PrintOctober 26, 2009
Obama voters have let down their leader
As Obama flails about, a very few of his fans are beginning to notice he can't deliver. His image sold to the public during the campaign was as phony as a David Axelrod astroturf group shilling for Commonwealth Edison. But for those who bought into him hook line and sinker, failure needs rationalization.
Reality is intruding. Barack Obama never ran anything. And it shows to those not blinded by the light from the light worker.
He is making it up as he goes along, letting others sweat the details. As a result, there is no coordination, no cross communication. They can't keep their stories straight. He is having trouble delivering on his promises. A lot of them turn out to be a lot more complicated than they seemed to the faculty lounge theorist mind of Obama. Say, closing Gitmo.
So, as Obama accomplishes nothing much domestically, and proves himself to be a naïf in the geopolitical realm, his true believers have a lot of rationalizing to do.
He remains, to members of his cult, above criticism. Newsweek has devoted its new cover to a prime example of this phenomenon, authored by Anna Quindlen. Obama voters have let down their leader:
He remains, to members of his cult, above criticism. Newsweek has devoted its new cover to a prime example of this phenomenon, authored by Anna Quindlen. Obama voters have let down their leader:
... the president's essential character... is at odds with the persona that developed during the campaign. Perhaps because of his race and his age, much of the electorate, especially those of us who are liberals, succumbed to stereotype and assumed that he was by way of being a firebrand. A year in, and we know that we deceived ourselves.
We, the public, also failed to realize all the checks and balances facing Obama. But don't worry. He is up to the job:
He is methodical, thoughtful, cerebral, a believer in consensus and process. In an incremental system, Barack Obama is an incremental man. It is one reason he is taking his time ending the two wars in which we remain mired, Nobel Peace Prize notwithstanding. On the one hand, on the other. This makes attacks on him as a radical or a socialist preposterous.
As for all those grandiose campaign promises at odds with a thoughtful incrementalist:
... campaigns are bad crucibles in which to forge the future. They speak to great aspirations; government amounts to the dripping of water on stone.
Remarkable fawning. But not isolated.
