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The Spectacle Blog
In his latest column, Charles Krauthammer hails President Obama as “the new comeback kid.”
Has Krauthammer gone all David Brooks on us?
Has Krauthammer developed a man crush on President Obama? Well, consider this passage:
Now, with his stunning tax deal, Obama is back. Holding no high cards, he nonetheless managed to resurface suddenly not just as a player but as the orchestrator, dealmaker, and central actor in a high $1 trillion drama.
If President Obama is “the orchestrator, dealmaker, and central actor in a high $1 trillion drama” then why did he odiously refer to the Republicans with whom he made this deal as “hostage takers”? Indeed, if one accepts President Obama’s characterization of the GOP then one can only conclude that the President agreeing to this tax deal was the equivalent of paying a ransom. And no one pays a ransom on their own terms, not even President Obama.
So why is Krauthammer spinning this as the most lopsided trade since the Cardinals got Lou Brock from the Cubs for Ernie Broglio?
My guess is that it has something to do with Sarah Palin. While Krauthammer has not called Palin “a cancer” or “a joke” as Brooks has done, his distaste for Palin is palpable. This was certainly the case in August 2009 when Krauthammer suggested that we ought to ask “Sarah Palin leave the room” after she coined the term “death panels.” Earlier this week, during an interview with Bill O’Reilly, Krauthammer said:
Now I would have hoped she’d spend the next years getting really deep into policy and becoming an expert the way a lot of other candidates have done as they mature and approach the presidency. She hasn’t. She has a political star. She’s out there, she’s very attractive both politically and ideologically to a large segment of Republicans. But I think if you want to expand your base you have to get into policy even though it sounds dull.
It seems to me that Krauthammer cannot get past Palin’s accent. The prospect of a Palin presidency has Krauthammer so troubled that he is now prepared to cast Obama as another Bill Clinton and have four more years of Obama in the White House. How else does one explain Krauthammer concluding his article by comparing Obama to Ronald Reagan?
The greatest mistake Ronald Reagan’s opponents ever made — and they made it over and over again — was to underestimate him. Same with Obama. The difference is that Reagan was so deeply self-assured that he invited underestimation — low expectations are a priceless political asset — whereas Obama’s vanity makes him always need to appear the smartest guy in the room.
Krauthammer’s analogy is fatally flawed. Since when has anyone underestimated President Obama much less had low expectations of him? After all, this is a man who has been described a “sort of God” capable of receding oceans and healing the planet? It it any wonder President Obama hasn’t lived up to those lofty expectations?
If anyone has been beset with low expectations, it is Sarah Palin. In fact, Krauthammer’s expectations of Palin are so low that he cannot acknowledge his soft bigotry. It is the sort of thing one cannot acknowledge when one has developed a man crush on President Obama.
View all comments (17) | Leave a comment
More Blog Posts by Aaron Goldstein
http://spectator.org/blog/2010/12/17/does-krauthammer-have-a-man-cr
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Imprudent Speculator| 12.17.10 @ 11:20AM
Krauthammer is NOT praising Obama. He astutely realizes that the tax rate extensions are a $800 Billion stealth stimulus passed by the Republicans that will truly stimulate economic recovery. The public will point to Obama when the economy recovers and re-elect him. I think that's CK's point.
Truth to Power| 12.17.10 @ 11:35AM
It is amusing that Palin and Krauthammer are in agreement on the so-called tax deal. Mr. Goldstein should get a little more Krauthammer. You don't have to agree with him but he is usually worth thinking about. Obama received another stimulus with Republican endorsement. The Republicans in the lame duck congress played their cards poorly. Krauthammer, by the way, has a very poor view of the President. It is hardly a crush and makes me think he uses his professional knowledge to diagnose a rather sick man.
ncatty| 12.17.10 @ 12:13PM
Circumstances have caused Obama to stumble into triangulation. The question now is whether he likes it or not.
solidground| 12.17.10 @ 12:14PM
No need to speculate on a Palin presidency. There will be none. Because even if the Republican Party actually loses its mind and nominates Palin as its candidate, it will be a pure suicide run -- Obama by big double digits. Palin is goods damaged beyond repair--the bulk of the damage inflicted by Palin herself.
Grzmlyk| 12.17.10 @ 12:25PM
Goldstein is 100% correct.
I noticed Krauthammer's infatuation with Obama right from the moment Obama emerged on the national stage (and if you really want to see a "bromance" brewing between a Fox News denizen and Obama, watch a little Bill O'Reilly - never knew a guy that tall could bend over so far backwards and still take it up the rear).
Krauthammer has adored Obama from the beginning - he rarely takes Obama to task and never misses an opportunity to miss an opportunity to identify even one of Obama's considerable number of character flaws, pathologies and hypocrisies. When Krauthammer criticizes liberals, it's usually Pelosi or Reid, or the hapless McCain.
And even the very rare mild rebuke of Obama at Krauthammer's hand is more in the vein of the wily Beltway insider taking the rookie aside and showing him the ropes with avuncular affection.
It is infuriating, and this - combined with Krauthammer's breezy, detached insouciance at this country's institutions being plundered, vandalized and pulverized by the left - has severely corroded my admiration for Krauthammer.
He always has and always will love Obama. He enjoys being the Dean of the House Conservatives, the one elitist with a few conservative intellectual bona fides whose presence at Sally Quinn's cocktail parties is tolerated because he's just so damned smart and pithy.
But his love for Obama is more than opportunistic.
He genuinely admires this piece of shit because he buys into the whole Ivy League ruling class twaddle - which is also why he detests Palin - whose IQ is doubless higher than Obama's.
This genuflecting before the classist status quo does not reflect favorably on Krauthammer's own character.
Grzmlyk| 12.17.10 @ 12:35PM
I should add that Krauthammer also loves Obama because Obama is black (and this, sorry to say, is not an uncommon blind spot among people of the Jewish persuasion); if Obama were white, I think his insatiable vanity would grate more on Charles, but as it is, it's just an impediment to Obama achieving the greatness that is his destiny.
Please. Can't any conservative pundit play this game the whole 9 innings?
Grzmlyk| 12.17.10 @ 12:58PM
My bad - I just remembered Krauthammer mentioned a couple of weeks ago that he isn't Jewish.
Sheila| 12.17.10 @ 2:22PM
Grz, Krauthammer was Jewish back when I was growing up and read a long biographical article about him and his paralysis in the Washington Post. He was Jewish back when I had a summer job in D.C. and worked for a woman who was personal friends with Krauthammer and his wife. He may claim some other affiliation now, but you are absolutely correct in correlating classical Jewish liberalism and Obama adoration (and Palin Derangement Syndrome). Don't back down, although RCV and Margie will soon show up to shrill "anti-Semite!"
Grzmlyk| 12.17.10 @ 2:56PM
Hi Sheila:
Thanks for the back-up - I have read Krauthammer off and on for 25 years - and I always understood him to be Jewish - and I was gobsmacked a few weeks ago when, on Special Report, he asserted that he was not Jewish - well, I suppose that's possible.
He didn't appear to be joking, so when I remembered that after writing the above, I thought I'd better acknowledge it.
It's good to know your recollection is the same as mine.
In any case, for Margie or anyone else who would hurl that epithet (and I've tangled with her on this very topic), I would just say that I dated many Jewish women in my youth (some of whom were out-and-out commies), I lived in NYC for a decade, and many of my friends - including my best friend - were Jews (I went to his son's Bar Mitzvah), I worked for many Jews on Wall Street and I went to grad school at Brandeis, at which 95% of the students are Jewish and most of the faculty.
I've always gotten along very well with Jews; I appreciate the culture, I respect the religion and I acknowledge their contribution to American culture - Hollywood being just one example. Indeed, I have often considered myself an honorary Jew.
However, my affinity doesn't change the fact that many stereotypes are based on truth, and one sad truth of the modern Jew is an unusually strong sympathy for - and romanticizing of - the victimhood of blacks (no doubt there's transference going on there).
That sympathy, in my observation, is wholly unrequited, but it doesn't deter Jews for a second.
I don't know the statistics, but I'm willing to bet that 75% of Jews in America happily voted for Obama - and would happily do so again, even after he's been exposed in a thousand ways as en execrable, incompetent fool.
Rich Rostrom| 12.17.10 @ 1:31PM
"Since when has anyone underestimated President Obama ...?"
I think his rivals for the 2008 Democratic nomination underestimated him. I think both the Edwards and Clinton campaigns saw each other as the main opposition. By the time they recognized Obama's strength it was too late.
And there are a fair number of conservatives who think Obama is a complete fake, with no real ability at all, i.e. his dependence on a Teleprompter. Obama is not as smart as he thinks he is, but he's far from stupid.
Is he a narcissist, an an egoist, touchy, paranoid, full of himself? All of that; but not incapable of seeing reality most of the time, or controlling his emotions.
He wouldn't have got as far as he did without real ability, and the adulation of his followers doesn't mean his enemies don't underestimate him.
Note that much the same applies to Sarah Palin. What's different is that Palin haters (and Obama lovers) have the most public
platforms, while Palin lovers (and Obama haters) are largely confined to back channels.
Grzmlyk| 12.17.10 @ 1:48PM
I think his rivals in 2008 underestimated a few things - the desire among squishy Republicans, independents, Democrats and committed leftists for a new face (Hillary was in many was damaged goods) that would tell them what they wanted to hear.
I think they underestimated the power that a blank slate has over the imaginations of those who are credulous or disgruntled.
I think they misunderstood the spiritual vacuum to which secular leftism succombs, and the ease with which pseudo-religious, redemptive claptrap and paganist hokum rushes to fill that vacuum.
I think they underestimated the competence of Obama's campaign organization, as well.
But here's the biggest underestimation: The utterly irresistable and ubiquitous intoxication at the prospect of being absolved from the original sin of white guilt.
That's why the mainstream media pretty much outright admitted they were buying Obama's bill of goods sight unseen. Because he is black.
In the hierarchy of victim groups, black trumps female every time.
Obama's entire meteoric rise - from college on - can be attributed to White Guilt's nobless oblige and an affirmative action mentality.
Absolutely nothing he has written, save those two books (and of course he didn't even write them), has been subjected to scrutiny. We still know nothing about his record as a student, an academic or a man. His record as a politician has left as few tracks as it is possible to leave excluding the conventional leftist dogma.
Nobody remembers him as a teacher. His record as a community organizer in Chicago is bolstered by the support he got.
The man is somewhat facile - but he knows nothing about history, geography, economics, politics (beyond the crudities of Alynsky-style demagoguery), science, philosophy or religion. His emotional intelligence is glaringly puerile.
He is an angry, petulant, puerile, ignorant, lazy, vengeful, prickly, indignant, vain, foppish, narcissistic, delusional, callow fool.
Dude | 12.23.10 @ 4:04PM
"He is an angry, petulant, puerile, ignorant, lazy, vengeful, prickly, indignant, vain, foppish, narcissistic, delusional, callow fool."
After reading your tirade, one can't avoid thinking you are.
A Nitpick| 12.17.10 @ 3:20PM
"While Krauthammer has not called Palin "a cancer" or "a joke" as Brooks has done, his distaste for Palin is palatable."
To be picky -- the word you want is "palpable" not "palatable." Speaking for myself, I find CK's distaste for Palin remarkable UNpalatable -- mostly because there's very little of substance to it.
A Nitpick 2| 12.17.10 @ 3:21PM
And of course I meant "remarkably."
Grzmlyk| 12.17.10 @ 3:35PM
Hey A Nitpick:
I noticed that too - that kind of stuff bugs me, but I often attribute it to whomever transcribed the piece - surely a professional writer would know the difference.
Still, if your name's on the byline, the buck stops with you.
On second thought, it's got to be Bush's fault.
A Nitpick| 12.17.10 @ 5:42PM
Transcribed? Really?! Does anyone transcribe anymore? I usually put it down to the insane haste with which bloggers must post in order to keep up with events. This also seems to preclude time for proofing/editing.
But you're right -- I'm completely on the wrong track. It is Bush, or Rove, or an unholy conspiracy by both.
WakeUpAmerica| 12.18.10 @ 10:02AM
I have heard nothing from Krauthammer to infer that he "...can't get past Palin's accent." I suspect that he, like most of us, can't get past her crass behavior and ignorance. Her constant, dripping sarcasm and snark are tiresome and juvenile.