Tuesday, January 24, 2012

Maureen Dowd: Not Good Enough for Obama

Perhaps it’s too much to say that Maureen Dowd is writing as a woman scorned, but she has surely been disappointed by Barack Obama.

Having allowed herself to be “seduced” by the man from Illinois she has been chagrined by his failure to perform as promised.

Dowd is describing a love affair gone bad. She speaks for a goodly number of honorable Americans who got caught up in the Obama rapture, only to discover that their love had been abused.

Sunday was not the first time that Dowd expressed her disappointment with Obama, but she is now offering one of the better profiles of the flawed man who is currently President of the United States.

With the political world abuzz over Newt Gingrich’s infidelities we would do well to spend some time contemplating Barack Obama’s deficiencies as a lover.

In Dowd’s words: “Times have been bad and sad, and The One did not turn out to be a messiah, just a mortal politician who ruefully jokes that his talent is hitting the ‘sweet spot’ where he makes no one happy, neither allies nor opponents.

“The man who became famous with a speech declaring that we were one America, not opposing teams of red and blue states, presides over an America more riven by blue and red than ever.

“The man who came to Washington on a wave of euphoria has had a presidency with all the joy of a root canal, dragged down by W.’s recklessness and his own inability to read America’s panic and its thirst for a strong leader.”

Disregarding the gratuitous swipe at W., Dowd describes a man who has deceived the public and who does not know what he is doing.

And then, Dowd quotes a statement by Obama that she calls “maddeningly naïve.”

In a Time Magazine interview Obama had this to say: “You know, the truth is, actually, when it comes to Congress, the issue is not personal relationships. My suspicion is that this whole critique has to do with the fact that I don’t go to a lot of Washington parties. And as a consequence, the Washington press corps maybe just doesn’t feel like I’m in the mix enough with them, and they figure, well, if I’m not spending time with them, I must be cold and aloof. The fact is, I’ve got a 13-year-old and 10-year-old daughter.”

In the past the press has allowed Obama to get away with this kind of mindless drivel. Now, Dowd is refusing to play along.

Effortlessly, she refutes Obama’s empty premise: “Reagan didn’t socialize with the press. He spent his evenings with Nancy, watching TV with dinner trays. But he knew that to transcend, you can’t condescend.”

What makes Obama such a bad lover? Why has the love that Maureen Dowd and many others invested in Obama been unrequited?

Simply put, Barack Obama is a monster of narcissism, an arrogant man who blames everyone else for his own faults.

What went wrong with Obama’s presidency? According to Obama and his sycophantic advisers, the fault lies with the American people. We all—you, me, and Maureen Dowd—are not good enough for the great Obama.

Dowd sees Michelle Obama as enabler in chief. She explains the Obama arrogance thusly: “Despite what his rivals say, the president and the first lady do believe in American exceptionalism — their own, and they feel overassaulted and underappreciated.

“We disappointed them.

“As Michelle said to Oprah in an interview she did with the president last May: ‘I always told the voters, the question isn’t whether Barack Obama is ready to be president. The question is whether we’re ready. And that continues to be the question we have to ask ourselves’.”

Pity the poor Obamas . They expected better of the American people.

Look at it this way. In the first flush of love, any man or woman will idealize the object of his or her affections.

There’s a reason they say that love is blind.

Now, Dowd is describing what happens when a woman discovers that her hero, the man she loved, the man to whom she plight her troth, cannot love her in return. How does she feel when she learns that he is so completely in love with himself that he has nothing left to give to anyone else?

You do not have to be a master of the art of romance to understand that if your love relationship is not working out you definitely do not want to hear your lover tell you that the problem is that you are just not good enough for him.

1 comment:

Dennis said...

It has always interested me that the Obamas seemed to be a lot like The Duvalier's. I can almost see them saying as they leave the WH, "We did everything for them."