Tag Archives: Michael Barone

Obama continues to vote present because he just likes Being There

Obama has not only diminished the nation in the eyes of the world but he’s diminished the office of president in the eyes of the American people.  It’s a shame when Americans have lost all pride in the POTUS and the first family. It’s sad that he’s such a bumbling fool, which reflects on all of us.

From bowing to foreign leaders:

from AmericanThinker.com

to denying American  exceptionalism to escorting the Dalai Lama past the garbage and out of the White House via the back door,

from FrugalCafeBlogZone.com

Obama has weakened our position on the world stage.

So, when the president is selling $5 raffle tickets from his living room in the White House for a dinner with him or Joe Biden, it’s obvious to all that the prestige of the office is in the basement. It’s on par with the sleaziness of selling the Lincoln bedroom.

 

Let’s hope a dinner with a common American goes better than this one did:

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: The Obamas are totally out of their element as the First Family of America.

~~~ooOoo~~~

Obama has the Alinsky community organizer job down very well: give the idea and incentive and then delegate so if (or when) it doesn’t work out, he has clean hands. It’s really nothing more than a continuation of voting “present” by just Being There.

Just Being There (in the White House) is all he really wants anyway: the perks and the private concerts with super stars, the private jet and personal chef. Honestly, after reading Michael Barone in the National Review today, I can see why BO wants to be president again. Being There is just so easy.

Which past leader does Barack Obama most closely resemble? His admirers, not all of them liberals, used to compare him to Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt.

[…]

But there is another comparison I think more appropriate for a president who, according to one of his foreign-policy staffers, prefers to “lead from behind.” The man I have in mind is Chauncey Gardiner, the character played by Peter Sellers in the 1979 movie Being There.

Peter Sellers as Chauncey Gardiner in Being There. And many believe that just like Chauncey, Obama walks on water, too.

As you may remember, Gardiner is a clueless gardener who is mistaken for a Washington eminence and becomes a presidential adviser. Asked if you can stimulate growth through temporary incentives, Gardiner says, “As long as the roots are not severed, all is well, and all will be well in the garden.”

“First comes the spring and summer,” he explains, “but then we have fall and winter. And then we get spring and summer again.” The president is awed as Gardiner sums up, “There will be growth in the spring.”

Kind of reminds you of Barack Obama’s approach to the federal budget, doesn’t it?

[…]

On all these issues, Obama seems oddly disengaged, aloof from the hard work of government, hesitant about making choices.

That doesn’t sound like Lincoln. Or Roosevelt. Or even Jimmy Carter. More like “then we have fall and winter.”

 


There’s the educated class and then there’s “the rest of us”

I read this column by David Brooks in the NYT  last week, H/T to HotAir.com, and it infuriated me. Since then, Michael Barone and Michelle Malkin have  taken this guys premise on.

David Brooks has said that he divides people into “those who talk like  us, and those who don’t.” In his column he again categorizes people as those in the  “educated class” and the rest of us.

Here’s an example of Brooks’ elitist/education based prejudice from Michelle Malkin’s site; take note of the college pedigree’s:

Jan. 20, 2009, will be a historic day. Barack Obama (Columbia, Harvard Law) will take the oath of office as his wife, Michelle (Princeton, Harvard Law), looks on proudly. Nearby, his foreign policy advisers will stand beaming, including perhaps Hillary Clinton (Wellesley, Yale Law), Jim Steinberg (Harvard, Yale Law) and Susan Rice (Stanford, Oxford D. Phil.).

The domestic policy team will be there, too, including Jason Furman (Harvard, Harvard Ph.D.), Austan Goolsbee (Yale, M.I.T. Ph.D.), Blair Levin (Yale, Yale Law), Peter Orszag (Princeton, London School of Economics Ph.D.) and, of course, the White House Counsel Greg Craig (Harvard, Yale Law)…

In Brooks’ opinion, only those with M.A.’s and higher after their names, should be governing us.

In his most recent column, Brooks compares the Tea Party members (the uneducated class) to the Obama educated class. And apparently the Tea Partiers are not smart enough – yet – to realize that we need those guys to lead us. To Brooks, it’s almost as though, those who do not support or belong to the educated class are just being contrarians for the sake of being contrary:

The educated class believes in global warming, so public skepticism about global warming is on the rise. The educated class supports abortion rights, so public opinion is shifting against them. The educated class supports gun control, so opposition to gun control is mounting.

The story is the same in foreign affairs. The educated class is internationalist, so isolationist sentiment is now at an all-time high, according to a Pew Research Center survey. The educated class believes in multilateral action, so the number of Americans who believe we should “go our own way” has risen sharply.

I guess it’s not possible in the educated brain of Mr. Brooks that maybe “the educated class” is wrong on all these issues! I guess he doesn’t know that all those issues that the “educated class” supports are UNCONSTITUTIONAL! “The rest of us” (the uneducated class) seem to know and understand more about that document than his ilk does.

Instead of contrasting the smart guys and “the rest of us”, Barone compares those who follow style (Obamatrons) and “the rest of us” who follow substance:

…it sounds like Brooks was indulging the conceit of so many liberals that they are, well, simply smarter than conservatives.

But when you look back over the surges of enthusiasm in the politics of the last two years, you see something like this: The Obama enthusiasts who dominated so much of the 2008 campaign cycle were motivated by style. The tea party protesters who dominated so much of 2009 were motivated by substance.

(Read more at the Washington Examiner: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/politics/Obama_s-rapturous-style-versus-tea-party-substance-8756474-81280502.html#ixzz0cZzuqeSJ)

If you’re a devotee of style, you’re buying every issue of Vanity Fair or People rag/mags to see Mrs. TheOne’s new spring fashion wardrobe or her new way cool hairdo, or gawking at TheOne’s serious six-pack and pecks.

If you’re a follower of coolness, you’re a twenty-something watching mindless Jersey Shores reality tv on  “Rock the Vote” network.

If your motivation is substance, you’re reading the Constitution, the health care and crap and tax bills and getting smart enough to debate candidates, congressmen and senators at town hall meetings.

Tell me again Mr. Brooks, who is the educated class in this country?