The Militarized Surrealism of Barack Obama
B illed as the beginning of the end of the Afghan War, it should have been big and it couldn’t have been smaller. The patented Obama words were meant to soar, starting with a George W. Bush-style invocation of 9/11 and ending with the usual copious blessings upon this country and our military. But on the evidence, they couldn’t have fallen flatter. I doubt I was alone in thinking that it was like seeing Ronald Reagan on an unimaginably bad day in an ad captioned “It’s never going to be morning again in America.”
Idolator President
If you clicked Obama off that night or let the event slide instantly into your mental trash can, I don’t blame you. Still, the president’s Afghan remarks shouldn’t be sent down the memory hole quite so quickly.
For one thing, while the mainstream media's pundits and talking heads are always raring to discuss his policy remarks, the words that frame them are generally ignored -- and yet the discomfort of the moment can’t be separated from them. So start with this: whether by inclination, political calculation, or some mix of the two, our president has become a rhetorical idolator. These days he can barely open his mouth without also bowing down before the U.S. military in ways that once would have struck Americans as embarrassing, if not incomprehensible. In addition, he regularly prostrates himself before this country’s special mission to the world and never ceases to emphasize that the United States is indeed an exception among nations. Finally, in a way once alien to American presidents, he invokes God’s blessing upon the military and the country as regularly as you brush your teeth.Think of these as the triumvirate without which no Obama foreign-policy moment would be complete: greatest military, greatest nation, our God. And in this he follows directly, if awkwardly, in Bush's footsteps.
I wouldn’t claim that Americans had never had such thoughts before, only that presidents didn’t feel required to say them in a mantra-like way just about every time they appeared in public. Sometimes, of course, when you feel a compulsion to say the same things ad nauseam , you display weakness, not strength; you reveal the most fantastic of fantasy worlds, not a deeper reality.
The president’s recent Afghan remarks were, in this sense, par for the course. As he plugged his plan to bring America’s “long wars” to what he called “a responsible end,” he insisted that “[l]ike generations before, we must embrace America’s singular role in the course of human events.
Barack Obama Bumper Stickers - News
Liberty Stickers, Obama Cruise Missile bumper sticker, accessed June 16. • Interview with Tom Collina, Arms Control Association, June 21. • E-mail exchange with James Acton, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, June 20.
Within each frame are various front pages of newspapers and magazines, bumper stickers and buttons, from a certain day in November 2008. By the end of the previous day, well over 130 million citizens of this country had cast a ballot in an election
In a country that now “supports the troops” with bumper-sticker fervor but pays next to no attention to the wars they fight, perhaps Obama is simply striving to be the premier twenty-first-century American. Still, you have to wonder what such
Mr Obama will probably try to strike a balance between public and economic pressure, and advice from the military as he assesses the future strategy for Afghanistan. But what Ms Gventer called "bumper sticker" politics is already starting to affect
The day before the debate, the ex-Minnesota governor gave Democrats a perfect anti-Romney bumper sticker by criticizing Romney's Massachusetts health-care law as "ObamneyCare." Democrats have mocked Romney for trying to run away from a plan they say
Barack Obama's disappointing 2Q? | RedState
Why? Because the combined number for Obama/the DNC this quarter was $60 million . Assuming that the President’s on the hook for half of that, and assuming that every single of those 500K donors gave again this quarter, that means that the average donation from each donor would have to be $60. That doesn’t jibe with a prolonged pledge drive that was pretty much begging for first $5, then $3 , in the last days of the quarter. Also, Mitt Romney hit between $15 and $20 million this quarter: if Obama made $30 million, well.
Again, there’s every possibility that the Obama campaign is merely trying to generate buzz by underplaying its fundraising totals. There’s also every possibility that the Obama campaign is hoping that all of those bloggers (including, well, me) and pundits who got burned in ’08 will be more shy about calling them out on shenanigans in ’12. You may safely assume from this post that I decline to play along.
Moe Lane ( crosspost )
PS: Honestly, money’s not going to be the same issue in ’12 that it was in ’08, anyway. The slack will be, as they say, taken up.
On both sides.
I believe obama is coming up way short and axlegease has no idea how to grease the pig in 2012. My prediction is obama won’t get 40% of the votes in Nov 2012 but he will be in the high 30s. May God Bless the USA and keep exposing the corrupt trojan pony for what his adminstration has done to destroy the Liberty and Freedom of the Citizens of the USA.. Thank You Moe for the job your doing.
That’s why you see articles like this one Obama/Cuomo in the NYPost suggesting that Obama needs to change it up, or this bit over at Hot Air where Captain Ed finds an interesting parallel between Krauthammer and Evan Thomas …
I’d bet actual dollars that each of the Senate Dems who are up in 2012, and several of them are in nominally “purple” States, have internal polling showing that The Won isn’t going to have any coattails… and may have negative coattails – i.e. either the Black or Hispanic bloc isn’t gonna show up in sufficient numbers if jobs don’t come back – and they’ve got to be furious that his fundraising is sucking up dollars they’re desperately going to need….
I still maintain it’s a matter of time before Obama is pushed aside in favor of a more moderate-appearing Dem, who can run as the anti-Obama while still running as a Lib.
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