Unbearable Lightness of Obama: The Audacity of Retrenchment

[KoKo]

Unbearable Lightness of Obama: The Audacity of Retrenchment
Barack Obama
by Robert Becker | December 15, 2009 - 12:23pm


Riddle of the week, month, or past year. Policy overlaps aside, how does a well-versed, savvy campaigner who glories in knowledge merge increasingly into his most uncurious, uninformed predecessor, who gloried what he didn't know? How did this high-risk candidate, taking on his entire party establishment, turn adverse to risk even before he stumbled?

How can the Obama who won the election, and the Peace Prize, by being not-Bush, match W.'s impulse to detach, delegate and default? And the final puzzle: how did a dense, inarticulate bully command his bully pulpit while the infinitely more articulate, tolerant newcomer fails to frame, let alone command key debates?

Bizarrely, the Paleolithic Sarah Palin prances and postures and plays the media while Obama hunts for his first major triumph true to the best of his campaign. Echoing the movie, Shakespeare in Love, "It's a mystery," as the besieged stage producer forlornly cites the "natural condition of insurmountable obstacles on the road to imminent disaster." But, unlike that happy ending, Obama's narrative is stagnating, and millions search for magic dust to make it all "turn out well." Beyond the painful defaults to the status quo in key advisers, business and the military affairs, the real shocker is why this presumptive reformer yields leadership to a venal Congress, the slipperiest slope to "imminent disaster."

-snip-


Unbearable Lightness of Obama

At this point, no-drama, low results Obama stars as the President of Process, the aloof mediator, as distant from unshakeable convictions as from the woes of average folks. Goods words articulating good ideas are mere starters, not enders, "nice to haves," not "must haves" for any politician sporting real clothes. To repeat my question, "What does Obama believe, and when did he stop believing it"?

This mystery is lasting so long I fear it's a permanent disability. If this president never gets energized, never realizes no risk-taking is the greatest risk of all for his party, then he becomes a transition figure between Bush and some fellow demagogue, likely more powerful and decidedly less liberal. Why should fickle independents be taken in again? Where do first-time voters, 71% of whom voted Obama, go, except to flee politics? Either this president achieves measurable, genuine achievements or lesser beings will define the future. This guy appears battle-wary without ever having gotten battle-weary.
Though a year after inauguration, Obama oddly reminds me of those stationary, detached 19th Century nominees who barely campaigned on the stump. Instead, prospective presidents dispatched oratory from on high, through the press, as if too dignified to jump in the trenches and get dirty. When does Obama roll up his sleeves and escape his own bubble, plus the one he admitted is Washington, not only fighting for his vision, but showing he can fight at all. If not, call rewrite and nix the happy ending. Even his re-election won't dent the status quo.

More of the article and his reasoning, here:

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/25528

[msongs]

1. being an american idol-like celebrity is not enough perhaps nt

[Berry Cool]

2. Oh, please. Who ever said it was?

That's really limp criticism, and I suspect it's backed with schaadenfreude.