This isn’t Camelot or the court of the Sun King

Reading The American Spectator today, Norman Podhoertz in the Wall Street Journal and Nile Gardiner of the UK Telegraph, reminded me of Evan Thomas (grandson of that loser but perennial socialist presidential candidate, Norman Thomas) declaring to Chris “tingly leg” Matthews in 2009 that “Obama is sorta god.”

(As an aside, Chris really should have this tingly leg thing checked out. It could be neuropathy caused by undiagnosed diabetes or something and maybe shove himself away from those jelly doughnuts, just in case it is. A weekly workout in the MSNBC gym wouldn’t hurt him, either. His god-dess Michelle will be the first to tell him, and the rest of us, that obesity is the number 1 cause of diabetes.)

But I digress and that’s a whole other blog.

Those were the days, weren’t they? Obama on the cover of every “news” magazine in the grocery store checkout line with the celestial halo around him, head upturned and nose in the air; the frown of determination and decisiveness across his face.

Under the spell of the messiah on Rolling Stone

Yes, Evan, he really was above us – on a ledge of your making. And every journalist in the nation, nay world, was all too quick and willing to acquiesce to their new found god Obama. His was the soaring rhetoric that was going to heal the world:

In the American Spectator, George Neumayr relates that “Obama loomed even larger than Lincoln. He was a “Lightworker,” as San Francisco Chronicle columnist Mark Morford​ put it in 2008, “that rare kind of attuned being who has the ability to lead us not merely to new foreign policies or health care plans or whatnot, but who can actually help usher in a new way of being on the planet, of relating and connecting and engaging with this bizarre earthly experiment.” [A bizarre earthly experiment? Does anyone really talk like this? Maybe if you were in a 70’s consciousness raising group, or something…]

Now that the Lightworker has fallen to earth and the glorious new way of being on the planet turns out to be a lowered credit rating, some of his prominent supporters have fallen silent or resentful. Heady Lincoln comparisons have given way to Carter comparisons, sotto voce: “We are watching him turn into Jimmy Carter right before our eyes,” an anonymous Democratic Senator said to New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd​.

Yep, well it’s a long, hard fall when you’re up “above the world” looking down.  It’s an even harder fall when you start to believe all the mythology about yourself.

The new Emperial president.

There is a disturbing let them eat cake mentality projected by the Obama White House … No US presidency in modern times has been more elitist or out of touch than the present one, which exudes the kind of condescending left-wing snobbery that is normally the preserve of an ivory tower common room. President Obama looks increasingly aloof and out of sync with the American people, three quarters of whom now believe the country is heading down the wrong track – including a staggering 58 percent of Democrats, according to Rasmussen. Nile Gardiner/UK Telegraph

Norman Podhoretz says that his “own answer to the question, “What Happened to Obama?” is that nothing happened to him. He is still the same anti-American leftist he was before becoming our president, and it is this rather than inexperience or incompetence or weakness or stupidity that accounts for the richly deserved failure both at home and abroad of the policies stemming from that reprehensible cast of mind.”

Although he plays one on TV, Obama is no statesman

I’ve argued before that Tony Blair and Barack Obama have an awful lot in common. Both are lawyers; both are snake-oil-salesman; both claim to be post-partisan, and Third Way and consensual; both play the acceptable, moderate-seeming public face of a regime chock full of Communists, class warriors, single issue rabble rousers, malcontents, communitarians and eco-loons hell bent on destroying every last vestige of what once made their country great. And both do (or did) the things dodgy political leaders always do when the going gets tough at home and their domestic audience finally wises up to how totally useless they are: they hop on the plane and pose as international statesman instead. James Delingpole/UKTelegraph (emphasis mine.)

Isn’t that an interesting observation (from a Brit, no less) considering the geo-political education Obama got last week from Benjamin Netanyahu?

Have you seen the movie Soapdish? The scene: Soap opera star and “America’s Sweetheart” Celeste Talbert (Sally Field) has been dumped by her boyfriend and is being maneuvered by political ner’do-wells at work. She’s depressed and emotionally falling apart when her friend and writer at the Sun Also Sets, (Whoopi Goldberg) takes her to the mall and pretends to be a fan. This incites all the shoppers to gather ’round Celeste and beg for autographs and go all gah-gah over her. Just the “worship fix” Celeste needed.

When I saw Obama in Ireland today, in front of thousands of cheering, adoring fans, I thought immediately of that scene in Soapdish. In his own version of television soap opera, Obama’s not getting the kind of reception in America that the Irish have lavished on him, and in fact he’s been getting a lot of criticism, so I’m sure he’s in need of a little messiah worship infusion. He’ll get it from those European socialists who want nothing more than to slobber all over the first Black American president.

Delingpole’s blog is a definite must read. You’ll enjoy it and be sure and read his link to a previous story about Michelle.

On another topic: Doesn’t Hillary look good since she got that LifeStyle lift?

Wow! What you learn from the Brits perspective…

From the UK Telegraph via Drudge.

You’ve gotta read the whole article. I always like to read how the foreign press portray us. This is a really good article.

The end of the road for Barack Obama?

“Obama’s big problem,” a senior Democrat told me, “is that four times as many people watch Fox News as watch CNN.” The Fox network is a remarkable cultural phenomenon which almost shocks those of us from a country where a technical rule of impartiality is applied in the broadcast media. With little rest, it pours out rage 24 hours a day: its message is of the construction of the socialist state, the hijacking of America by “progressives” who now dominate institutions, the indoctrination of children, the undermining of religion and the expropriation of public money for these nefarious projects. The public loves it, and it is manifestly stirring up political activism against Mr Obama, and also against those in the Republican Party who are not deemed conservatives. However, it is arguable whether the now-reorganising Right is half as effective in its assault on the President as some of Mr Obama’s own party are.

….

The root of the problem seems to be the management of expectations. The magnificent campaign created the notion that Mr Obama could walk on water. Oddly enough, he can’t. That was more Mr Axelrod’s fault than Mr Emanuel’s. And, to be fair to Mr Emanuel, any advice he has been giving the President to impose his will on Congress is probably well founded. The $783 billion stimulus package of a year ago was used to further the re-election prospects of many congressmen, not to do good for the country. America’s politics remain corrupt, populated by nonentities whose main concern once elected is to stay elected; it seems to be the same the whole world over. Even this self-interested use of the stimulus package appears to have failed, however. Every day, it seems, another Democrat congressman announces that he will not be fighting the mid-term elections scheduled for November 2. The health care Bill, apparently so humane in intent, is being “scrubbed” (to use the terminology of one Republican) by its opponents, to the joy of millions of middle Americans who see it as a means to waste more public money and entrench socialism. For the moment, this is a country vibrant with anger.