The man is a smarmy, aloof, lying, neo-Marxist-Alinskyite ponzi schemer(see Steve’s fine post above). A lying liar who lies.

Any questions?

So, he gets to Chicago and meets a group of progressives who ultimately support his running for office. (I am skipping stuff here to get to my point.) He is introduced to the people who now make up the Chicago Obami in the White House. But, if he never gave up his childhood radical politics, one has to question whether any one in this White House crew has any influence with him or whether he seeks more radical advice (and, if so, from whom)? (In fact, does he view his Obami as nothing more than “useful idiots”?) Jonah Goldberg had a very funny piece on NRO on the new narrative strategy calling it more cowbell.

But, something horrible is happening. As Obama loses public support he does not seek competent and helpful advisors form the DNC. Rather, he goes more heavily into campaign mode. Is anyone running the country? Is there ONE ADULT who he can turn to for good advice?

Obama has still not left NYC off the “terrorist trial hook”. He is still pushing his healthcare bill (and he still does not even have a healthcare bill of his own to push). All the polls are screaming that Obama should now be focusing on jobs and the economy. But he dithers.

For whatever bad reason, Obama is not doing the politically astute thing to do. This is not how a typical Democrat would deal with this situation. (My view is that Democrats want power because they think they are smarter than Republicans and know how to use it. That is, until they get it.) This dithering (almost a refusal to address the real issues at hand) puts at risk not only the power of the Democrat party to control Congress (and the legislative agenda and federal budget), but his own power as well. If he is throwing the Democrat party to the wolves in order to make a Clinton-like comeback, he does not seem capable of actually governing from the center, as he said he would do in his campaign. Otherwise, he would be doing that now.

My sense is that he cares no more for the Democrat party than for the Republican. He is still a dedicated Marxist-Leninist at heart and will use any means, democratic or otherwise, to maintain his power. If the Democrats fail, so be it. He can do a lot of damage through the regulatory process and who knows what else he has in mind. So long as Nancy Pelosi (the epitomy of aggressive political stupidity but a genius at manipulating people) remains the Leader of the House, it will not be likely that Congress will pass overriding legislation with veto-proof majorities.

We may have a rocky year ahead of us.

I’m reminded of Abraham Lincoln, saying about a political opponent (perhaps Stephen Douglas, although I’m not sure):

“He can compress more words into a smaller idea than any other man I ever met.”

CV: I agree. President Obama knows he is in trouble, and so he’s falling back on his strength, the technique that’s always helped him in the past: blame other people and talk, talk, talk. (He doesn’t seem to know that this accounts for a lot of the trouble he’s in; he may not even realize that he’s doubling down on a failed strategy.)

He will no doubt continue to try to control the narrative. But the narrative is beyond his control; we have other sources than him and his trained lapdogs, and we’ve been using them.

He may yet find the day when he gives a major policy speech, and discovers, to his dismay, that he’s orating to an empty hall.

respectfully,
Daniel in Brookline

“Maybe if we put a little more chrome on the bumper the Edsel will sell”.

Has any president in American history blathered, addressed, interviewed(controlled)and generally filled the air with more words than this one? I think not.

This could actually be a big change for Obama, though I doubt it.

Obama’s tactic for the first year was to let Congress write all the bills, and then pretend that they were his. This meant that Barak’s speeches never really defended the actual laws which were being written, see he didn’t write them. He just spoke in platitudes to support someone else’s legislation. This was designed to protect him to some extent, because he was not directly responsible for the bills which were written. This was somewhat dishonest, in that his staff was directly involved in writing the bills, but that was hidden.

If the White House staff is going to write new proposed legislation directly, that will be a change. But I doubt it will increase his popularity any. It will probably decrease it.

James

It looked more like the classic school teacher’s “I’ll wait until you are done goofing off” look.

Every school teacher had that trick in their bag of tricks when I was growing up. It worked.