watch out for.
Of the many and disturbing pathologies of Richard Nixon, none was greater than his anger at what John F. Kennedy could get away with but he himself could not. If Hillary Clinton does lose the nomination to Barack Obama, we should expect a shattered woman to grit her way through a pro forma party endorsement, all the while obsessing about how the nation’s prolonged honeymoon with Obama ended a few weeks too late to help her.
1. He plagiarizes his speeches (”Words, words, words.”)
It’s old news only to readers of this Boston Globe article, but as the blogosphere is today discovering, some of Obama’s famed turns of phrase were either stolen or taken with consent from Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick, another politician chided by his opponent in 2006 for his ability to win hearts and minds through mere “words.” Patrick wittily replied: “‘We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal’ — just words. ‘We have nothing to fear but fear itself’ — just words. . . . ‘I have a dream’ — just words. They’re all just words.”
Now here is Obama praising the Chicago organizer Saul Alinsky to the New Republic fewer than five months later: “Sometimes the tendency in community organizing of the sort done by Alinsky was to downplay the power of words and of ideas when in fact ideas and words are pretty powerful. ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, all men are created equal.’ Those are just words. ‘I have a dream.’ Just words.”
Obama admired this peroration so much that he repeated it, again without attribution to Patrick, this past weekend. Here’s a YouTube comparing the two speakers:
As Joan Didion famously observed, when Americans say “No man is an island,” they think they’re quoting Ernest Hemingway*. And if “No Country for Old Men” is forever associated with the Coen brothers, then Cormac McCarthy — to say nothing of Yeats — should feel a mite cheated.
I’m sure old hands of the United Farm Workers, led heroically in the 70’s by Cesar Chavez, are wondering how their original slogan, “Si Se Puede” (”Yes We Can”) has somehow failed to endear Obama to Latino voters.
Pilfering other people’s words is a form of flattery and homage. But in a politician who both invites and welcomes comparison with dead historical figures, an unwillingness to discharge a rhetorical debt to a living one is — what’s the word? — unseemly.
2. His volunteers hang memorials to totalitarian mass murderers.
Credit again to the Boston Globe, specifically to editorialist Jeff Jacoby, who had the cleverest take on this image of a Che Guevara banner hanging on the wall in a Houston, TX office of Obama volunteers: “What would JFK do?” (Or as John Cole at Balloon Juice unironically took the opportunity to ponder, might now be the right time to rethink our Cuba policy?)
True, volunteers can’t be supervised to a man, but should it have taken two full days after this embarrassing disclosure for the “official” Obama campaign to call the banner “inappropriate”? And is that the best they could come up with to describe a man who installed concentration camps and hymned sport-killing as the greatest revolutionary activity?
3. His foreign policy guru travels to Syria to kibitz with murderous fascists.
As reported by Eli Lake in the New York Sun, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Jimmy Carter’s national security advisor and a consultant to Obama on Iraq, led a RAND Corp. delegation to Syria last week, the purpose of which was to meet with “high-level people in the region.” The Baathist regime in Damascus still dispatches jihadists to Iraq, has likely been responsible for more than half a dozen assassinations of Lebanese politicians in the last three years, and otherwise rules a police state complete with roving death squads. Despite the fact that Obama has pledged, as commander-in-chief, to open discussions with regimes exactly like Syria’s, his camp claimed not to have known about the Brzezinski trip until Lake told them. Yet even if this is true, state-controlled Cham News agency has happily described the meet-and-greet as an “important sign that the end of official dialogue between Washington and Damascus has not prevented dialogue with important American intellectuals and politicians.”
Which begs the question: Whom did they have in mind by “politicians”?
4. He flip-flops on public financing.
Back when he and John McCain were still long-shots, Obama promised that, if he made it to the general election and faced off against the Arizona senator, he’d agree to a publicly financed campaign. This has been the unofficial rule for presidential races since the Watergate scandal; it means that instead of using the money a candidate raised on his own, he dips into party coffers for TV spots, mail-out literature, etc. (Hillary made no such promise to adhere to this tradition, thinking that she’d be flush with cash and ready to use it come 2008.)
Well, now that Obama raised $100 million in 2007 and a whopping $32 million last month alone, he’s changed his tune. Here’s the Associated Press:
Obama spokesman Bill Burton on Thursday called public financing “an option that we wanted on the table,” but said “there is no pledge” to take the money and the spending limitations that come with it.
Obama told reporters on Friday that it would be “presumptuous of me to say now that I’m locking myself into something when I don’t even know if the other side is going to agree to it.”
The other side — McCain’s — is plainly still agreeing to it and has said that it will only renege if Obama does first. And as for keeping options on the table, this brings us to…
5. He’s wavering on his Iraq withdrawal plan.
Interviewed on Feb. 10 by 60 Minutes‘ Steve Kroft, who asked him if he would still implement his plan for withdrawing all U.S. troops from Iraq by 2009, “regardless of the situation? Even if there’s serious sectarian violence?”, Obama said: “No, I always reserve as commander in chief, the right to assess the situation.”
As it happens, however, this instance for a possibly weakened resolve to end the war categorically is itself an equivocation.
Months ago, President Bush invoked the ominous contingency of genocide as one salient reason not to implement any plan for troop withdrawal — to keep open, in other words, the executive ability to “assess the situation” as it progressed. In reaction to this, Obama said, “If that’s the criteria by which we are making decisions on the deployment of U.S. forces, then by that argument you would have three hundred thousand troops in the Congo right now-where millions have been slaughtered as a consequence of ethnic strife-which we haven’t done. We would be deploying unilaterally and occupying the Sudan, which we haven’t done.”
As George Packer put in it his Sep. 17 2007 New Yorker essay, “Planning for Defeat” — hardly an optimistic gloss on our options in Iraq — “The argument is shallow: by Obama’s reasoning, America doesn’t have an obligation to prevent large-scale massacres in a country it invaded and occupied, but it does have an obligation not to be hypocritical about it.” (Packer further concluded that the more honest rendering of Obama’s position implied that it is not in the U.S. interest to forestall a humanitarian catastrophe, which would be a “strategic footnote.”)
***
Bill Clinton not too long ago made a fool of himself by seething about the thick film of infamy attaching to his wife in every newspaper article or television broadcast about her. Why, he asked, was Obama so immune to scrutiny? The answer was simple: He was the presumed loser. Now that that’s changed — largely by virtue of his immunity — it may be time for Bill and Hill to sit back and finally, if belatedly, enjoy the show.
* The original version of this piece mistakenly identified the Didion reference as one to Bob Dylan. Special thanks to “old” Instaputz for spotting the error.
Michael Weiss is the New York Editor of Pajamas Media.
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33 Comments
1. brian:How come Hillary did not hire you?
Feb 18, 2008 - 11:55 am 2. David Thomson:One should be somewhat fearful of predicting the future. My own track record is far from perfect. Election Day is over nine months away and many things could occur between now and then. Nonetheless, if I had to bet $100 at this very moment I would put my money on John McCain winning the election by at least eight percentage points. Barack Obama and his wife Michelle are simply too weird for the middle of the road voters. This man would not have been considered for the highest office in the land if he were white. Political correctness underpins his candidacy. Too many guilt tripped white liberals wanted to prove “I’m not a racist!” Obama took full advantage of this well-meaning silliness.
Feb 18, 2008 - 12:15 pm 3. T. O'Connor:Thank you for drawing attention to Obama’s equivocation on the “60 Minutes” program.
The moment I heard him say he’d reserve the right “to [re-]assess the situation,” I knew that within 3 months it would be common knowledge for the MSM that he’d always held that position.
Feb 18, 2008 - 12:23 pm 4. william:It is very hard to read much into the record of someone who does not have a record. Obama is not running on his record nor even his politics. He is running on semiotics. He is fresh and vigorous and a messenger from the future. That is the claim of his followers. Maybe yes, maybe no. The constellations of the stars exist not in heaven but in our imagination. And sometimes we reach our destinations by following these imaginary patterns.
Feb 18, 2008 - 12:26 pm 5. Letalis Maximus, Esq.:Here are some things that Dem candidates are promising us they will do, but that any thinking person knows they will not:
1) Pull out of Iraq immediately.
2) Repeal, or even seriously question, NAFTA.
3) Bring blue collar factory jobs back to the U.S.
Feel free to add to the list.
Feb 18, 2008 - 12:48 pm 6. ameryx:Re: charges of plagiarism.
Given that David Axelrod, Obama’s media consultant, was an advisor to Patrick’s 2006 gubernatorial campaign, is it at all surprising that similar themes would come up in the two campaigns? Given that both campaigns were subject to similar criticisms, is it surprising that they have similar responses?
As for the other possible vulnerabilities listed in the article:
Che flag: by the time November rolls around, nobody will remember this story. Granted that the campaign should have responded more quickly. Still, this is the action of a distant low-level campaign worker.
Damascus interview: this may make him vulnerable to GOP criticism, but didn’t the Clinton campaign also send someone over there? No edge to Clinton on this issue.
Campaign financing: unlikely to sway any voters. Campaign finance issues regularly show up in the asterisk section of public opinion polls.
Iraq withdrawal: better he should waver than to hold firm to a quick withdrawal. He is much more vulnerable to GOP criticism if he does not waver.
The observations of potential weaknesses are interesting, but I don’t see that they weaken Obama relatively to Clinton. How do they make him “less electable” than her?
Feb 18, 2008 - 12:59 pm 7. Steevo:Good article Michael. I would only disagree in that I believe Obama hasn’t received criticism in the mainstream media in general because he has become their choice, and having the best chance to become president. I think most of his future criticism will come from conservative sources of which the blogsphere will play an important role. McCain will now begin to receive serious criticism from the MSM.
Feb 18, 2008 - 1:05 pm 8. postroad:that’s pretty thin stuff to “charge”Obama with! Let us compare McCain and his many twists and turns and flips and flops with Obama and his weaknesses. If you can live with McCain and his hypocrisy, then surely you can concede that Obama is hardly as terrible as you would like to have your readers believe. Not by chance that a number of Obamicans–Republicans–say they will support Obama, along with so many independents.
Feb 18, 2008 - 1:12 pm 9. watcher1:More questions for Obama…..
Why 875 billion to fight global poverty elsewhere in the world when we have thousands of americans still living in trailers in New Orleans??? What about all of our poverty stricken and homeless people? Take care of your own first, and did anybody ask me if it’s ok to send my money overseas???
No because we don’t matter, unless your following this pied piper madness that Obama has unleashed on the country.
And what about his relationship with Raile Odinga in Kenya??? Why isn’t anybody asking why Obama supports his “cousin”, who has vowed to replace the democratic government in Kenya with sharia law?
Feb 18, 2008 - 1:23 pm 10. gringo:Odinga lost the election and then called on his supporters to incite violence on supporters of the president of Kenya. Obama isn’t saying a word…he doesn’t pass the smell test.
More important and certainly more telling than the five listed is the fact that Obama has counted on PC-ism and white guilt to get what he wants as an African/American his entire adult life when in fact it’s a lie. He isn’t an African/American.
Feb 18, 2008 - 1:23 pm 11. marsouin:http://www.freedomsenemies.com/_more/obama.htm
Even more troubling is Obama’s ardent racialist pastor of 20+ years who has long standing close ties to Farrakhan. The pastor is a black David Duke. Why the news blackout? This racial unity stuff by BHO is a total fraud.
Feb 18, 2008 - 1:25 pm 12. Bob Matsuoka:@ameryx; @postroad
Good comments, thin stuff indeed. This “obama-backlash”/”honeymoon is over” meme is just that — the current meme in vogue, and this blog, like many others, is piling on.
Feb 18, 2008 - 1:33 pm 13. Al Fin:Obama and his wife are just too weird. Not to mention Jeremiah Wright, Obama’s mentor and advisor.
Anyone who’s read “Dreams of My Father”, Obama’s 1995 auto-biography will instantly see Obama’s lack of substance.
All style. But style grows old very quickly in the US. Over 8 months to go, and Obama has to stay stylish the whole way.
Feb 18, 2008 - 1:34 pm 14. Jeff:On the plagiarism -
The funny part is that neither of them got the Roosevelt quote correct. He said “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”
Feb 18, 2008 - 1:39 pm 15. cfbleachers:Michael, you obviously have not embraced the fullness and richness of Zen and the Art of ElectionCycle Maintenance.
In order for you to own a piece of Nirvana, (or at least a time share) you will have to find the Inner-Self of the Obama campaign.
1)His Nirvanistas hang posters of totalitarian mass murderers because in order to achieve peace, love and understanding you have to be willing to kill, torture, imprison and maim anyone who doesn’t adopt your worldview of “change”.
2)Campaign financing is where Zen meets the Kama Sutra with Obama on his “positions”. You see, Michael, there are no actual positions, just the thought of actual positions. Changing into and out of new ones is not even necessary…or possible.
3)Syria, Jimmy Carter connections, Peace not Apartheid, if we could line up any stronger signals to scare the living daylights out of Israel, I don’t know what they could be. But the Zen of being an ex-President violating an alliance with Israel, the Logan Act and brandishing hate messages against sitting Presidents sits well with the UN and Nobel committees. And the BBC. Obama, like his hero Carter, is enthralled at running the United States of the World.
4)Iraq withdrawal. That’s the condition leftists will suffer when Bush is no longer President. The Zen of having no mindless lemming issue or refrain is to center the mind around some other anti-establishment “dark matter”, that makes up the void in their universe. Promising when and how requires a plan, impossible when you live in the moment, Michael.
5)Plagiarizing. Much like a deep fried, pressed chicken, fast food, …parts is parts. Since they are not intended to convey any actual position, as long as they taste just fine going down and come cheaply…parts is parts and words is words. The Zen of the Happy Meal McSpeech. You want “change” with that?
Feb 18, 2008 - 1:53 pm 16. legion:American politics is about making the voters feel good. Details are not important.
Feb 18, 2008 - 2:15 pm 17. BMO:There are legions of white, middle class, union, factory workers, between the ages of 45 and 65, who have been union all their working lives and will never vote for Obama. I’m talking the mill wrights, electricians, tool & die, ect, ect. I know because I grew up around those guys, and was raised by one. No one ever seems to talk about it, but it’s there like the proverbial elephant in the room. They rarely ever go to primaries because they work odd shifts, with lots of overtime, but they do vote in elections. I’ve even talked to my dad about this, (he’s pretty high up in the union), and he said that the Union Leadership, (on the National level), can endorse who they want, but once we are alone in the voting booth we vote for who we want usually, and we won’t vote for Obama. Watch and see folks. Watch and see.
Feb 18, 2008 - 2:35 pm 18. huxley:Bob — I’d say that Obama is the current candidate in vogue. His sudden rise in the past few months to take away Hillary’s lead has been remarkable and largely unexamined. I spend more time than they should on politics these days and I didn’t know much. Now that I’m beginning to, I’m surprised by what I find. Obama is much more radical than I’d thought.
Hillary can’t attack Obama directly but the Republicans can. If they’re smart, they will keep their powder dry until after the convention. Whey they open fire, Obama could lose as badly as McGovern–another idealistic, anti-war Democrat like Obama.
Feb 18, 2008 - 2:51 pm 19. Brian Macker:You forgot his apparently innocuous membership in that racially divisive Trinity Church. Doesn’t mean he’s a racist but doesn’t look particularly good.
Feb 18, 2008 - 3:46 pm 20. Miss Orange:Well, Symptom #6 just arrived — with a pretty bow, all wrapped up for Hillary:
His wife starts to believe her own PR and thinks she can talk smack about America with impunity.
After today’s “For the first time in my adult life I feel pride in my country” speech, there’s going to be some fancy soft-shoe going on in Camp Obama.
Feb 18, 2008 - 4:28 pm 21. Lily Simmosn:Obama wants Change. He wants your change ($$) – all of it.
Feb 18, 2008 - 6:31 pm 22. actor212:How’d you miss the Iraqi oil billionaire who loaned money to his campaign thru a Panamanian shell company?
Hell, even I had that, and I’m a liberal!
http://simplyleftbehind.blogspot.com/2008/02/uh-oh-barack-war-in-iraq.html
Feb 18, 2008 - 6:42 pm 23. baldilocks:watcher1
What do you mean by ’support?’ Did Obama pay for the machetes? And if Obama were to say a public word, wouldn’t he be accused of jumping outside of his lane and conducting foreign policy? (It was reported back in early January that Obama had contacted Odinga–his second cousin–since the December 27th Kenya election debacle with the permission of the Bush Administration.)
Please educate yourself on the Kenya situation…that is if you’re really interested in why Luos and Kalenjins are killing Kikuyus and that interest isn’t merely a tool to be used to beat Obama. Weapons (metaphorical) exist for that which are closer to home.
Feb 18, 2008 - 6:46 pm 24. Thom:Wow. If that’s what they got on him, he’ll win in a cakewalk. Weak!
Feb 18, 2008 - 8:32 pm 25. gc:Your item #3 is simply false. Brzezinski, National Security Advisor to President Carter, is not an advisor to Obama. Brzezinski called Barack Obama and volunteered his endorsement of Obama’s campaign because Brzezinski agrees with Obama’s Iraq policy. While Obama briefly discussed Iraq with Brzezinski, Obama has never discussed, and will not discuss, Israel or Palestinian issues with Brzezinski.
Feb 18, 2008 - 9:27 pm 26. RA:1. He quoted ex-presidents. Lots of people quote ex-presidents!
2. He will disavow that Houston campaign supporter the way Hillary disavows someone almost weekly.
3. He stumped on talking with our enemies. The liberals love it.
4. With the money he is raising he would be an idiot to take government funding. To do so would be a sign of insanity. So what if McCain takes public money because half the Republican party hates him and he can’t raise squat.
5. Of course he backed off on cut and run. He understands if he withdraws prematurely and things go to hell, he and the Dems will be blamed. He will listen to the military and withdraw slowly.
You underestimate Obama supporters who walk around like mind numbed zombies chanting “Imhotep…Imhotep…Imhotep… LOL
Feb 19, 2008 - 5:42 am 27. tanstaafl:Now here is Obama praising the Chicago organizer Saul Alinsky to the New Republic
Barack and Hillary have Saul in common ?
Alinsky was the subject of Hillary’s Sr. thesis at Wellesley.
From Alinsky’s “rules for radicals” via the infamous wikipedia…
“There’s another reason for working inside the system. Dostoevsky said that taking a new step is what people fear most. Any revolutionary change must be preceded by a passive, affirmative, non-challenging attitude toward change among the mass of our people. They must feel so frustrated, so defeated, so lost, so futureless in the prevailing system that they are willing to let go of the past and change the future.
This is, literally, the Obama playbook.
Feb 19, 2008 - 6:35 am 28. Steve:Would you consider a Link Exchange with The Internet Radio Network? At the IRN you can listen for free to over 30 of America’s top Talk Shows via FREE STREAMING AUDIO!
http://netradionetwork.com
Feb 19, 2008 - 9:56 am 29. david still:The rather limited “serious charges” against Obama will of course go on and on. But note that with each speech,he draws to his side the young, the independents, and, yes,many Republicans.He has charisma and he gives a good speech.The countryit seems wants big changes made, and McCain and Bush the Elder et al are very very old and tired looking…and since I am their age I can say this.
We have a huge budget deficit, lousy health coverage, an endless war, housing market that continues to worsen and make home values go down and down; scandal after scandal in the GOP Congress; high gas prices and a military that is overstretched and no longer in the shape it needs to be in;cuts in Vet Hospital funding; and on and on and on…who wouldn’t take a chance on CHANGE.
Feb 19, 2008 - 11:25 am 30. legion:Is that really true? Do Obama supporters wander around mumbling “imhotep, imhotep, …?” Whenever I hear them they are mumbling “obama de one, obama de one, …!”
Feb 19, 2008 - 1:09 pm 31. pch1013:Swift-boating is alive and well; the only difference between 2008 and 2004 is that this time, the Democratic Party is prepared for it. If this is the level of anti-Obama invective we’re seeing now, I can only assume that by September we’ll be hearing that he breakfasts on boiled puppies in white fetus sauce, secretly worships at an altar of Baal, and once had sex with Osama bin Laden in a toilet stall at the Tehran airport.
Feb 19, 2008 - 5:47 pm 32. Sister Rosetta:baldilocks,
I think you shouldn’t be so dismissive of watcher1’s remarks.
Obama did campaign for Odinga. In fact, the Kibaki regime was so disgusted with Obama, they labeled him Odinga’s “stooge.”
Since Obama did support Odinga’s ascension, he is obligated to distance himself now that it has emerged Odinga signed onto a pact with the Muslim minority in Kenya.
SisterRosetta (not verified) says:
Perhaps Senator Obama could respond to a query on exactly why he would support the opposition candidate, Raila, in Kenya, who signed on to a pact with the leader of the Muslim minority a guarantee of the supremacy of Sharia law in Muslim dominated regions of Kenya.
http://www.eakenya.org/AAEAKUpdate/RAILA_MUSLIM_MOU.pdf
Sister Rosetta
Feb 19, 2008 - 5:48 pm 33. Sister Rosetta:Here’s another example of how some feel about the Obama — Odinga connection:
ONE MAN’S (OR ONE WOMAN’S) OPINION
http://piciccikenya.com/?p=1870
February 19, 2008
Open Question: I’m thinking of selling American fashion-Burqas, pretty beekeeper suits for Obamagirls. Good idea?
“They can’t wait for Sharia, which Bobo’s cousin Odinga vowed to force onto Christian Kenya (poor loser, though, when he lost he sicked his thugs and murdered over 1,000 Christians and displaced over 300,000 more), BUT he gets to power share now so all the violence kinda worked for him. AND he’s going to implement a new constitution stating Islam is the one true religion and women will have to Burqa-ize, all the usual garbage of that stone age religion. In Great Britain and other European countries the push is on for Sharia LAW all over Europe! And Bobo wants that here too! So, might as well cash in, what are your favorite colors girls? Gray or Black?
Paris – “US presidential hopeful Barack Obama has told a French magazine he wants to organise a summit of the Muslim world if he makes it to the White House. In the interview, Obama also said he wanted to shut down the US Guantanamo prison camp in Cuba and release its prisoners & end the war in Iraq.” to end peace in Iraq! Bobo campaigned for Odinga 8-07, Odinga’s an al Qaeda oil billionaire Odinga wants to annex Sudan and Somalia as a start of Qadafi’s Islamic Axis and Islamic USAfrica, Obama as president would help stabilize such a Christian-purging effort and reorganized Africa. Good Pick Oprah you MORON!!”
Feb 19, 2008 - 5:53 pm