Sunday, October 2, 2011

Suckered by Obama

I have been at pains on this blog to point out the dereliction of judgment that led many of the smartest people in this country to support Barack Obama.

Now more and more of them are stepping forward to offer their mea culpas. They were suckered into vouching for a man who was not even remotely qualified for the job.

David Brooks now declares that he was a sap for believing in Obama. Tina Brown now tells us that Obama was not ready to be president.

And Wall Street bankers, not the group that first comes to mind when you think of politically correct progressives, are looking elsewhere for a candidate this time.

We take note of the fact that these same bankers, the ones that Obama has been excoriating for three years now, are now suffering the indignity of seeing their neighborhood occupied by Obama supporters who at least knew what they were voting for.

Commenting on Wall Street’s disillusion with Obama, Mark Steyn explains: “Gee, aren't you the fellows who, when you buy a company, do something called ‘due diligence’? But you sunk everything into stock in Obamania Inc. on the basis of his ‘perfectly creased pant leg’ or whatever David Brooks was drooling about that day? You handed a multitrillion-dollar economy to a community organizer, and you're surprised that it led to more taxes, more bureaucracy, more regulation, more barnacles on an already rusting hulk?”

Some few intellectual types are still clinging to their Obamania. They are whining about how Obama was simply too moderate, too sensible, too centrist, to work with Republican extremists.

Such thinkers keep failing to recognize that these same Republican extremists had no influence at all during the first two years of the Obama administration, and that our community-organizer in chief showed them the back of his hand.

This notion of Obama the centrist is being hawked by no less than Hendrik Hertzberg, chief political commentator at The New Yorker.

You remember Hertzberg. He used to write speeches for Jimmy Carter. He was an author of Carter’s “malaise” speech, widely considered one of the worst political speeches of all time. In liberal precincts this qualifies him for a genius award.

So, now Obama is whining about how soft America is, and Mark Steyn, like Jonah Goldberg before him, explains that only a soft country could have elected Barack Obama president.

Steyn writes: “After all, a key reason why 53 percent voted for a man who was not, in Tina Brown's word, ‘ready’ is that Tina and all her pals assured us he was. Occidental, Columbia, Harvard Law, a little light community organizing, a couple of years timeserving in a state legislature: That's what America's elites regard as an impressive resume rather than a bleak indictment of contemporary notions of ‘accomplishment.’ Obama would not have withstood scrutiny in any society with a healthy, skeptical press. Yet, like the high-rolling Wall Street moneybags, they failed to do due diligence.”


3 comments:

Dennis said...

I was talking with my son-in-law and mentioned I really feel sorry for many of these young people who voted for Obama. They are just beginning to realize that all of this largess is going to fall on their shoulders.
I can understand how they are because we were all young and thought we were going to change the world on a hope that what sounded good was going to work miracles. Little did we ask whether or how these nice sounding ideas were going to be accomplished. It does take some time to gain enough maturity to start asking the right questions as to who, what where, when and how.
The problem is that large swaths of the 60's generation never matured enough to ask any questions as to the ramifications of these nice sounding ideas. It became what "feels" good as opposed to doing good. If we help those who need help and ultimately make them slaves to the state and create more dependency are we really doing good?
There are few programs developed or pushed by the 60's generation that have not lead to further decay and a poverty of the spirit. Is there any wonder that we as a country have a significant number of the population who love nice sounding words and feeling over the actual work of raising everyone up by bettering the abilities of those who need help.
Obama fits perfectly with the 60's generation. He hoists the rubes up on their own desires, but spends his time doing damage or playing golf or going on vacations. Most of his ideas are warmed over 60's generation leftist dogma that has never worked and caused misery and poverty every where they are tried, retried, repackaged, et al. Obama fits perfectly with the fantasy world of Hollywood.
I suspect that some of us went through a growing up process where we began to as ourselves the question why do I believe as I do and what are the ramifications of those beliefs. That is when many of us started moving away from what has become known currently as liberal ideas and approaches. Once one takes away an individual's belief that they possess the capability and capacity to succeed without someone else's constant guidance and control you take away their sense of self. How many of us just want to be known as a member of a group and lose what makes us unique?
There is a reason that the generation who predicated their ideals on "Never trust anyone over thirty" keeps finding themselves making large mistakes that hurt us all. The ultimate irony is hearing them, as the over thirty crowd, tell the young to do the same thing.

Stuart Schneiderman said...

I agree with you... I too feel sorry for the young people who were so excited to vote for Obama, only to discover that they may have voted themselves out of a future.

Given that they were so strongly influenced by the media and the educational establishment I am not inclined to blame them. I believe that they have had a rude awakening, though I do not recall reading many articles by young people who now regret their vote for Obama.

GM Roper said...

A HUGE portion of the electorate held their noses and voted for McCain. Unfortunately a larger portion of the electorate believed the hope and change hype, the "racist" hype, and the "Oh, Obama is such an intellectual" hype. The proof is the utter stupidity of his being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize with nothing but an election result as evidence.

While I'm betting that Obama will be trounced in the next election, I'm worried that the backlash may last too long. Our republic must have dissenting voices to slow the clamor for another "hope and change" mantra whether it comes from the left or the right.

Lets hope that the four years of Obama have taught us something, and that the youngsters and those that voted for the "anti-bush" have learned a lesson in real-politik. I don't think it has, but I can hope... oops, there is that word again.