Shrug.
Excellent conversation between the wry and philisophical Faoud Ajami, author and professor, and WSJ's Alan Murray and Kelly Evans, re the Ajami op-ed on the disappointment of Barrack Obama. The essay does not go to new places for Ajami, and his ironies are deft, sound, historically rich and useful. The professor finds the expectations of POTUS to have been based upon illusion and imagination. Shrug. The professor finds that the ardent supporters of Candidate Obama were seeking a redeemer and that the candidate decided to play to the appetite rather than to define himself as a state senator and a freshmen from Illinois. Shrug. The professor argues that POTUS Obamas has disappointed his supporters just because he left himself undefined, his supporters did not ask for clarifications, the events of the last year have required seasoned Washington talent and not a teleprompter reader who enjoys scrapping with his opponents when they are unable to answer face to face (such as in community organizing townhalls). In sum, the professor writes the obvious with great wit and style.
Why the Whining from Obamanation?
Kelly Evans characterizes some of the comments as vitriol and even hatred for the professor. I have seen much nastier in the Beast about much more volatile subjects, so perhaps the idea of hatred is relative to the WSJ comment rules that excise the vulgar and the prankish. Those who voted for POTUS Obama have not walked away from him. Those who voted against him were never in the room. Those who voted against George Bush and Hank Paulson and the cranky, weary, predictably puckish John McCain are newly persuaded that there was no credible choice in 2008. The rookie or the train-wreck? Fourteen months later, it is more clear that the Obamanation crowd chose their idea of the UnBush, and instead what they got was an UnAware. POTUS does not register how much polling trouble his party is in. The PPP from Arkansas is shocking. Blanche Lincoln at 27% approval is dropped toast. What has she done to deserve this enmity? Lincoln is a Blue Dog senator from a Red State. This is a protest vote. Not Tea Party, much stranger. Independents have turned off the Obama/Dem alliance. What does the Scott Brown win have to do with Blanche Lincoln's crater? The Independents are voting against incumbent power. Boxer, Feingold, Gillibrand, all in deep trouble.
Cult of Disappointment.
The red ink in the 2011 fiscal budget has ended all the dreams for Obamanation as well as the last-ditch McCainiacs. The cheers of the Berliners are long gone. POTUS will skip the May EU Summit. No interest from the EU or from POTUS. What remains for the US is receivership, or something like it, and a heavy-handed reorganizing of Federal spending and paying off the debts without taking on new ones. The debts are the end of disappointment. Time to clean out the two-car garage called Congress.
What has become clear over the past year is that Barack Hussein Obama does not like America. That, more than anything, troubles Americans. Mistakes made due to inexperience, or even ineptitude, would have been easily excused by an inherently forgiving public. No one is under the illusion that POTUS is easy work. He would have been forgiven even a dalliance with interns had he shown even minimal respect for America and its hallowed institutions.
Instead he has consistently shown utter disregard for the documents of America’s founding and modeled himself after the commonest banana republic dictator as he continues to push for policies that go hard against the grain of American ideals and principles.
“Disappointment” is not the proper word for what America is feeling right now. “Scared” is far more appropriate. People are scared that he will actually succeed in bringing down the house. They have already begun to question his motives. His budget is just the latest example. It is clearly designed to destroy what’s left of the fiscal integrity of our nation.
Whereas Obama has been roundly applauded oversees, at home he has already overstayed his welcome. The people are desperate to elect a congress that will curb his appetites. …and no doubt they will. They hope it will not come too late. Even overseas they look at him with deepening suspicion. No one has the stomach to watch a nation commit public suicide – especially if that nation has had the distinction of being the leader of the free world. Even our traditional adversaries are concerned as they are now suddenly and unexpectedly confronted by a reality that only their wildest rhetoric could have invented.
No, John! Disappointment can only be attributed to those few among us who have been advocating for America’s demise ever since the Berlin wall came down – those miserable, self-loathing, ivory–tower hypocrites who will never be happy until they see innocent blood flowing on America’s streets. For them America can never be forgiven for having had the audacity to reach for the sky. In this way, they approximate Iran’s mullahs, those there in power who would welcome a sanguine cleansing to usher in their global Caliphate. Our own 20 per centers want the same, except they call it ‘revolution’ (to usher in some implausible communist Utopia).
These are interesting times indeed: identical upheavals in different parts of the world – each one quite probable within most of our lifetimes. It’s a horse race now. Curiously, should one succeed, it is likely to forestall the other. Who will be the one to escape the apocalypse? Or will these actions coordinate for maximum effect? Stay tuned. The four horsemen are headed ‘round the last turn.
http://peterkoelliker.blogspot.com/