Light On Dark Water

Wishful thinking?

Probably. Quin Hillyer thinks the tide may be turning against Obama in a big way. I sorta doubt it. But there's one item in that piece that really caught my eye: the quote from an unidentified "Democratic insider" saying that "It’ll take the American people five years to realize what Obama’s really about and what he’s really like.” At a minimum, it does seem that the magic is gone for any but his most dedicated supporters, so that's progress. 

(This really should/could have been an update to the previous post, but I always doubt whether people will see those.)

Maclin Horton

25 responses to “Wishful thinking?”

  1. Art Deco

    Dunno. Whenever we get into one of these tussles over fiscal policy, one gets two impressions: 1. our institutional architecture is defective and 2. the President either has no interest in or no clue about how to make a deal with anyone. If you prorate his seasonal and part-time employment, he only spent about three years practicing law; you have to wonder how many settlements he negotiated.
    If you do not mind a personal opinion: I have never been able to figure out the rapport he seems to have with a certain portion of the electorate, and I’ve a family full of Democrats. I couldn’t make sense of Clinton’s appeal either; I always felt like taking a shower to wash his oleaginous verbiage off me. Reagan’s appeal I understood, even though it did not hit me viscerally; he was just an exemplary piece of mid-20th century Americana, and appears to have been so all his life. YMMV. The rest of them I think arrived at their positions through certain skills in the areas of organization, publicity, and fund-raising and did not really connect with the public; if you look at old polls, you see the public’s stated regard for George Bush the Elder gyrated wildly for scant apparent reason.

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  2. Louise on the new ‘puter

    There are not many high flying politicians whom I find very appealing whether here or abroad. How any of these people makes it to the top is a mystery to me.

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  3. Art Deco

    Harry Truman said that on entering the U.S. Senate, he said to himself, “I can’t believe I got here”. After six months, he said to himself, “I can’t believe they got here.”

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  4. Art Deco

    I think they got to where they were because they were willing to run for office in a public square that gets tawdrier every year. Look at who that has been:
    1. Ron Paul (goof)
    2. Newt Gingrich (goof with an odor of sociopathy)
    3. Mitt Romney (highly accomplished man, who appears to believe that issues are merely instrumental, and is in politics for God-knows-why)
    4. Barack Obama (consumer product)
    5. Hillary Clinton (warped by ambition, and a terror to work for)
    6. John Edwards (sociopath)
    7. John Kerry (pegged 50 years ago as a young man on the make by schoolmates, made semi-confabulated war stories the foundation of his entire public career while acquiring the habit of marrying women with 9-figure sums of money behind them)
    8. Howard Dean (moderately accomplished man who behaves like a raving loon for career advancement)
    9. Albert Gore, Jr. (a study in secular characterological decay)
    10. George W. Bush (per Karl Rove, “the most competitive man I have ever met” – so that’s what it’s all about)
    11. Alan Keyes (demonstration candidate. Former foreign service officer who gets odder every year)
    12. M.S. Forbes (demonstration candidate)
    13. Patrick J. Buchanan (demonstration candidate; last surviving employee of the America First Committee press office)
    14. Robert J. Dole (Capitol Hill apparatchik)
    15. George H.W. Bush (Begin with Mitt Romney, subtract some business acumen; add demonstrated personal courage, annoying verbal tics, two or three problem children, and a much funnier wife).

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  5. Louise on the new ‘puter

    That’s very amusing, Art, but I’m annoyed that I know the names of most of those people and even their faces. I shouldn’t have such knowledge. I wish someone would wipe those bits of my brain clean.

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  6. Louise on the new ‘puter

    what is a demonstration candidate?

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  7. Mac

    Just wait till you get here, Louise. They’ll really start to invade your head then. Even if, like me, you don’t watch any TV news to speak of, somehow they get in.
    Funny list, Art.

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  8. Mac

    I think I do understand the appeal of Obama and Clinton to a certain sort of person. They are extremely well suited to fill the role of president-as-secular-messiah in the hearts and minds of progressives. They have a lot in common with the original of that type, John F. Kennedy: young for the office, handsome, articulate, somewhat educated, and giving the impression, at least, of being something close to an intellectual, and being clearly a member of the progressive party. In other words, just the sort of person the quasi/semi-intellectual liberal sees himself as being, or at least longs to be. Add personal charisma and political skill, and you have a heartthrob for those, female and male, whose religion is progressive politics and who await the coming of one who will lead them to A Better World. In Obama’s case, there’s the added appeal of the Numinous Negro, and a chance for whites to experience a warm glow of interracial benevolence. So it’s not surprising that, in Obama’s case, the adulation became positively cultic. You and I may be immune to the charisma of all three, but it’s clearly there. You may remember Tina Brown’s bizarre gushing about Clinton.

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  9. Art Deco

    what is a demonstration candidate?
    Someone running to make a point, rally a constituency, get ideas into circulation, &c. but is not a working politician and in general lacks the preparation to actually function in office (which, come to think of it, many working politicians do as well). Demonstration candidates I think are a feature of the last 4 decades or so; prior to 1968 the element of peer review in nomination contests seems to have screened them out, though the peer reviewers sometimes did strange things (e.g. Wendell Willkie). Ron Paul was a demonstration candidate, as were Jesse Jackson, Shirley Chisolm, and Channing Phillips. Ronald Reagan qualified as such during his first run, but not his 2d, 3d, and 4th.
    I neglected to mention the Big He himself (another sociopath).
    To be fair, you do have some people who may be wrong on the issues and or not well-prepared for the office but who appear to qualify as passably decent and serious as a rule (R. Santorum, Gen. Clark, Wm. Bradley, John McCain, R. Kerrey, P. Tsongas) or episodically (Gov. Moonbeam). You will notice that McCain was the only one who ever won the nomination, by some accounts hired a campaign manager and press agent who were not actually for him, and has been treated with disrespect by partisan Republicans ever since. And so it goes.
    If we had any sense, we would ask Her Majesty Elizabeth II to nominate a viceroy to function as chief of state and take up parliamentary politics. Capitol Hill fixtures (e.g. Gerald Ford) have been the least annoying characters to be tasked with the chief executive’s job.

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  10. Louise on the new ‘puter

    Just wait till you get here, Louise. They’ll really start to invade your head then
    shudder

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  11. Stu

    I do think that they are all ego-maniacs – all politicians that is. Probably and most especially the ones that are so wealthy that leading a life outside of the public eye would certainly seem to be more reasonable to do. I am a Catholic church goer who is firmly on the left, but I do think that both sides for the most part believe they are working for the best interest of the country. Though I do have a more cynical take on those who must constantly be up for re-election. Who does that leave, second-term presidents? Bill Clinton was the first time my generation (now late 40s) felt like there was a president that could even understand what younger people might be all about. Reagan was out of it and really completely non-religious, so it is odd to see any lionization of him on this page. Okay, those are my fractured thoughts after reading these posts. Long live Emperor Obama!

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  12. Mac

    🙂
    The Clintons are class A baby-boomers, so I think your sense of having something in common with him has more to do with the cultural change that (some) baby-boomers wrought than with their and your age per se.
    I don’t really know, so someone can correct me if I’m wrong, but I always had the impression that Reagan was non-church-going but not non-religious. I thought he had a somewhat vaguely defined but real Americo-Protestantism. Something perhaps like the deistic views that have been part of American religious life from the beginning?

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  13. Art Deco

    “Bill Clinton was the first time my generation (now late 40s) felt like there was a president that could even understand what younger people might be all about. ”
    Speak for yourself
    “Reagan was out of it and really completely non-religious, so it is odd to see any lionization of him on this page.”
    You don’t know what you’re talking about. The President was a member of the Disciples of Christ and educated and a Disciples of Christ college. That is a non-creedal denomination. He attended fairly infrequently in office due to the clanking security cordon around him. His son, not a churchgoer, has said that churchgoing was standard in the Reagan household, at least through 1970.

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  14. Stu

    http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/christian-conservatives-have-a-very-selective-memory-of-ronald-reagan/
    Well, I just remember what I remember, like anyone else. Reagan seemed to know what he was doing as President, which goes a long way. In his first term that is – in the second one he seemed to be suffering from Alzheimers already. His successor was wildly tone-deaf, which opened the door for Slick Willy. Then I suppose due to Al Gore being such a stiff we ended up with W who seemed to mean well, but is apparently not the brightest of the Bushies – but his presidency has probably spoiled it for little brother Jeb, who is smart. It is hard to imagine a Republican being president again considering their debates and how wacky they are, but anything can happen I suppose.

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  15. Stu

    Oh, and where would Santorum be on your list, Art? And how would he be described?

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  16. Mac

    Just in passing: I don’t see any “lionization” of Reagan here, and you certainly won’t ever hear it from me. I was never wildly enthusiastic about him, although his successors have made him look better. I pretty much agree with Art’s description: “he was just an exemplary piece of mid-20th century Americana.” The better side of that, for the most part, I would add, and it looks pretty good in comparison to the most occupants of the White House since then. There’s nothing inconsistent about that, which is the main charge the piece you linked to levels against Christian conservatives. I think your guy has an overly monolithic view of the right, which is pretty typical of the left. Anyone who looks at the conservative movement as it actually is, and was in the 1980s, knows that there have always been a lot of very divergent views there, about Reagan and about pretty much everything.

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  17. Louise on the new ‘puter

    It is hard to imagine a Republican being president again considering their debates and how wacky they are, but anything can happen I suppose.
    Really? More wacky than the Democrats?

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  18. Janet

    I can’t really imagine anything much more wacky than Biden’s behaviour in the VP debate.
    AMDG

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  19. Mac

    We’re supposed to stay apprised of progressive updates when using words like “wacky.” It is now wacky to think that marriage necessarily involves a male and a female. It is not wacky to dismiss questions about misinformation involving the assassination of an American ambassador with “What difference at this point does it make?”
    I think we may find ourselves needing to resort to the Puddleglum gambit before this is over.

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  20. Art Deco

    The Mataconis article is valueless.
    I doubt that if you did a content analysis of ‘Christian conservative’ literature, you would find much in the way of references to Reagan. Over the years, I’ve done stretches as a subscriber to First Things, Crisis, Catholic World Report, Touchstone, Books & Culture and been for a time a regular reader of the online edition to World. I draw a complete blank about articles concerning the Reagan Administration. You might see something along those lines in National Review or in a column by Linda Chavez. Perhaps if I read more evangelical literature, but I do not think Christianity Today concerns itself with topical political questions much.
    I have had to come to the conclusion that the principal motivation of much political journalism is in exercises of self-aggrandizement, and that would certainly apply in this case.

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  21. Art Deco

    Donald McClarey, the moderator of The American Catholic, is a great admirer of Reagan, but if you recall the discussions at Open Book he was generally atypical in his assessment of conventional Republican politics (amongst that particular set of discussants).

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  22. Art Deco

    Oh, and where would Santorum be on your list, Art? And how would he be described?
    Remarked above. Santorum’s a constituency candidate, insofar as he rallied an abiding strain of thought within the Republican Party. Most recent constituency candidates have not been working politicians. Ronald Reagan was, as were John Anderson and Nelson Rockefeller. I think as working pols go, Santorum is a fairly forthright advocate; it is just that he does not have the preparation to occupy a demanding and variegated executive position; for that reason, I’d say Mike Huckabee was the more appropriate candidate.

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  23. Louise on the new ‘puter

    We’re supposed to stay apprised of progressive updates when using words like “wacky.” It is now wacky to think that marriage necessarily involves a male and a female.
    Oh yeah, I forgot.
    I think we may find ourselves needing to resort to the Puddleglum gambit before this is over.
    Sticking our foot in the fire?

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  24. Louise on the new ‘puter

    I have had to come to the conclusion that the principal motivation of much political journalism is in exercises of self-aggrandizement
    That is all too plausible.

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  25. Mac

    “Sticking our foot in the fire?” Yes, or other drastic means of reminding ourselves of what’s real. Circumstances may see to that, though.

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