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| Home Front: Politix |
| VDH: The Obama Paradox |
| 2008-07-23 |
| The more a coy Obama speaks to enthusiastic crowds and gives soundbites and photo-ops to slavish reporters, the more everyone wants more of a piece of him, especially in interviews and press conferences. But the more he dispenses his impromptu wisdom, the more he sounds like, well, a rookie senator whose collective experience derives from the utopianism of The Harvard Law Review, the gravy-train of Chicago entitlement politics, and the world view of Trinity Church. Yet, the more his handlers treat him like fossilized amber, the less experience he gains, guaranteeing that on almost every rare ex tempore moment he will suggest something that doesn't compute—that he might be president for 10 years, or that we need a civilian version of the Pentagon with the same $500 billion annual budget, or that someone like a Centcom commander like Petraeus doesn't have his strategic comprehensive view, or that the Anbar awakening and the Surge were not, at least in part, connected (as if the signal that we were not pulling out, [as Obama advocated] or that we were changing tactics to ensure the safety of those in the neighborhoods who would help us, did not reassure tired Sunnis to join with us in expelling al Qaeda.) For someone who has made the case that Bush in general is responsible for everything from the mortgage to energy crises, it's jarring to hear such particularism and contextualization about the surge's irrelevance. |
| Posted by:tipper |
| #2 I'd say the Irish are right on. I don't know what the Messiah followers are drinking. must be more powerful than KoolAid, but it ain't Irish Grog. |
| Posted by: Woozle Elmeter 2700 2008-07-23 10:58 |
| #1 Subject: E-mail from Ireland An email from Ireland to all of their brethren in the States. A point to ponder despite your political affiliation: We, in Ireland, can't figure out why you people are even bothering to hold an election in the United States. On one side, you had a pants wearing female lawyer, married to another lawyer who can't seem to keep his pants on, who just lost a long and heated primary against a lawyer, who goes to the wrong church, who is married to yet another lawyer, who doesn't even like the country her husband wants to run! Now...On the other side, you have a nice old war hero whose name starts with the appropriate 'Mc' terminology, married to a good looking younger woman who owns a beer distributorship! What in God's name are ya lads thinking over in the colonies!!!!! |
| Posted by: Besoeker 2008-07-23 09:34 |