Politicians promise much, but often deliver little. They can make all sorts of grandiose claims while campaigning, but when elected, reality sets in, and their feet must come back down to earth. The day to day business of running a government is often light-years removed from the rhetoric and idealism which abounds prior to taking office.
A classic case in point is Barack the Messiah Obama. Perhaps no other American political leader in recent history had such a messianic aura surrounding him as this man. The hysteria and hoopla which surrounded his campaigning and election was a sight to behold.
Of course more sober voices knew that he was a mere man. Those not totally overcome by ideology and leftwing blinders could see that this mere mortal was not in fact an incarnation of the gods, and would make just as many mistakes, and be liable to as much corruption as the next politician.
And sure enough Obama had not let the realists down. Indeed, a brand new book chronicles the litany of blunders, corruption and unethical practices of the new Obama administration. The book is a mindful wakeup call to all glassy eyed idealists that in a real world, even would be messiahs can mess things up big time.
Those wanting to get the real scoop on the very human Obama and the very tarnished Obama administration need to grab Michelle Malkin’s just released expose, Culture of Corruption: Obama and His Team of Tax Cheats, Crooks, and Cronies (Regnery Publishing).
The evidence there should be enough to convince most people (except the leftist ideologues who never let the facts get in the way) that Obama’s feet are indeed made of clay after all. It is a damning indictment of corruption, deals and deception.
While you wait to get your copy of this important book, let me draw your attention to a recent column by Jonah Goldberg who has also written on this theme. He reminds us of the messianic status of Obama and how it seemed that deity had indeed appeared on planet earth:
“Obama isn’t supposed to be a typical politician. He was supposed to be The One. He was supposed to change Washington. Transcend race. Fix souls. Bake 12-minute brownies in seven minutes. Oprah promised Obama would help us ‘evolve to a higher plane.’ Deepak Chopra said Obama’s presidency represented ‘a quantum leap in American consciousness.’ Last month, Newsweek editor Evan Thomas proclaimed that Obama stood ‘above the country, above – above the world, he’s sort of God.’ Well, now he’s the god who bleeds, and once you’re the god who bleeds, it’s hard to get the divinity back in the tube, as it were.”
Goldberg brings us back down to earth by actually looking at his track record – what he in fact has done, and how he has fared, since becoming president. And it does not look all that divine after all. “He’s bleeding on every front. The latest Pew survey shows that only 38 percent of Americans approve of his handling of the economy. In the latest Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll, fewer than half of respondents (48 percent) say Obama can be trusted to keep his word. Gallup has his approval rating at a new low of 52 percent, and Rasmussen has it below 50 percent for the first time.
“On almost every domestic issue, polls show that support for Obama and his agenda is plummeting, and that the Democratic Party’s advantages over Republicans on the economy, taxes, the deficit and health care have been erased or severely reduced.”
Goldberg continues, “Obama undoubtedly has major accomplishments ahead of him, but in a real way the Obama presidency is over. His messianic hopey-changiness has been exposed for what it was, and what it could only be: a rich cocktail of pie-eyed idealism, campaign sloganeering and profound arrogance. As president, he’s tried to apply the postpartisan gloss of his campaign rhetoric to the hyperpartisan dross of his agenda. And he’s fooling fewer people every day.
“Indeed, the one unifying theme of his presidency so far has been Obama’s relentless campaigning for a job he already has. That makes sense because that’s really all Obama knows how to do. He’s had no significant experience crafting major legislation. He has next to no experience governing at all.
“But he’s great at giving speeches, holding town halls and chitchatting with reporters. So that’s largely what he does as president. The problem is that campaigning is different than governing. The former requires convincing promises about what you will do; the latter requires convincing arguments for what you are doing. He’s good at the former, not so good at the latter. Or as columnist Michael Barone puts it, he’s good at aura, bad at argument.”
Quite so. Goldberg concludes this way: “Now, just as critics predicted, Obama needs on-the-job training to become a president, because he’s a god no more.” The problem is, most people who become American presidents did have quite a bit of training and experience, so that when in office they could actually govern.
Obama has mostly relied on image over reality, rhetoric over realism. Now the hard job of actually running a country has been thrust upon him. It is hoped that he learns real quick, before the nation suffers irreversible setbacks. Time will tell.
http://townhall.com/columnists/JonahGoldberg/2009/07/31/the_god_who_bleeds
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