If I were Obama I would laugh and get a copy of the cover signed by the artist. As it is, he ends up looking clueless and humorless.

I hope the campaign comes around and “gets it”.

It certainly is a disappointing election season so far.

doug

doug

doug

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JdpPj6UMG6A

doug

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/21/AR2008022102159_pf.html

with the title “If Obama Went 0-for-10 . . .”.

While I have been, and remain, a strong Hillary supporter (I find I agree with Samuelson’s recent column about the “delusion” factor), I have to admit his logic about the actual state and history of the campaigns is irrefutable.

I especially found this paragraph compelling: “But it’s stunning that the battle-tested Clinton machine allowed itself to be outsmarted and outhustled at the arcane science of winning delegates in caucuses. And it’s even more surprising that the campaign has been so careless with its money that it now is resigned to being outspent anywhere and everywhere.”

It does seem that Obama has simply out-campaigned Hillary. A shame!

Good column though…

doug

See the entire column here:

http://www.newsweek.com/id/113672/output/print

Here are some excerpts:

“Repudiating racism is not a magic cure-all for the nation’s ills. The task requires independent ideas, and Obama has few. If you examine his agenda, it is completely ordinary, highly partisan, not candid and mostly unresponsive to many pressing national problems.”

…..

“Political candidates routinely indulge in exaggeration, pandering, inconsistency and self-serving obscuration. Clinton and McCain do. The reason for holding Obama to a higher standard is that it’s his standard and also his campaign’s central theme. He has run on the vague promise of “change,” but on issue after issue—immigration, the economy, global warming—he has offered boilerplate policies that evade the underlying causes of the stalemates. These issues remain contentious because they involve real conflicts or differences of opinion.”

…..

“The contrast between his broad rhetoric and his narrow agenda is stark, and yet the mediapreoccupied with the political “horse race”have treated his invocation of “change” as a serious idea rather than a shallow campaign slogan. He seems to have hypnotized much of the media and the public with his eloquence and the symbolism of his life story. The result is a mass delusion that Obama is forthrightly engaging the nation’s major problems when, so far, he isn’t.”

…..

doug

doug

I myself am not sure what I will do. Obama still has to win my vote for November. Personally, I think this is a disaster and the day after Obama is nominated the Democratic Party is going to wake up with a huge hangover. They might as well drive by McCain headquarters on the way home and drop off the keys to the White House.

I’m not saying I definitely won’t vote for him if push comes to shove. But I am not inclined to vote for him right now. He has run a really underhanded campaign in my view, while pretending that all the “politics as usual” have just been coming from HIllary. His empty rhetoric and hypocrisy really turns me off.

I think CNN tonight said that 57% of Obama supporters would not be happy if Hillary was nominated and 43% of Hillary supporters would not be happy if Obama was nominated. So that is slightly a better percentage of support in Obama’s favor, but still split almost 50-50 into dissatisfied supporters. That does not bode well for either candidate.

Even if I were to end up voting for Obama, it would be half-hearted. He certainly isn’t going to get me campaigning for him or contributing money, like I have been trying to do for Hillary.

Should Obama win the nomination (which is looking likely at this point) then he has to find some way of reaching out to Hillary supporters in a way that shows he understands what we are talking about. If it is “my way or the highway”, or we all have to drink the kool-aid and start chanting “yes we can” with glassy eyes, then the election is even more doomed than I think it is right now.

doug

By DAVID BROOKS
At first it seemed like a few random cases of lassitude among Mary Chapin Carpenter devotees in Berkeley, Cambridge and Chapel Hill. But then psychotherapists began to realize patients across the country were complaining of the same distress. They were experiencing the first hints of what’s bound to be a national phenomenon: Obama Comedown Syndrome.

The afflicted had already been through the phases of Obama-mania — fainting at rallies, weeping over their touch screens while watching Obama videos, spending hours making folk crafts featuring Michelle Obama’s face. These patients had experienced intense surges of hope-amine, the brain chemical that fuels euphoric sensations of historic change and personal salvation.

But they found that as the weeks went on, they needed more and purer hope-injections just to preserve the rush. They wound up craving more hope than even the Hope Pope could provide, and they began experiencing brooding moments of suboptimal hopefulness. Anxious posts began to appear on the Yes We Can! Facebook pages. A sense of ennui began to creep through the nation’s Ian McEwan-centered book clubs.

Up until now The Chosen One’s speeches had seemed to them less like stretches of words and more like soul sensations that transcended time and space. But those in the grips of Obama Comedown Syndrome began to wonder if His stuff actually made sense. For example, His Hopeness tells rallies that we are the change we have been waiting for, but if we are the change we have been waiting for then why have we been waiting since we’ve been here all along?

Patients in the grip of O.C.S. rarely express doubts at first, but in a classic case of transference, many experience slivers of sympathy for Hillary Clinton. They see her campaign morosely traipsing from one depressed industrial area to another — The Sitting Shiva for America Tour. They see that her entire political strategy consists of waiting for primary states as boring as she is.

They feel for her. They feel guilty because the entire commentariat now treats her like Richard Nixon. Are liberal elites rationalizing their own betrayal of her? Is Hillary just another fading First Wife thrown away for the first available Trophy Messiah?

As the syndrome progresses, they begin to ask questions about The Presence himself:

Barack Obama vowed to abide by the public finance campaign-spending rules in the general election if his opponent did. But now he’s waffling on his promise. Why does he need to check with his campaign staff members when deciding whether to keep his word?

Obama says he is practicing a new kind of politics, but why has his PAC sloshed $698,000 to the campaigns of the superdelegates, according to the Center for Responsive Politics? Is giving Robert Byrd’s campaign $10,000 the kind of change we can believe in?

If he values independent thinking, why is his the most predictable liberal vote in the Senate? A People for the American Way computer program would cast the same votes for cheaper.

And should we be worried about Obama’s mountainous self-confidence?

These doubts lead O.C.S. sufferers down the path to the question that is the Unholy of the Unholies for Obama-maniacs: How exactly would all this unity he talks about come to pass?

How is a 47-year-old novice going to unify highly polarized 70-something committee chairs? What will happen if the nation’s 261,000 lobbyists don’t see the light, even after the laying on of hands? Does The Changemaker have the guts to take on the special interests in his own party — the trial lawyers, the teachers’ unions, the AARP?

The Gang of 14 created bipartisan unity on judges, but Obama sat it out. Kennedy and McCain created a bipartisan deal on immigration. Obama opted out of the parts that displeased the unions. Sixty-eight senators supported a bipartisan deal on FISA. Obama voted no. And if he were president now, how would the High Deacon of Unity heal the breach that split the House last week?

The victims of O.C.S. struggle against Obama-myopia, or the inability to see beyond Election Day. But here’s the fascinating thing: They still like him. They know that most of his hope-mongering is vaporous. They know that he knows it’s vaporous.

But the fact that they can share this dream still means something. After the magic fades and reality sets in, they still know something about his soul, and he knows something about theirs. They figure that any new president is going to face gigantic obstacles. At least this candidate seems likely to want to head in the right direction. Obama’s hype comes from exaggerating his powers and his virtues, not faking them.

Those afflicted with O.C.S. are no longer as moved by his perorations. The fever passes. But some invisible connection seems to persist.

Take a look at this column about the Che Guevara flag hanging on the wall of the Obama volunteer office in Houston:

doug