House of Eratosthenes

Jay Cost is engaged in the usual criticism but with a unique twist: President Obama is out of His element in His new job, because He is the product of our nomination process for that job. Therefore, His inadequacy is a much bigger problem for us that is not limited to just Him. Cost makes an interesting case.

Unfortunately, since George McGovern ruined the presidential nominating system in 1971, there has been a new potential item for the presidential CV: navigating the byzantine process of primaries and caucuses better than any competitor.
:
Unfortunately, gaming the nomination process plus having no significant experience in government turns out to be a grossly insufficient combination for presidential leadership. Day by day, week by week, we are becoming more aware that, when it comes to the political dance in Washington, [President Barack] Obama is foxtrotting with two left feet.
:
[a bunch of examples]
:
When you get right down to it, Obama hit his high point at Iowa’s Jefferson Jackson Dinner in November, 2007. It’s been downhill ever since – with one verbal gaffe or policy misstep after another.

Of course, the media overlooking all this stuff does not make the problem go away. And the proof is in the pudding: the right can’t stand him, the middle has abandoned him, and now even the left is criticizing him out in the open.

Let’s face it: this president is just plain bad at politics.

To me, the power of such an argument comes not so much from the examples, but from what one can reliably anticipate in terms of rebuttal. We need not speculate idly about this; the rebuttal would have to concern itself with the history Obama made. The hope, the change, the smiles and the tears of election night ’08, the enthusiasm at the inauguration…all that great stuff. Surely, whoever brought that kind of excitement must have the talent to back it up somewhere. Surely this must be someone who is unique in some way, right?

Something like that.

Trouble is, we’re all unique. Here lies the hazard of avoiding details; one tends to trap oneself in a fantasy world, in which anything said anywhere about anything, must necessarily be missing the details. It’s just like seeing yourself on HDTV without the proper makeup — once someone adds the details back in, the picture that results is not so flattering.

What’s the trouble with our nominating process? It isn’t the integrity. That part of it worked just fine. The champion deserved to be the champion; Barack Obama is the best of the best of the best. At what, though — there is the problem.

I, among others, tried to point out that this was not a successful producer of positive results who was being built up by our strange, surreal, emotion-driven nomination and electoral process. For this, myself and others were called rigid, inflexible, conservative Republicans, and then tea party bigots, and then just plain bigots. Nothing like a good session of name-calling to sweep aside whatever points and counterpoints happen to be unpalatable in the moment, huh. But the substance of an argument is not so easily swept aside. It manifested then, and manifests now, a problem that is with us and growing. And that problem is this: We have yet to have installed an executive to deal with the nation’s many problems. The number of people who want to believe we have, is irrelevant. The passion with which they believe this, is also irrelevant.

It seems every other month or so, I hear from somewhere “Obama really hit one out of the park!” But with the passage of a little more time, the ugly truth emerges: It was just a speech. Some of the people who agree with Obama really liked it, because it made them feel better than their enemies, whom Obama successfully smeared, or marginalized. But if the speech contained any policy points, they were not policy points assured of making the situation any better. And that’s assuming there would be action taking place consistent with the speech — another question altogether.

Obama is not as big as the issues He was elected to confront. And that is not even because the issues are big, or because He is small. The issue of fiscal discipline is actually pretty mundane. But it takes an effective executive to truly conquer it.

And Obama is just…Obama. Not big, not small, just average. A mediocre politician selected by a process built to seek out and reward mediocrity. He sounds kind of sophisticated when He says the word “uh,” and that’s about all He has going for Him. Or for the rest of us.

Update: Until I actually watch the President’s much-talked-about speech from yesterday, front to back, consider this to be my comment upon it. I’m confining my commentary to things that I know, and as safe as I may find it to be to presume things about that speech, I don’t know it so I shall remain mostly silent on it.

But I do have to say, given the track record I’ve been watching unfold, and the other commentary I’m hearing about it, things like this do not surprise me.

…Obama offered little of substance other than rhetorical bombs aimed at Paul Ryan, accusing him of trying to kill an entire generation of retirees while offering nothing specific to oppose it…

Uh huh. Fits right in with the theme. The President is a superior fit for the nomination process but the nomination process is wholly inadequate for the job at hand, and therefore, so is He. Unless the job at hand is to belittle the other side. Some of our liberals, and let’s be fair some of the conservatives as well, seem to think that is exactly the case. A little ridicule, some mocking, diminish the other side and the job is done. Everything else will work out.

They’re wrong. And because they’re wrong, Obama is just a bad fit for the job. Not up to it.

As a professional speaker, trained by the best in the craft, and doing many, many presentations every year — keynotes, workshops, etc. — I have always been mystified by people that tell me Obama is a “great” speaker. Huh? He’s a reader, not a speaker. No passion in the delivery. He’s on the street corner, playing to an amorphous crowd of passers-by. And, even inside the delivery, he’s fair to average.

The content? Please. “I won’t allow it.” “This isn’t the America I know.” What? Even lousy-speaker Bush talked about the country and very, very little about himself.

Now, about Obama’ s character, when he gets off “script” you can see right through him. Up until about three months ago, I called him The Cipher. Then a buddy wrote me an email and called him Plastic Man. I like that better. No history. No transcripts. No friends. No, ahem, birth certificate. Amazing…

I carry around a folded-up sticky I give to Lefties when discussing him and they bring Bush into the argument. The sticky says: five minutes or less to mention Bush. They can’t defend Plastic Man either. He’s just “better than Bush.” OK, it’s 2011. Now what?
- BillW. | 04/14/2011 @ 07:03
He’s just “better than Bush.” OK, it’s 2011. Now what?

Bill,

the truly horrifying thing is that this still counts as some kind of irrefutable, ace-in-the-hole argument to lots and lots of otherwise perfectly reasonable people. What this says about our national psyche is way above my pay grade, but it can’t be anything good.

[For my part, I find it a refreshing way to keep my “nonpartisan” friends from annoying me with their stupid, ill-informed opinions about politics. Ever since 2007 I’ve been singing Teh Won’s praises as Not-Bush. You’re frickin’ A right, I tell these folks. When it comes to not being George W. Bush, our glorious God-pharaoh Obymandias is the undisputed world champeen. Nobody is more consistently not-Bush than him. Heck, there are hardly any letters in common between “George W. Bush” and “Barack Obama,” that’s how Not-Bush he is. Now… what else ya got?

Works like a charm.]
- Severian | 04/14/2011 @ 08:08
Plastic Man is truly nothing more than a community organizer. That’s our President and certainly those around him. We all meet them in person from time to time. Shifty, non-account, continually rolling with the punches, non-resolute. No one is quite sure where they stand on issues until someone offers an opinion and, then, after assessing the wind direction, they jump in and offer some mindless compromising statement. Kinda like Peter Sellers’ character Chauncey Gardner in Being There without the “nuance”.

PM thinks speeches are enough action on his part. His speeches take the place of movement. And, he likes to appoint all kinds of commissions to investigate things. When they come back with a plan, he can’t lose. If he takes the advice and it fails, he blames the commission. If he takes the advice and it works, he takes the credit. If he doesn’t take the advice, no one can prove him wrong because — well, how can you?
- BillW. | 04/14/2011 @ 09:34
That’s why he’s going to be such a fantastic UN General Secretary (and we all know that’s next) — you get all the perks and photo ops and motorcades of presidentin’ but without all that pesky decision making.
- Severian | 04/14/2011 @ 11:47

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Foxtrotting with Two Left FeetThursday, April 14th, 2011

Foxtrotting with Two Left Feet
Thursday, April 14th, 2011