As the TechPresident blog noted recently, Obama’s admitting that he’s never used Twitter is a reminder that his campaigned lied when it demonized John McCain for being out of touch with the Internet. (Despite the YouTube and blog-savvy nature of the McCain camp doing much to keep his campaign competitive during the summer of 2008.)
In China, a student asked President Obama, “Should we be able to use Twitter freely?” You and I might have said, “Yes.” President Obama began, “Well, first of all, let me say that I have never used Twitter. My thumbs are too clumsy to type in things on the phone.” He went on, “I should be honest. As president of the United States, there are times where I wish information didn’t flow so freely, because then I wouldn’t have to listen to people criticizing me all the time.” Yet “in the United States, information is free.” And “I have a lot of critics . . . who can say all kinds of things about me.” And “I actually think that that makes our democracy stronger and it makes me a better leader because it forces me to hear opinions that I don’t want to hear.”
You could argue that this is a clever, nuanced answer — not too brash. But isn’t the answer weirdly me-centric, Obama-centric? And doesn’t he argue from pragmatism — “It makes me a better leader”? How about principle: the principle of free speech, freedom of expression?
I really think a simple “yes” might have been better.
One more thing: Obama said, “There are times where I wish information didn’t flow so freely.” Did he mean that, or was that just a matter of rhetoric?
Or, two, two, two magazines in one! When Wolcott Gibbs coined his famous satire of the breathless tone of the early Time magazine writers of the 1930s (also parodied in the writing of the brilliant “News On The March!” faux-newsreel in Citizen Kane), he didn’t know the half of it.
On Saturday, I mentionedTime magazine’s “Why Main Street Hates Wall Street” cover. The actual article begins thusly:
Are you furious? If not, you should be. The giant financial institutions that make up Wall Street have been bailed out, thanks to trillions of dollars of our money, and are on track to hand out record-breaking multibillion-dollar bonuses while millions of regular folks are hurting. Even outside the gilded halls of Wall Street, there’s no shortage of good cheer: many economists say the Great Recession has ended, and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke keeps seeing “green shoots” in the economy.
But the only green shoots that many non–Wall Street types have seen lately are the weeds sprouting in the parking lots of abandoned malls. Unemployment is marching toward 10%, and house foreclosures are still rising. If you’re a day late with your credit-card payment or overdrawn by a few bucks on your ATM card, the bank (which your tax money helped bail out) is still sticking you with obscene fees and charges. Hence the question that so many of us are asking: Where’s my bailout?
Happiness is a sappy word and a flimsy concept — more fleeting than contentment, several octaves lower than joy. But happiness is what pollsters test and economists track, however clumsily, so we’re stuck with it as the medium for measuring our mood. Not surprisingly, that mood has bounced around over the years, with the general sense of well-being hitting its lowest points in 1973, 1982, 1992 and 2001, all recession years. So why is it that at least some aspects of the Great Recession of 2009 appear to have made people feel better?
The Professor writes, “Time asks why Americans are so cheery during a recession. Well, all that positive press spin probably helps. I mean, it’s almost worth having a Democrat in the White House just to be spared all the lugubrious coverage we’d be getting with a Republican. . . .”
Is everything spinning out of control? Midwestern levees are bursting. Polar bears are adrift. Gas prices are skyrocketing. Home values are abysmal. Air fares, college tuition and health care border on unaffordable. Wars without end rage in Iraq, Afghanistan and against terrorism.
Horatio Alger, twist in your grave.
The can-do, bootstrap approach embedded in the American psyche is under assault. Eroding it is a dour powerlessness that is chipping away at the country’s sturdy conviction that destiny can be commanded with sheer courage and perseverance.
Why, it’s like the difference in tone between the reporting on one progressive president and another in the early days of the Depression. Or how the difference in how the media covered two moderate southern governors turned Third Way presidents who both promoted regime change in Iraq.
It’s amazing what the letter after a president’s name can do to impact The Narrative — not to mention how it twists journalists into knots who have to bend it to their wishes.
A Newsweek.com article on Tuesday celebrated historic speeches by U.S. Presidents at the Berlin Wall, somehow ignoring the fact that Barack Obama has decided not to go to Germany to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the collapse of communism. At the same time, the piece, by Anita Kirpalani, pretended that President Obama has made such a trip.
The article, entitled, “Ich Bin Ein Speechmaker: Historic speeches by visiting American presidents have left an outsize footprint on Berlin,” listed visits by John F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama. Obama’s entry insisted, “President: Barack Obama- Date: July 24, 2008.” This was prior to his election and was only in the city of Berlin, not at the wall. The article notes these facts, but why list him as President when he wasn’t? The rest of the piece is vague on this point.
Kirpalani began, “Five American presidents delivered addresses at the Berlin Wall and, 20 years after its fall, the city is still considered a prime venue for American presidents to deliver important speeches.” No mention is made of the President’s decision to snub German President Angela Merkel and not attend the upcoming 20th anniversary ceremonies.
Further, Kirpalani asserted, “…[Obama’s] plea for the fall of all walls echoed every earlier presidential speech, and the crowd of 200,000 was more than four times the number that attended Reagan’s 1987 speech.”
However, in a November 3 column, National Review editor Rich Lowry pointed out:
Obama famously made a speech in Berlin during last year’s campaign, but at an event devoted to celebrating himself as the apotheosis of world hopefulness. He said of 1989, “a wall came down, a continent came together, and history proved that there is no challenge too great for a world that stands as one.”
The line was typical Obama verbal soufflé, soaring but vulnerable to collapse upon the slightest jostling from logic or historical fact. The wall came down only after the free world resolutely stood against the Communist bloc. Rather than a warm-and-fuzzy exercise in global understanding, the Cold War was another iteration of the 20th century’s long war between totalitarianism and Western liberalism. The West prevailed on the back of American strength.
President: Barack Obama
Date: July 24, 2008
Obama hadn’t even been elected when he went to Berlin during his 2008 campaign. For that reason, the Germans did not allow him to speak at the Brandenburg Gate—they reserve it for presidential speeches. But his plea for the fall of all walls echoed every earlier presidential speech, and the crowd of 200,000 was more than four times the number that attended Reagan’s 1987 speech.
In a 20th anniversary piece on the fall of the Berlin Wall, the very least Newsweek could do is acknowledge the bewildering decision by Obama to turn down an invitation to Germany.
Hey, it may not be that bewildering, given the number of overt Marxists in Obama’s immediate orbit. But in any case, Newsweek’s article also brings into question a piece they ran a month ago, when they asked “Was Russia Better Off Red?” If you’re a publication longing for the days of the Soviet Union, it’s more than a little hypocritical to praise American efforts to liberate East Germany from its oppression.
As I noted back then, Newsweek’s piece ran right around the same time that Thomas Friedman of the New York Times was insisting that communist China was a better governing model than American democracy. But then, this is a surprisingly long tradition for American media, as a new report by Newsbusters’ parent organization, the Media Research Center highlights. Titled “Better Off Red?” It looks back at over two decades of the American media swooning over the Soviet Union, both before and after its fall, communist China, and communist Cuba.
Bob McDonnell won big tonight in the Virginia gubernatorial race, as did the entire Virginia Republican party. The implications of the race will be sorted out soon enough. But one big loser is the Washington Post which may unwittingly have helped the Republican, despite their best efforts to put his opponent over the top.
On the last weekend in August the Post ran the first of dozens of stories about McDonnell’s 1989 masters’ thesis, in which he wrote, among other things, that working women were detrimental to families and that government should favor traditional marriage over gay unions. While they didn’t know the exact target, the McDonnell camp was expecting, as one top adviser put it, a “hatchet job” from the Post. A top campaign strategist says, “We always knew we’d have to fend off some attack from the Post, probably on a social issue. But in all candor we didn’t expect the thesis. It was a 20 year old paper.”
The Post was off and running, harping on the story for weeks. It was, some conservatives feared, a replay of the infamous “macaca moment” (a more successful Post election obsession) which helped sink George Allen’s 2006 Senate campaign.
The McDonnell camp quickly made some critical tactical decisions. First, the Monday after the story broke McDonnell held a 90-minute media call to explain his views, and answer all questions. Second, rather than respond to every potential allegation they focused on the most potent one–that McDonnell was hostile to working women. His TV ads focused heavily on this issue, featuring testimonials by his daughters and women who had worked for him.
Larry J. Sabato explains that “the thesis story actually helped Deeds at first. For nearly a month the contents of McDonnell’s thesis closed the gap to a near-tie.” But then Deeds went, as one party insider says, “bonkers” over the issue, badly overplaying his hand. McDonnell communications director Tucker Martin says, “It was like someone threw a tennis ball over the fence and we all watched the Labrador Retriever race after it, leaving the whole yard to us.” Deeds rolled out TV ads and a Twitter feed devoted to the thesis and even organized book clubs to conduct “readings” of the thesis.
One McDonnell adviser says that it took a “lot of discipline” both to narrow the focus and to continue to stick to his positive, issue-oriented message. One day no fewer than 11 Post editors and reporters peppered the campaign with thesis queries.
Fortunately, as Jennifer writes, “The Post may have learned the hard way that voters are not so easily distracted. And Republicans, if they are smart, will plan ahead for the moment in their races when the mainstream media come after them.”
Well, let’s give MSNBC credit for something. As Ed Morrissey writes, Chuck Todd stumbles onto the truth about President Obama in a segment with the Tingler himself, Chris Matthews:
MATTHEWS: But Chuck, let me get back to you again. Is there such a thing as an Obama believer? In other words, is there a set of beliefs he holds which can be shared by other politicians of the Democratic Party?
TODD: You know, it’s funny you say that. I think right now you’re seeing an argument on the Left take place where you’re seeing some criticism of the President — “Hey, where’s all the change?” So I think this is all trying — I think they’re all trying to figure this out. The White House seems to be about, and this President seems to be about pragmatism and — you know, trying to get something done, trying to figure out a solution in Afghanistan, trying to compromise and get health care through.
But you’re right, there isn’t this core set of principles that were so easy to say and do — “change you can believe in” in 2008. I think he’s struggling to translate that to policy. We’re seeing it, this whole Organizing for America wing of the DNC is struggling to work correctly. I think they haven’t figured it out.
Ed adds:
Jim Vicevich at the link thinks that Obama has a core set of principles that run to the hard Left, but has kept them hidden thus far. Why? Jim argues that Obama couldn’t get elected on those principles, and so he has kept them hidden while pushing them through his legislative agenda.
Actually, I think Todd is closer to it. Obama wanted to be President, not to lead, but just to win. Now that he has won, he has no core set of governing principles other than what impacts Barack Obama. He has offered no leadership on any part of his agenda all year long, content to have Nancy Pelosi run it for him. His foreign policy thus far consists entirely of making himself personally popular with the world. On Afghanistan, Obama has thus far allowed Robert Gates and David Petraeus to make his decisions, only balking at the moment because the McChrystal strategy puts him at odds with his base, which could erode his popularity.
We’ve complained a number of times about the cult of personality that surrounds Obama, but as Todd implies with this answer, it’s really all Obama has.
The proof of his ideological emptiness is practically undeniable. He has been, over the short course of his political career, the great abandoner, ever-willing to denounce those ideals that were previously sold to his constituents as “his convictions.”
After 20 years in Reverend Wright’s church, he simply got up and left. The man who baptized his children, who was marketed (to black voters in particular) as Obama’s spiritual adviser, who was so integral in shaping Barack Obama’s adult life, that he publicly denounced him, and left his church altogether. And he also denounced black liberation theology, despite giving numerous interviews about the ways in which it had helped shape his religious worldview. After initially defending Rev. Wright, suddenly he and his brand of religion were chucked out the window of a moving campaign bus. He has yet to find a replacement, unsurprisingly, but his interest in evangelicals like Rick Warren and Carey Cash means he is open to the theological polar opposite of Rev. Wright.
The same sort of dance occurred with other politically inconvenient allies, like domestic terrorist Bill Ayers, Wright apologist Father Michael Pfleger, and convicted felon Tony Rezko. Obama distanced himself from all of them and then eventually dumped them altogether when it became politically necessary. Van Jones was merely a post-election victim of Obama’s willing abandonment. And there have been others.
So would a real radical disown his radical mentors and protégés? Would a real extremist and true-believer insist with a straight face that he didn’t really believe all that stuff? Would a real ideologue be persuaded by a public opinion poll to abandon whole ideology?
Actual radicals like Wright and Ayers and Jones defend their beliefs, regardless of the pushback and potential fallout. What Obama did, in contrast, was purely political. Because, despite the insistence by the left that Obama somehow transcends politics, that’s what he is – a politician. Nothing more, nothing less.
We can also look at the shift in his policy positions over the past few years. He was once quoted as saying that he supported a single-payer health care system. The best political decision now, however, was to abandon that for a more docile public option. Once that failed to garner the groundswell of support his advisers thought it would, he appeared altogether indifferent to it. If he were reallya radical, he’d be rallying us around universal health care right now, not some watered-down 1990-page bureaucratic hodge podge that is neither revolutionary nor practical.
His impassioned pledges to end “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” close Gitmo, bring troops home, end military tribunals, and myriad other promises, suddenly seem less like the stuff of real political conviction, and more like political headaches that require a clever exit strategy.
And his reaction to any kind of opposition – from the right, from the citizenry, from Fox News – is equally telling. If Obama’s agenda were based on conviction instead of political expedience and an unquenchable thirst for popularity, criticism would bounce right off him. Instead he seems frighteningly flappable. That’s because leadership without convictions is leadership of empty rhetoric. Convictions can be defended against criticism. Empty rhetoric cannot.
So why all the radical friends and the radical proposals and the radical rhetoric if he’s not himself a radical? Because his lack of conviction and his inability to forge his own philosophical and theological identity, have made him incredibly susceptible to external influence and pressure. He is easily led. He is, as such, the perfect prospect for someone like Bill Ayers or Reverend Wright, whose radical agendas require vulnerable recruits who are malleable and willing.
The 140-character limit of Twitter forces Cupp to boil her thesis down to the perfect soundbite: “Trust me, if Obama’s advisers told him to talk like Goldwater and join the NRA, he would. Empty.”
In his New York Post column last night, Glenn Reynolds noted that Obama really wasthe Accidental Candidate:
The truth is, Obama wasn’t ready to be president when he ran in 2008. When he started, he probably thought he had no real chance — he himself admitted upon entering the Senate that he wasn’t qualified to be president — and that his first run would simply be a PR effort that would lift him to the top ranks of Senate Democrats.
When, to everyone’s surprise, resentment of the Clinton machine crystallized around him, he wound up beating Hillary for the nomination, and found himself riding an out-of-control express train. He rode it to victory, with some help from erratic McCain actions.
But he was right the first time about not being ready for the Oval Office. As president, he seems confused and a bit distant on the issues, leaving the details to congressional Democrats and an ever-growing number of “czars” while he golfs and launches attacks at Rush Limbaugh and Fox News.
With the economy tanking (unemployment is much worse after Obama’s deficit-swelling stimulus than Obama’s advisers predicted it would be with no stimulus at all), with the promised post-partisanship dissolving into witch-hunts against hostile media and the promised post-racial America devolving into the awkwardly staged “beer summit,” with the “necessary war” in Afghanistan the subject of endless dithering and the promised “smart diplomacy” materializing as a series of awkward missteps by Hillary Clinton, the froth has become a lot less frothy.
Republicans, who were prepared to give Obama the benefit of the doubt a year ago, now can’t stand him. Independents who voted for him are deserting in droves. And Democrats don’t seem that happy either.
The American presidency is not supposed to be a journey of “personal discovery.”
As the Professor has written, “As always, it’s a question of who the rubes are.”
Orrin Judd sums up the president thusly: as a politician, Mr. Obama’s goal “was nothing more than to add a line at the top of his resume. He did everything he set out to do already.”
This week marks the 45 anniversary of Ronald Reagan’s “A Time For Choosing” speech delivered on behalf of Barry Goldwater pyrrhic 1964 presidential campaign. Here’s an excerpt; Red State (naturally enough) has the full speech:
“Not too long ago, two friends of mine were talking to a Cuban refugee, a businessman who had escaped from Castro, and in the midst of his story one of my friends turned to the other and said, “We don’t know how lucky we are.” And the Cuban stopped and said, “How lucky you are? I had someplace to escape to.” And in that sentence he told us the entire story. If we lose freedom here, there’s no place to escape to. This is the last stand on earth.
And this idea that government is beholden to the people, that it has no other source of power except the sovereign people, is still the newest and the most unique idea in all the long history of man’s relation to man.
This is the issue of this election: Whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capitol can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves. You and I are told increasingly we have to choose between a left or right. Well I’d like to suggest there is no such thing as a left or right. There’s only an up or down—[up] man’s old—old-aged dream, the ultimate in individual freedom consistent with law and order, or down to the ant heap of totalitarianism…
“No government ever voluntarily reduces itself in size. So governments’ programs, once launched, never disappear. Actually, a government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we’ll ever see on this earth…
“You and I have a rendezvous with destiny.
We’ll preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on earth, or we’ll sentence them to take the last step into a thousand years of darkness.
While Obama remains largely free of criticism in most network news rooms, he better start shoring up another part of his base — the Comedian-Industrial Complex, which is poised for counter-insurgent action: “When Late Night Attacks: Left Worries Obama Becoming Punchline.”
As Orrin Judd recently quipped, “People have mistakenly used the ‘Emperor has no clothes’ analogy for the [Unicorn Rider.] The real point is the clothes have no Emperor.”
Obama and his supporters could deflect charges of his lack of executive experience while on the campaign trail as Anita Dunn has bragged. But the floundering of the last eight months (Nobel approved!), coupled with the radical chic Marxism of his staffers, is increasingly hard to ignore, as comedians who once moved in lockstep with the president are slowly, slowly beginning to notice.
Update: In the comments below, the CEO of Paco Enterprises is taking credit for bringing the first Obamacentric “clothes have no emperor” reference to the marketplace — in 2008.
Mickey Kaus wonders if the recent attack by President Obama’s staffers against the leftwing Blogosphere isn’t a case of “Insta-Triangulation”, but it’s worth comparing and contrasting the rhetoric coming from himself and his aides then and now.
Candidate Obama to his supporters in June of 2008:
“This was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal.”
Most presidents become a joke at some point. It’s a matter of when and how. Both points should concern this president. In Winston Churchill’s words, “a joke is a very serious thing.” Or it can be, when the joke is about a very serious thing.
“Saturday Night Live” has long been a comedic benchmark. Last weekend, SNL took its first hard hit at President Obama. Fred Armisen, who plays the president, gave an Oval Office address questioning why some critics were distraught with him transforming the country: “When you look at my record it’s very clear what I’ve done so far and that is nothing. Nada. Almost one year and nothing to show for it.”
Political satire matters when it is larger than the joke. The growing rap on Obama is that he is a man both ineffective and meek; a man who is loved by all and feared by none.
Bill Maher hit the punch line first in mid-June: “You don’t have to be on television every minute of every day. You’re the president, not a rerun of ‘Law & Order’… TV stars are too worried about being popular and too concerned about being renewed.”
Soon Maher came to his key point: “You’re skinny and in a hurry and in love with a nice lady, but so is Lindsay Lohan. And just like Lindsay, we see your name in the paper a lot but we’re kind of wondering when you’re actually going to do something.”
Jon Stewart has been in on the joke all week. On Monday, Stewart hit Obama for “appeasing” the health care and energy industries. On Tuesday, Stewart showed clips of Obama’s repeated campaign promises to allow gays to serve openly in the military.
Stewart to Obama: “I know you have a lot on your desk plate. But as a thin man who smokes, you may not understand the concept. All that stuff you’ve been putting on your plate, it’s f-cking chow time, brother. That’s how you get things off of your plate. ”
The Olympics only helped reinforce the punch line. The president went to Copenhagen to rally for his hometown. Analysts assumed that the White House was in on a secret. The president could tip the vote? But Chicago lost on the first round. The president looked powerless.
Many Sunday political shows touched on Obama’s Olympic failure. Was it a metaphor? On ABC’s “This Week,” George Will said yes. He listed Obama’s big initiatives abroad and the absence of progress. “Saying no to the president is a habit,” Will argued. “The world adores him and ignores him.” The digs came from all sides. But SNL brought the point home.
Wow — who on earth could have seen that happening last year on the campaign trail?
As Mark Steyn writes, “Democrats win by pretending to be to the right of who they really are. Their base understands and accepts this”:
Veronique de Rugy wonders why gays are disappointed by President Obama:
Obama was and is still against gay marriage. Seriously, whatever your position on the issue of gay marriage is, it should at least have been a clue that the guy wouldn’t become a great advocate for the agenda of gay leaders. Right?
I think Veronique’s overlooking a central reality of contemporary electoral politics: Democrats win by pretending to be to the right of who they really are. Their base understands and accepts this. Thus, when Democrat candidates profess to believe that “marriage is between a man and a woman” or to be “personally passionately opposed to abortion” or even to favor “the good war” in Afghanistan and if necessary invade Pakistan, their base hears this as a necessary rhetorical genuflection to the knuckledragging masses but one that will be conveniently discarded on the first day in office.
On balance, this seems a healthier reaction than falling like schoolgirls for the candidate’s “centrism”, “fiscal responsibility”, “post-partisan temperament” and other hooey like certain conservatives thinkers we could mention.
In modern terms, it’s a phenomenon that dates at least back to the aftermath of Walter Mondale getting creamed in 1984 after promising to raise taxes, and arguably to Jimmy Carter’s centrist campaign in 1976. And as Ann Coulter wrote in 2003, forecasting John “Can I get me a hunting license here?” Kerry’s endgame in the election year to come:
When they’re running for office, all Democrats claim to support tax cuts (for the middle class), to support gun rights (for hunters) and to “personally oppose” abortion. And then they get into office and vote to raise taxes, ban guns and allow abortions if a girl can’t fit into her prom dress.
The common wisdom holds that “both parties” have to appeal to the extremes during the primary and then move to the center for the general election. To the contrary, both parties run for office as conservatives. Once they have fooled the voters and are safely in office, Republicans sometimes double-cross the voters. Democrats always do.
The cruelest, most violent Samurai in Japan decides he wants to become enlightened. He bursts into the home of an esteemed Zen Master and demands that the Master teach him how to become enlightened.
The Zen Master looks deeply into his eyes and says, “No. You are a dirty, vicious Samurai. I will not teach you.”
Enraged, the Samurai yanks out his sword and places it right at the Zen Master’s neck. He hollers, “Do you have any idea who I am? I am the cruelest Samurai in the world. I can cut your throat and not blink an eye.”
Without skipping a beat, the Master calmly responds, “Do you have any idea who I am? I can let you slit my throat and not blink an eye.”
The Samurai falls to his knees, sobbing, overcome by the presence of a man mightier than his sword.
I get the impression that President Obama would like very much to say to those Americans and traditional allies who are not falling for him, “Do you know who I am?”
I wish he would, because the response would be: “Do you know who you are?”
Five years to the month after Rather’s most infamous moment, and its resulting circle-the-wagons defense by an old media colleague which inadvertendly helped to launch Pajamas Media, Dan’s suite against CBS has been tossed, Ed Morrissey writes:
The state court of appeals in New York has dismissed a lawsuit from Dan Rather against CBS for wrongful termination and $70 million in damages. The court was apparently not impressed with the claim that CBS did any more damage to his reputation than he did himself with a collection of fraudulent documents and unsubstantiated allegations:
Bad news for Dan Rather: His $70 million lawsuit against CBS is no more.
In a 19-page decision made public Tuesday, a state appeals court dismissed the legendary newsman’s suit against CBS. …
A lawyer for Rather and a CBS spokeswoman could not immediately be reached for comment.
Jammie Wearing Fool hopes Rather will now slip into obscurity. That should be easy to do as a reporter for HDNet, of course. Obscurity is usually the final stop after humiliation, and in truth Rather has mostly arrived at that destination except for news about this lawsuit.
Gen. Stanley McChrystal says he’s talked to President Obama only once since taking command of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan over the summer, a revelation that drew swift criticism from some who are concerned that the president is putting off McChrystal’s request for more troops.
“It’s startling,” Sen. Judd Gregg, R-N.H., told FOX News.
McChrystal talked about his interaction with the president in an interview with CBS News.
“I’ve talked to the president since I’ve been here once on a (video teleconference),” he said.
“You talked to him once in 70 days?” CBS’ David Martin asked.
“That’s correct,” McChrystal said.
(Which isn’t all that surprising in one sense: As the RNC warned in 2008, “As Chairman Of The Foreign Relations Subcommittee On European Affairs, Obama Has Not Held A Single Hearing On The NATO Mission In Afghanistan.”)
As more and more members of the left such as the New York Times’ Frank Rich come out in favor of pulling the plug on a war they wholeheartedly supported up as “the Good War”, at least up until, oh, about the end of the day on November 4 of last year, former U.S. Army vet Baldilocks looks back at her numerous posts during that period that warned of what was to come, and writes, “Told Ya So.”
Back in July I described the positively celestial coverage that Newsweekhad bestowed upon The Won, and wrote:
Last month, Evan Thomas declared [Obama] “standing above the country, above – above the world, he’s sort of God.” This week, as Ed Morrissey paraphrases with gusto, Kathleen Kennedy Townsend writes, “You know who’d make a great Pope?”
The parody Newsweek cover that National Review’s art department designed last month (and reproduced at left) is looking, if anything, understated these days. Obama’s no longer “Better than FDR”, he’s positively papal. I didn’t know Obama was Catholic; As someone who placed himself on styrofoam Olympus last year, I assumed he transcended earthly religious castes.
How do you know when an extraordinarily liberal politician is failing badly?
When extraordinarily liberal journalists like Newsweek’s Howard Fineman not only notice, but are willing to write about it AND get their critique’s published.
Adding insult to injury, in Fineman’s most recent column, he expressed concern that “[u]nless Obama learns to rely less on charm, rhetoric, and good intentions and more on picking his spots and winning in political combat, he’s not going to be reelected.”
* * *
To be sure, losing Howard Fineman is not anywhere near as serious for Obama as losing Walter Cronkite was for Lyndon Johnson.
However, with each passing week, more and more liberal journalists are realizing what those that didn’t drink Obama’s Kool Aid knew when he first threw his hat into the ring in 2007: this is a completely inexperienced politician with absolutely no track record of legislative success.
As Fineman noted, “Never much of a legislator (and not long a -senator), Obama underestimated the complexity of enacting a major “reform” bill.”
Hey Howard: where were you when candidate Obama’s detractors were pointing out his astounding lack of legislative accomplishments and just how green he was as a senator?
Oh, that’s right — you were aiding and abetting his White House run by not bothering to report such insignificant details.
Nice of you to tell your readers now almost eleven months AFTER Election Day; you and your editors should be so proud of your journalistic expertise.
A political party is dying before our eyes — and I don’t mean the Democrats. I’m talking about the “mainstream media,” which is being destroyed by the opposition (or worse, the casual disdain) of George Bush’s Republican Party; by competition from other news outlets (led by the internet and Fox’s canny Roger Ailes); and by its own fraying journalistic standards.
– Howard Fineman, in 2005.
Update: “Rule of Thumb #1 for President Obama: When Howard Fineman starts looking fondly back to the Reagan administration, you know you’re in trouble.”
No, that’s not an obscure Hanna-Barbera cartoon from 1973; Allahpundit has video of Sarah Palin in Hong Kong, and adds:
For a speech that some on the left stupidly maintained was an elaborate “prank,” it sure does seem to have been treated pretty seriously by those who were there (seriously enough, in fact, to inspire two Palin-haters to walk out in a huff). Alas, the event was closed to the press so this tiny clip of her burnishing her “Main Street” credentials ahead of 2012 is the best I can do, but the Journal got hold of the entire vid somehow and published some of the choicer excerpts. She touches on “death panels,” of course, but for my money this is the most significant bit:
Lack of government wasn’t the problem. Government policies were the problem. The marketplace didn’t fail. It became exactly as common sense would expect it to. The government ordered the loosening of lending standards. The Federal Reserve kept interest rates low. The government forced lending institutions to give loans to people who, as I say, couldn’t afford them. Speculators spotted new investment vehicles, jumped on board and rating agencies underestimated risks…
After I appeared on a PBS panel about Tea Party racism last week, some commenters here wondered why I didn’t object to moderator Gwen Ifill’s use of the term “teabaggers” (answer: I didn’t even notice it, such is the general filth-content of my brain). Anyway, PBS Ombudsman Michael Getler says the Corporation received a lot of complaints, and Ifill has now apologized:
Ombudsman’s Note: Ifill says, “Turns out I am the only person with access to email who never knew this was a term with a sexual meaning. I used it in an offhand manner as a shorthand referring to the ‘tea party’ movement. It was a slip I was unaware of, and I regret it.” I would add that I didn’t know that either.
Last year, Rep. Paul Kanjorski (D-PA) had his now semi-famous Kinsley-esque gaffe regarding the 2006 midterm elections:
“I’ll tell you my impression. We really in this last election, when I say we…the Democrats, I think pushed it as far as we can to the end of the fleet, didn’t say it, but we implied it. That if we won the Congressional elections, we could stop the war. Now anybody was a good student of Government would know that wasn’t true. But you know, the temptation to want to win back the Congress, we sort of stretched the facts…and people ate it up.”
Escalation is a bad idea. The Democrats backed themselves into defending the idea of Afghanistan being The Good War because they felt they needed to prove their macho bonafides they called for withdrawal from Iraq. Nobody asked too many questions sat the time, including me. But none of us should forget that it was a political strategy, not a serious foreign policy.
There have been many campaign promises “adjusted” since the election. There is no reason that the administration should feel any more bound to what they said about this than all the other committments [sic] it has blithely turned aside in the interest of “pragmatism.”
Jim Geraghty responds:
The average Democrat doesn’t like fighting wars. They don’t like using military force. They don’t just dislike collateral damage and civilian casualties and flag-draped coffins; they cringe at the concept of combat with citizens of another country, even when the president has declared:
Al Qaeda and its allies — the terrorists who planned and supported the 9/11 attacks — are in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Multiple intelligence estimates have warned that al Qaeda is actively planning attacks on the United States homeland from its safe haven in Pakistan. And if the Afghan government falls to the Taliban — or allows al Qaeda to go unchallenged — that country will again be a base for terrorists who want to kill as many of our people as they possibly can.
That’s not the last president; that’s the current president, an entire six months ago.
Notice this only applies to the use of military force and violence overseas; as we’ve seen, these same folks have a very different reaction when they hear about a town-hall protester having his finger bitten off. The base of the Democratic party is fundamentally pacifist and isolationist and has extraordinary, although not complete, leverage over this White House. They want the rest of the world to go away so we can focus on creating the perfect health-care system.
Quoting Hullabaloo’s statement that “none of us should forget that it was a political strategy, not a serious foreign policy”, Ace of Spades writes:
You claimed to support a war in which American soldiers were fighting and dying, leaving friends and limbs on the battlefield, as a cynical political strategy?
You… um… voiced support of a real serious-as-death war to cadge votes out of a duped public?
We won’t forget, champ. And we won’t let you forget, either.
Again we see a leftist projecting his pathological darkness on to others. They accused Bush of fighting wars for this very reason. And now, when it’s safe to say so (they think), they concede: We supported a war for the reason we accused Bush of doing so for 8 years.
One American general sounds like he’s getting tired of being a pawn in an increasingly politicized war. But these days, what isn’t?
“Our bill calls for the redeployment of U.S. troops out of Iraq so that we can focus more fully on the real war on terror, which is in Afghanistan.”
So said Nancy Pelosi on March 8 of 2007. Soon after, both houses of Congress passed a bill for ending the war in Iraq, arguing that it was a distraction from the “real fight.”
The opinion implicit in that resolution — that Iraq was a war of choice and, hence, the “wrong” war, while Afghanistan was a war of necessity, thus the “right” war — was echoed by the three leading Democrat candidates for the presidency at the time, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and John Edwards. Howard Dean, leader of the Democrat Party, argued that “we don’t have enough troops in Afghanistan. That’s where the real war on terror is.”
