House of Eratosthenes

Just before Labor Day, controversy erupted over President Obama’s garb at a presidential press conference — should he or should he not have worn a light tan summer suit when talking about ISIS? That was beside the point.

The issue isn’t the weight or color of his suit. The issue is that the suit is empty.

With almost six years of the Obama administration under our collective belts, the time has come to acknowledge a painful truth: This is an astoundingly idea-free presidency.

At that press conference, Obama stunned the world by saying, out loud and openly, that “we don’t have a strategy yet” on how to deal with ISIS. No president before him had ever said such a thing out loud, and for good reason: Having a strategy is the president’s job.
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This inconstancy is the result of the administration’s elevation of cool and calm above all other qualities — leadership qualities like urgency, firmness, focus and determination.

The hard truth is that the Harvard Law Review editor and University of Chicago professor with two bestselling books to his name can’t formulate a policy to save his life, can’t oversee the implementation of the policies his administration has put in place and can’t adapt or rejigger them in a convincing way to take account of changing conditions.
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We can all name the ideas of presidencies, from the New Deal to Reaganomics to the Bush Doctrine. Obama’s self-described strategy for world affairs is “don’t do stupid s – – -.”

His economic strategy is “print money.” These aren’t ideas. They aren’t even ideology. They’re voting “present.”

What matters most to this administration is surface. It’s why Obama made such a spectacular subject for a “HOPE” poster and why his choice of suit provoked so much discussion. As a two-dimensional object, he’s endlessly fascinating. Add the third dimension and he’s lost.

I have some dread for the day President Obama is out office. As much time as He spends golfing, I can’t see Him as the type of ex-President who keeps His mouth shut. Even now, every time Obama gets the feeling He’s starting to become irrelevant, that means the rest of us have to listen to yet another greatest-in-human-history speech. Once He’s out, He’s going to be feeling like that all the time. Uff da…

I worry about that, too, but we’ve got the example of Bill Clinton arguing otherwise. I thought I’d be seeing his smarmy mug every day on tv for the rest of my life (I don’t think Jonah Goldberg was kidding when he suggested Clinton would/should get a daytime talk show; asking starlets about their underwear preferences seems like his destiny). And yet, these days Bill only shows up to not-so-subtly torpedo Hillary! at campaign events.

I could be wrong — and I think Bill’s health problems contributed a lot to his post-presidency visibility — but I’m betting it won’t be long before Obama becomes “history,” and therefore safe to talk about. It’s raciss if you criticize a sitting black president, but once he’s an ex-president, I bet a lot of people will discover just how much that guy sucked, and how they really couldn’t stand him all along.
- Severian | 10/08/2014 @ 07:16

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“An Astoundingly Idea-Free Presidency”Wednesday, October 8th, 2014

“An Astoundingly Idea-Free Presidency”
Wednesday, October 8th, 2014