House of Eratosthenes

I have finally been able to put my finger on what it is that the democrats have been trying to keep the public from knowing. Barack Obama is boring. This is a secret. Its a super secret. Please don’t tell the democrats that we are on to this fact because they still have time to change their minds and put Hillary at the top of the ticket and get her 18 million voters back. Remember, she didn’t END her campaign, she just suspended it.

A campaign against Hillary would be fun too, but that’s a whole other story.

The man LOVES the sound of his own voice. He goes on and on and on and on. If you pay attention during his speeches – not to him but to the audience – you’ll notice that their eyes start glassing over. Then all of the sudden he’ll say ‘HOPE’ and they’ll all rouse up and start applauding and jumping up and down. When they settle down he starts talking again. Their eyes start glassing over and he goes on and on and on…

Michael Wolff noticed it in President Soetoro’s first year:

But now, at week 11, we’re face-to-face with the reality, the man can’t talk worth a damn.

You can see the fundamental mistake he’s making. Having been so successfully elected, he’s acting like people actually want to hear what he thinks. He’s the great earnest bore at the dinner party. Instead of singing for his supper, he’s just talking—and going on at length. The real job of making people part of the story you’re telling, of having them hang on your every word, of getting the tone and detail right, the hard job of holding a conversation, he ain’t doing.

He’s cold; he’s prickly; he’s uncomfortable; he’s not funny; and he’s getting awfully tedious. He thinks it’s all about him…

Robert Morrison notices it, and notices something else too:

Two million people gathered two years ago on the Mall to hear President Obama take the Oath of Office. It was assuredly an historic moment. But now, barely 25 months later, can anyone-supporter or opponent-recall a single memorable line from Inaugural Address? “Starting today, we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work of remaking America.” He said that?

Mr. Obama has also suffered from the 24/7 news cycle. Franklin Roosevelt “Fireside Chats” were offered sparingly. FDR knew the presidency was a precious national resource and he did not squander it. His major speeches were carefully crafted for maximum effect.

Compare Mr. Obama at Normandy with President Ronald Reagan at the same location twenty-five years earlier. Reagan spoke movingly of “the Boys of Pointe du Hoc”-our heroic Rangers-in cadences that gave echoes of Henry V and Gettysburg.

Mr. Obama was said by Newsweek’s Evan Thomas to hover over the nations at Normandy “like a god.” Awesome, but what did he say there? [emphasis mine]

President Barack Obama is, in fact, known for just a few identifiable, glowing snippets and there are people who can recite them instantaneously. The problem is, those are people like me who disapprove of Him. We use the glittering verbal trinkets to make our Obama Speech Bingo cards, because they don’t actually mean anything. “Let Me be clear,” “Make no mistake,” “We are the ones we have been waiting for,” et al.

Where’s the counterpart to “One Man Makes a Majority” or “The Only Thing We Have to Fear is Fear Itself”? What can a slobbering Obama fan print up onto a tee shirt, or glaze onto a coffee mug, that won’t look silly?

It’s not too tall an order, is it? Shoot, I’m a blogger, widely ridiculed for my inability to say something in less than several thousand words…and after six years in “office” even I have just a few snippets some readers have found worthy of quotation. Doesn’t happen very often at all, mind you. But it seems to me, if I can pull it off and I don’t have any magazine editors babbling any glowing nonsense about my godlike superpowers, surely Birther Zero over there in the White House can say something that is both memorable and actually means something? Both at the same time?

Because to many among His supporters, that’s the one thing we were supposed to get out of this deal. The “ZOMG THERE’S JUST SOMETHING ABOUT HIM I CAN’T EXPLAIN IT!!!” voting bloc. C’mon, Barack…give ’em something. You’ve paid back everybody else, right? Where’s that super duper excitement and charisma-or-whatever so repetitively extolled two years ago?

Hand our leader a foreign crisis — like Libya. What does the president have to say about that? “This violence is unacceptable.” We don’t need a $400,000-a-year Commander-in-Chief and his $172,000-a-year speechwriter to tell us that.

Exactly.

He’s still a tough contender for His re-election bid, which suggests maybe none of this matters very much. But that contest is still in a state of uncertainty. And this is shaping up to be yet another argument, and by no means the first one, that perhaps this is a person who is good for a job different from the one He has, and that the job He has, requires a person whose talents are far different from His.

Hat tip to Boortz.

Hand our leader a foreign crisis — like Libya. What does the president have to say about that? “This violence is unacceptable.” We don’t need a $400,000-a-year Commander-in-Chief and his $172,000-a-year speechwriter to tell us that.

R.O.T.F.L.

That is “teh” awesome.
- philmon | 03/03/2011 @ 09:05
I’m starting to get excited–think about this:

They’re both young and handsome. They’re both famous for reading the words that other people have written. They’re both oblivious to the chaos they’re creating. They even have a similar slogan!

Obama / Sheen 2010 — Winning! …the Future.
- Jason | 03/03/2011 @ 09:48
As he said in his autobiography – (Commie) Dreams of his (supposed) Father – “People project on me what they want to..” or some such, I didn’t read it as I’m not into fiction.

Of course he’s boring, how else can someone go through Columbia U. and be involved in their Black Student Union (?) and nobody remembers him; be the president of the Harvard Law Review nobody remembers him. Nobody. Like he’s a ghost.

Guaranteed if I became famous, ya’ know like slaughtered a bunch of folks like a typical tea bagger, there would be people from my past, who I’ve long since forgotten about, coming out of the woodwork to tell their story about what they remember about me back in the day. But the most famous guy in the world…nobody remembers?

Hell, I remember people from thirty years ago that I only knew for a year or so, their names, what state they lived in…

Forget the “was he born in Hawaii” stuff, I wann’a know how this dude has managed to go through his life, with stops as some pretty remarkable places, and people/fellow students/professors he presumably meet, attended classes, socialized/work with and…”nope, don’t remember him” is his ever lasting impression???

Does he even have a friend? Seriously, who is Barry’s friends? Not the dudes on his presidential staff, but a real friend? Somebody he hung out with before Michelle, fuck it, since Michelle, who is considered Obama’s friend? Anyone…hello…???

Kind’a spooky. Strike that. It’s beyond spooky, it’s delving into the creepy arena.
- tim | 03/03/2011 @ 11:02
Dang, Morgan. You still don’t geddit, do ya? Obama’s a Lightworker. He don’t need no steenken BEDGES… or quotes.
- bpenni | 03/03/2011 @ 12:05
BTW… great points, Small-Tee.
- bpenni | 03/03/2011 @ 12:06
small-tee,

PolitiFact says you are spreading an untruth, because they have tracked down some people who remember Obama. Since this revelation is complimentary to Birther Zero, they & countless other people are going to call these “facts.” Hat tip to Ed Darrell, who naturally is going to conclude from this that the entire point has to be dismissed and isn’t open to viewing it in any other way…

Myself, I think the observations about His speeches, post-inauguration, explain the (lack of) observations about Him back in the olden days. I notice the point still stands that Obama has yet to have His “ask not what your country can do for you” moment. Lots of people gather at the water cooler the morning after an Obama speech to say “OMG I just was ready to faint!”…but nobody, it seems, ever says “When He said [fill in the blank] I almost fainted.” It’s like the dulcet tone is the entire point of the speech; and why should the speech last thirty minutes instead of thirty seconds? No reason whatsoever. It’s just like a drug high. Nothing more, nothing less.
- mkfreeberg | 03/03/2011 @ 13:35

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It’s a Secret: Barack Obama is Boring!Thursday, March 3rd, 2011

It’s a Secret: Barack Obama is Boring!
Thursday, March 3rd, 2011