I really try my best to avoid being 'negative' on Barack Obama in this Forum unless the issue is quite clearcut - as his ironclad position on abortion on demand as a human right, and his continual doublespeak, to use a charitable term.
But allow me to indulge this time. The following piece by a Newsweek editor is remarkable because it comes form someone who, until this column, was one of the most faithful and assiduous high priests of the Obama-walks-on-water cult, probably the decisive factor in determining that Obama was on the cover of Newsweek more than 20 times in the past two years.
And Fineman wrote this before the ego-deflating embarassment of Obama being soundly rebuffed on the very first round of voting for the 2016 Olympic site - just hours after his exceptionally mediatic breast-beating speech in Copenhagen to push his bid for Chicago. The limits of charisma indeed!
The limits of charisma:
Mr. President, please stay off TV!
by Howard Fineman
For the magazine issue dated Oct 5, 2009
If ubiquity were the measure of a presidency, Barack Obama would already be grinning at us from Mount Rushmore. But of course it is not.
Despite his many words and television appearances, our elegant and eloquent president remains more an emblem of change than an agent of it. He's a man with an endless, worthy to-do list — health care, climate change, bank reform, global capital regulation, AfPak, the Middle East, you name it—but, as yet, no boxes checked "done."
This is a problem that style will not fix. Unless Obama learns to rely less on charm, rhetoric, and good intentions and more on picking his spots and winning in political combat, he's not going to be reelected, let alone enshrined in South Dakota.
The president's problem isn't that he is too visible; it's the lack of content in what he says when he keeps showing up on the tube.
Obama can seem a mite too impressed with his own aura, as if his presence on the stage is the Answer. There is, at times, a self-referential (even self-reverential) tone in his big speeches. They are heavily salted with the words "I" and "my." (He used the former 11 times in the first few paragraphs of his address to the U.N. last week.) Obama is a historic figure, but that is the beginning, not the end, of the story.
There is only so much political mileage that can still be had by his reminding the world that he is not George W. Bush. It was the winning theme of the 2008 campaign, but that race ended nearly a year ago. The ex-president is now more ex than ever, yet the current president, who vowed to look forward, is still reaching back to Bush as bogeyman.
He did it again in that U.N. speech. The delegates wanted to know what the president was going to do about Israel and the Palestinian territories. He answered by telling them what his predecessor had failed to do. This was effective for his first month or two. Now it is starting to sound more like an excuse than an explanation.
Members of Obama's own party know who Obama is not; they still sometimes wonder who he really is.
In Washington, the appearance of uncertainty is taken as weakness —especially on Capitol Hill, where a president is only as revered as he is feared.
Being the cool, convivial late-night-guest in chief won't cut it with Congress, an institution impervious to charm (especially the charm of a president with wavering poll numbers).
Members of both parties are taking Obama's measure with their defiant and sometimes hostile response to his desires on health care.
Never much of a legislator (and not long a senator), Obama under-estimated the complexity of enacting a major "reform" bill. Letting Congress try to write it on its own was an awful idea.
As a balkanized land of microfiefdoms, each loyal to its own lobbyists and consultants, Congress is incapable of being led by its "leadership."
It's not like Chicago, where you call a guy who calls a guy who calls Daley, who makes the call. The president himself must make his wishes clear — along with the consequences for those who fail to grant them.
The model is a man whose political effectiveness Obama repeatedly says he admires: Ronald Reagan. There was never doubt about what he wanted. The Gipper made his simple, dramatic tax cuts the centerpiece not only of his campaign but also of the entire first year of his presidency.
Obama seems to think he'll get credit for the breathtaking scope of his ambition. But unless he sees results, it will have the opposite effect — diluting his clout, exhausting his allies, and emboldening his enemies.
That may be starting to happen. Health-care legislation is still weeks, if not months, from passage, and the bill as it stands could well be a windfall for the very insurance and drug companies it was supposed to rein in.
Climate-change legislation (a.k.a. cap-and-trade) is almost certainly dead for this year, which means that American negotiators will go empty-handed to the Copenhagen summit in December — pushing the goal of limiting carbon emissions even farther into the distance
[And who says this is necessarily the be-all and end-all of ecological concern???]
In the spring Obama privately told the big banks that he was going to change the way they do business. It was going to be his way or the highway. But the complex legislation he wants to submit to Congress has little chance of passage this year. Doing Letterman again won't help. It may boost the host's ratings, Mr. President, but probably not your own.
Every kind of public opinion poll in the United States today screams of buyers' remorse by most of those who voted Obama into office - mainly the independents. All of a sudden, they realize the emperor is really naked!
Well, it's only been nine months, and as much as I have always personally found him phony and untrustworthy, I do sincerely want the first black President of the United States to succeed - and not only because the country desperately needs good leadership these days.
The naked emperor - 2
But wait, there's more! What's this I read in the Times of London today? Even the overseas Obama hot-and-panting groupies are starting to have second thoughts???? If I were atheist, I would go down on my knees now and exclaim "There is a God, thank God!"
Obama’s Olympic failure will only add
to doubts about his presidency
by Tim Reid in Washington
Oct. 3, 2009
There has been a growing narrative taking hold about Barack Obama’s presidency in recent weeks: that he is loved by many, but feared by none; that he is full of lofty vision, but is actually achieving nothing with his grandiloquence.
Chicago’s dismal showing yesterday, after Mr Obama’s personal, impassioned last-minute pitch, is a stunning humiliation for this President. It cannot be emphasised enough how this will feed the perception that on the world stage he looks good — but carries no heft.
It was only the Olympic Games, the White House will argue — not a high-stakes diplomatic gamble with North Korea. It is always worthwhile when Mr Obama sells America to the rest of the world, David Axelrod, his chief political adviser, said today. But that argument will fall on deaf ears in the US. Americans want their presidents to be winners.
Mr Obama was greeted — as usual — like a rock star by the IOC delegates in Copenhagen — then humiliated by them.
Perception is reality. A narrow defeat for Chicago would have been acceptable — but the sheer scale of the defeat was a bombshell, and is a major blow for Mr Obama at a time when questions are being asked about his style of governance.
At home, it is difficult to turn on television and not see Mr Obama giving a press conference, or an interview, or at a town hall rally, in his all-out effort to sell his troubled reform the US health insurance system.
After three months of enormous exposure, Mr Obama has achieved this: the growing likelihood of ramming a Bill through Congress with — at most — just one Republican vote.
Abroad, Mr Obama promised in his Inauguration address to engage America’s enemies, and he has done just that. He has very little to show for it.
Yes, Iran took part in bilateral talks with the US this week over its nuclear weapons programme — but that is something Tehran has wanted for years. There is still a very good chance that the meetings will prove to be an exercise in futility and a time-wasting ploy by Tehran.
Mr Obama also scrapped a plan for a missile defence shield in the Czech Republic and Poland, hoping to get in return Russian co-operation behind new sanctions against Tehran.
There was optimism when President Medvedev said “sanctions are seldom productive, but they are sometimes inevitable”. Yet Vladimir Putin, and the Chinese, remain fiercely opposed to sanctions.
Meanwhile, America and its allies are being forced to witness a very public agonising by Mr Obama and his advisers over his Afghan strategy — six months after he announced that strategy.
This has all added to the perception that Mr Obama’s soaring rhetoric — which captured the imagination during last year’s election — is simply not enough when it comes to confronting the myriad challenges of the presidency. His spectacular Olympic failure will only add to that.
It's the way of the world, alas, that much of it gets taken in by what it considers 'rhetorical eloquence' - no matter how empty - by someone like Obama, while it largely ignores the eternal authentic eloquence of Truth from the soft-spoken 'unspectacular' Vicar of Christ on earth!
Great caption:
POTUS, FLOTUS and TOTUS!
(President of the United States, First Lady of the US, and Teleprompter of the US)
Inspired headline for the Olympics putdown:
THE EGO HAS LANDED!
P.S. I hope I am wrong, but I have a strong hunch that perhaps Mr. Vian and his Secretariat of State bosses at L'Osservatore Romano will find a way to put a positive spin for Obama on Copenhagen. It doesn't matter the Pope was undeniably clear about his message to Obama's ambassador yesterday about the Church brooking no doubletalk on abortion and conscience rights.
Also, how could anyone have doubted that, by any measure, Rio de Janeiro was going to be the pick this year?
Japan had already hosted both the Suymmer and Winter Olympics; Spain had it in Barcelona fairly recently; the US has had it in LA and Atlanta since 1980; and the IOC was not going to continue ignoring Latin America - and its largest nation - forever!
Two, despite its problems with unequal distribution of wealth, to say the least, Brazil is an economic power in the world, with far more resources than Chicago - and its financial projectiosn were adjudged best among the four by the IOC's accounting consultants.
And finally, even the incorruptible members of the IOC would know that Rio is the most spectacularly beautiful city in the world and a better bonus for Olmypic participants than Chicago could ever be. [Besides, Pele has been a global institution and symbol of the empowered, idolized and iconic black man for almost as many decades as Obama is old!]
The naked emperor - 3
Obama’s French lesson:
Sarkozy could not conceal
his astonishment at Obama’s naïveté
By Charles Krauthammer
Syndicated Columnist
Oct. 2, 2009
“President Obama, I support the Americans’ outstretched hand. But what did the international community gain from these offers of dialogue? Nothing.”
— French President Nicolas Sarkozy, September 24
When France chides you for appeasement, you know you’re scraping bottom.
Just how low we’ve sunk was demonstrated by the Obama administration’s satisfaction when Russia’s president said of Iran, after meeting President Obama at the U.N., that “sanctions are seldom productive, but they are sometimes inevitable.”
You see? The Obama magic. Engagement works. Russia is on board. Except that, as the
Washington Post inconveniently pointed out, Pres. Dmitry Medvedev said the same thing a week earlier, and the real power in Russia, Vladimir Putin, had changed not at all in his opposition to additional sanctions.
And just to make things clear, when Iran then brazenly test-fired offensive missiles, Russia reacted by declaring that this newest provocation did not warrant the imposition of tougher sanctions.
Do the tally. In return for selling out Poland and the Czech Republic by unilaterally abrogating a missile-defense security arrangement that Russia had demanded be abrogated, we get from Russia . . . what?
An oblique hint, of possible support, for unspecified sanctions, grudgingly offered and of dubious authority — and, in any case, leading nowhere because the Chinese have remained resolute against any Security Council sanctions.
Confusing ends and means, the Obama administration strives mightily for shows of allied unity, good feeling, and pious concern about Iran’s nuclear program — whereas the real objective is stopping that program.
This feel-good posturing is worse than useless, because all the time spent achieving gestures is precious time granted Iran to finish its race to acquire the bomb.
Don’t take it from me. Take it from Sarkozy, who could not conceal his astonishment at Obama’s naïveté. On September 24, Obama ostentatiously presided over the Security Council.
With 14 heads of state (or government) at the table, with an American president in the chair for the first time ever, with every news camera in the world trained on the meeting, it would garner unprecedented worldwide attention.
Unknown to the world, Obama had in his pocket explosive revelations about an illegal uranium-enrichment facility that the Iranians had been hiding near Qom. The French and the British were urging him to use this most dramatic of settings to stun the world with the revelation and to call for immediate action.
Obama refused. Not only did he say nothing about it, but, reports Le Monde, Sarkozy was forced to scrap the Qom section of his speech. Obama held the news until a day later — in Pittsburgh. I’ve got nothing against Pittsburgh (site of the G-20 summit), but a stacked-with-world-leaders Security Council chamber, it is not.
Why forgo the opportunity? Because Obama wanted the Security Council meeting to be about his own dream of a nuclear-free world. The President, reports the
New York Times, citing “White House officials,” did not want to “dilute” his disarmament resolution “by diverting to Iran.”
Diversion? It’s the most serious security issue in the world. A diversion from what? From a worthless U.N. disarmament resolution?
Yes. And from Obama’s star turn as planetary visionary: “The administration told the French,” reports the
Wall Street Journal, “that it didn’t want to ‘spoil the image of success’ for Mr. Obama’s debut at the U.N.”
Image? Success? Sarkozy could hardly contain himself. At the Council table, with Obama at the chair, he reminded Obama that “we live in a real world, not a virtual world.”
He explained: “President Obama has even said, ‘I dream of a world without (nuclear weapons).’ Yet before our very eyes, two countries are currently doing the exact opposite.”
Sarkozy’s unspoken words? “And yet, sacre bleu, he’s sitting on Qom!”
At the time, we had no idea what Sarkozy was fuming about. Now we do. Although he could hardly have been surprised by Obama’s fecklessness.
After all, just a day earlier in addressing the General Assembly, Obama actually said, “No one nation can . . . dominate another nation.”
That adolescent mindlessness was followed with the declaration that “alignments of nations rooted in the cleavages of a long-gone Cold War” in fact “make no sense in an interconnected world.”
NATO, our alliances with Japan and South Korea, our umbrella over Taiwan, are senseless? What do our allies think when they hear such nonsense?
Bismarck is said to have said: “There is a providence that protects idiots, drunkards, children, and the United States of America.” Bismarck never saw Obama at the U.N. Sarkozy did.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 03/10/2009 22:55]