PrintJuly 9, 2010
Boring Barry
I wrote recently about the political dangers to President Obama when people stop liking him. Many of us, me included, found it impossible to like Obama as soon as it became clear that he was a disciple of prophets of evil like Saul Alinksy. Many Americans (too many, in fact) are mesmerized by television. Good-looking, relaxed, well-spoken people have a big advantage in national politics.
This does not mean that the leftist establishment media does not create false images which enhance the likability of leftist politicians. Camera angles, editing, selection of questions asked, choice of news covered, and a dozen other tricks can make a candidate more likable. Magazine covers treat Obama like a rock star and show adoring photos of his wife and children. Marvel Comics, Tiger Beat, Vanity Fair, GQ, Rolling Stone, and Vogue are magazines supposedly not connected with partisan politics, but Barack and his family find their photographs in good poses, smiling amiably at readers of those magazines.
Conservatives know how politicized all of American life has become. The propagation of leftism in America means that Obama is never shown in unattractive poses or losing his temper at underlings. He answers few questions, and when he deigns to talk to his subjects, it is always through a safe, politically correct organization. A fair and objective media would have pulled Obama's likability down long ago, but even with fawning coverage, nearly all polls show a steady erosion of personal support for Obama, artificially obstructed by the leftist establishment.
Obama will become unlikable as people tire of fluff news stories or smiling photos of Barack and Michelle on the cover of Vogue. Much worse for Obama than becoming unlikeable is becoming boring -- and he will become more and more boring every day. Why? Marxists like Obama have nothing new to say. The whole sum of human problems, according to the goateed gurus of radical socialism on college campuses, is the unfair distribution of wealth, and the only solution to this "problem" is coercive redistribution.
It is hard to overestimate just how dull, dumb, and monotonous radical socialism is to people who are forced to listen to it all the time. The Marxist-Leninist paradise of Soviet Russia died of poverty, of party privilege, of suppression of nationalities, of many things -- but perhaps the most underrated cause of its implosion was sheer, mind-numbing boredom. No one, from the members of the Politburo to the local party bosses, actually believed the drivel of capitalist exploitation. Slavish, ritual expressions of the brilliance of Marx were simply a way of culling out honest and interesting people and insuring that only power-hungry hacks ever had any power in the Soviet Union.
The grotesque curiosity of living Marxism on American campuses will inspire future historians to compare these mad and malicious men to Nazi racial theorists or Hindus who compelled widows to immolate themselves or Aztec priests building mountains of human hearts to appease savage gods. It is no coincidence that both Nazism and Fascism, so different in other ways, both were conscious derivatives of Marxism. This evil, stupid doctrine seems to be the sole catechism of Obama.
That dooms Obama to descend into uninteresting, unhip, and utterly predictable rhetoric. Already we see signs of this slow political death. People are simply not watching his television addresses as much these days. A story of Obama sitting down with Medvedev to eat a hamburger is no longer thrilling or even interesting. Americans are not so much angry at Obama as indifferent to him. Most presidents have had a grand objective to their administration. Eisenhower wanted the interstate highway system. JFK wanted a man on the moon. Nixon wanted realpolitik engagement of China and Russia. Reagan sought to win the Cold War. George W. Bush tried to bring democracy to West Asia. These may not all have been good ideas, but they were at least novel ideas.
Obama seeks nothing more ordinary than an acceleration of Fabian Socialism long after most socialists had given up on their hoary doctrine. He has all the originality of a Young Communist reciting a lecture on the brilliance of Lenin to his fellow communists. He has all the glamour of Brezhnev reading the next Five-Year Plan to the Central Committee of the Communist Party. He has all the stirring insight of aging leftists in Hollywood pontificating about the evil of the land they choose to live and to prosper in.
The worst curse in modern politics is the yawns of voters. When no one wants to watch you, when no one really listens to you, and when most people do not even bother to dislike you anymore, then you (and your party) face a case of slow, terminal consumption. Obama is a fast-fading comet, and his party, having foolishly linked its fate to such an anachronism, may face with him extinction. Barry is becoming boring.
Bruce Walker is the author of two books: Sinisterism: Secular Religion of the Lie and The Swastika against the Cross: The Nazi War on Christianity.
