Blogs For Victory

Heard some clips of this, but didn’t realize the totality was this bad:

Earlier this week, during a radio interview, I had said that Obama’s appearance for Martha Coakley on Sunday was the least effective stump appearances I had seen from a president. A lot of factors contributed to that – Coakley’s literally yawn-inducing speech, the decision to use the president as an attack dog in the race, the president (or his speechwriter’s) odd fixation on Scott Brown’s truck, and so on.

But perhaps Obama is in a “stump slump.” Maybe it’s me; maybe I can’t see any Obama speech as a good one these days. But today in Ohio, it seemed like the president was way off his game. But I thought he was defensive, prickly, almost indignant that he’s found himself in the tough spot that he’s in.

He began by talking about how much he didn’t like being in Washington, and apparently said something about the job being stifling. Sir, you spent two years trying to get this job.

One of his rallying cries as, “This is not about me!” Yes, Mr. President, but it’s about the decisions you make and the policies you’re trying to enact.

He made a reference to bankers who “click their heels and watch their stocks skyrocket.” Was he going with a Dorothy in Oz metaphor? Do bankers click their heels?

“I won’t stop fighting to bring back jobs here,” worked as an applause line, but I wondered how it worked outside the venue. That insinuates he’s been doing it for the first year, as unemployment has steadily increased. He’s calling on Congress to “pass a jobs bill.” I thought the stimulus was supposed to do that.

The few clips I’ve heard tended to indicate to me that Obama will never be a populist – he hasn’t the nack for it. Someone said he’s like Woodrow Wilson, and that I that apt. Highly educated, lacking any practical experience but quite certain of moral rectitude while leading a party corrupt as the day is long. That is Wilson, that is Obama.

Trouble is, Wilson was a miserable failure as President and stored up an endless about of woe for the United States in later years. Could be that Obama wants to be the populist leader, but can’t do it – it helps, if you wish to be populist, to have lived a bit like the people have. Growing up a rich stoner in Hawaii and then heading to elite eduction and then in to politics doesn’t allow you to do this. Teddy Roosevelt got over his elite upbringing by volunteering to live and work with regular folks – and not as a “community organizer” but by actually getting out there and doing some work (TR failed as a rancher, but the lessons he learned by working with ranch hands proved invaluable). As an aside, don’t think I’m hammering Obama on the stoner thing – while I only smoked marijuana a few times and never tried anything harder than that, I lived the basic stoner lifestyle and had bags of stoner friends – not casting stones but, rather, pointing out that hitting the bong doesn’t give a person a lot of real world experience as a youth. I corrected this deficit by joining the Navy – Obama has yet to find a corrective.

Anyways – Now that the bloom is off the rose and Obama has to lead, he’s proving incapable of doing so. He was elected, it must be kept in mind, because he kept himself largely a blank slate in 2008 and allowed everyone to apply whatever they wished to him. He became the un-named Democrat incarnate. Liberals saw a true-blue liberal, because that is what they wanted him to be. Some conservatives saw a liberal with a pragmatic streak, because that is what they wanted him to be. Centrist saw a post-partisan, post-racial uniter, because that is what they wanted him to be. Trouble is, he was none of things things – in large measure, he is nothing. He’s whatever people pour in to him – I can’t identify a core set of ideals which can be described as Obamanism.

He was going to close Gitmo in a year – now it looks as though it’ll still be open for an indefinite period of time. He was going to win in Afghanistan – then he dithered for months before sending less force to Afghanistan than the military said was necessary. He was going to keep unemployment below 8% – now its above 8% and he saying he’ll start working on jobs right away. On and on it goes – with the insistence on health care being the only thing he’s been consistent and, indeed, ferocious in pushing. Everything else is flash and glitz and then forgotten.

President Obama really needs to sit down with people who can help him – a long weekend with President Bush with some actual listening going on would do wonders. President Bush soared even higher than Obama ever did and has, thus far, sunk lower than Obama has. He knows, for real, the ups and downs of being President – most importantly, he knows how to get things done even when a popular majority is wary and Congress is being uncooperative. There’s a gold mine down in Texas for Obama, if he’ll just go get it. And if he can’t stomach a lecture on leadership from Bush, he could at least try Bill Clinton – not as good as Bush, but vastly better than Obama.

We’ll see how this all comes out, but I think we’re rapidly developing towards a completely failed Presidency – and thus an hour of grave danger for the whole world.