Never trust a campaign slogan that ends in a preposition.
“Change we can believe in,” reads Obama’s pompous promise on his
website. A quote from Obama hovering nearby seeks halfheartedly to
flatter voters by suggesting this change will enlist their genius
too: “I’m asking you to believe. Not just in my ability to bring
about real change in Washington…I’m asking you to believe in
yours.”
A similar song and dance is contained in his bafflingly arrogant
mantra: “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.” That apparently
means whoever appears last is best — the political equivalent to
Darwin’s theory of evolution.
Offering himself to the nation as the charismatic consummation
of uncorrupted liberalism worked for awhile but now leaves an
increasing number of people bored and irritated.
Unlike the cynical JFK, who wore his claimed idealism lightly,
Obama actually seems to believe his narcissistic slogans, as do his
followers, who, like the black novelist Alice Walker, present him
as a gift to a racist nation and chance for Americans to prove at
long last their entrance into the light.
EVEN IF OBAMA were less deluded and empty, it would still be hard
for him to keep a New Frontier-style sham going, given the tedious
glare of 24/7 media coverage. Remoteness helped launch JFK’s
Camelot. Today’s multimedia familiarity breeds contempt.
He is an “Ivy League scold,” says the Washington Post,
quoting a Democratic party observer who gives that as the summary
explanation for his recent rough patch. His chip-on-her-shoulder,
finally “proud of America” wife and “God damn America” spiritual
mentor have hardened this image of him as an elitist and stealth
radical.
Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton, who is also an Ivy League scold but
first and foremost an amorphous political animal, grows more
populist and less elitist by the day. As she learned during her
time in the South, political survival often requires liberals to
feed parasitically off reassuring conservative themes.
While Hillary no doubt rolls her eyes as she prepares her latest
speech of populist gruel about the glories of “hunting and
shooting,” she figures that is a small price to pay for hoodwinking
300 million Americans.
Recall that after Bill Clinton once lost his governorship in
Arkansas — due in part to Southerners distrusting his
Ivy-League-lawyer, arriviste wife who insisted on calling herself
“Hillary Rodham” — she promptly dropped her maiden name.
Lesson learned.
AND IT WAS HILLARY, not Bill, who called Dick Morris in from the
bullpen to pitch triangulation strategies after Newt Gingrich and
the Republicans took Congress in 1994. Now as she heads into
Indiana she is faking up some enthusiasm for “Hoosier values,” an
easier task after the ongoing damage from Obama’s gaffe in San
Francisco.
Also cementing his “Ivy League scold” image is the fact that his
attempts to recover from such gaffes are almost as inept and
condescending as the original offenses. The analogies and excuses
on which he falls back are strained and cowardly, whether equating
his grandmother with racist crack-pots or his senatorial colleague
Tom Coburn with a terrorist.
So how does he get back on track? What populist prop could Obama
use in Indiana to stop Hillary’s new appeal to ordinary Americans?
Should he start smoking again?
If he doesn’t, Hillary could seize on the practice; smoking
would be a useful addition to her new enthusiasm for whiskey shots.
Or maybe in a basketball-dominated state like Indiana Obama should
abandon his bowling shoes and pick up his sneakers, though I
noticed from a recent Bryant Gumbel sports segment that even here
Obama runs into populist trouble: his style of basketball tends to
be ginger and was branded by a black commentator as Yuppyish and
“white.”
In Indiana, Obama will no doubt continue to deny that he meant
any offense by his “bitter” comment. And give him this much: It is
true that he likes bitter people who turn to God and guns out of
economic and social frustration. The problem is that they tend to
be the militant followers of Jeremiah Wright at his church.
The bitterness of benighted, NRA-card-holding Christians and the
bitterness of the Malcolm-X-God-and-guns crowd in Chicago are
apparently two different categories in Obama’s mind. The first
group is in need of enlightenment; the second group is the vanguard
of it.
