What Mr. Obama has been doing, and this started before the European trip and continued throughout, is making people see him as president. He’s doing this when he ambles back to the back of the plane and leans over the reporters, in his shirtsleeves, speaking affably into their held-up mics and recorders, at the end of the victorious tour. That’s what presidents do. He speaks to rapturous crowds in foreign capitals. That’s what presidents do.
He isn’t doing this to show he’s inevitable and invincible. He’s doing it to give voters the impression that they’ve already seen President Obama. That he’s kind of already been president, he’s done and can do all the things presidents do, to the point that by the middle of October a certain portion of the country is going to think he already is president.
And he needs to give them this impression because he’s a young black man from nowhere who’s been well-known for less than a year. And he knows one of his biggest problems with older white voters is they just can’t imagine a young black man from nowhere as president. He’s helping them imagine.
It’s not vanity, it’s strategy.
However. Mr. Obama consistently shows that he doesn’t know what he doesn’t know. It’s a theme with his talented, confident staff. They don’t know what they don’t know either. Because they’re young and they’ve never been in power and it takes time to know what you don’t know. The presidential-type seal with OBAMA on it, the sometimes over-the-top rhetoric about healing the earth and parting the seas. They pick the biggest, showiest venue for the Berlin speech, the Brandenburg Gate, just like a president, not realizing people would think: Ya gotta earn that one, kid. Going to Europe was fine, but they should have gone in modestly, with a modest venue, quietly spread word that his speech was open to the public, and then left the watching world awed by the hordes that showed up. For they would have. “We couldn’t help it, they love him!” It would have looked as if Europe was coming to him, and let that sink in back home.
She was a speech writer for Reagan after all. In my book she is one of us even if I disagree with her from time to time. She gets it and wasn’t scared to speak truth to power recently when she felt the President had turned his back on the Reagan conservatives that got him elected twice. She was right. I voted for the President twice and am disappointed in him. Not because of Iraq but because he has consistently shown the inability to exercise any fiscal restraint.
She’s one of us, she’s just disillusioned with Bush, so are a lot of conservatives. So am I.
She seems like she’s praising Obama’s strategy as smart politics, but that his execution leaves much to be desired.
The subtext is that the arrogant ignorance of Bush is now embodied in Obama.
I can’t say I disagree with her much, even when I do disagree with her. I’m tired of voting for self-proclaimed idealists/messiahs. Reagan was an exception, not the rule.
I think her assessment of the tactic- setting up all of these appearences with Presidential visuals- is spot on. I hope it’s as transparent to the rest of the electorate, because frankly I am really unimpressed.
This guy is all style (and marginal style at that) and no substance.
Her assessment of tactics IS spot on. And I am scared the tactics will actually work. Obama is all marketing hype, but he is being marketed very well. People believe what they see on TV. If his campaign can get supporters to actually get off the couch and vote, we are in serious trouble. I think the possibility of a young, black, eloquent president will get lots people out to vote that usually would never bother.
I hope I am wrong. Unless something really interesting happens, Obama is very likely our next president.
Who was it?? Himmler or Gobbels that said, "If you repeat the same lie over and over again sooner or later the people will begin to believe it as the truth… Hitler after all did promise the German people "change"if they voted for him, Hmmm, Kinda sounds like Obama tactics…Sadly, the real losers this fall will be the American citizens, and what’s more sad is that most are too dumb to figure it out…
She’s right in that Obama doesn’t know what he doesn’t know and that’s because the guy has only spent 144 days (fact) in Congress. He literally has ZERO experience…ZERO.
He’s campaigned far longer than he’s spent serving this country.
If his campaign can get supporters to actually get off the couch and vote, we are in serious trouble.
Precisely why we conservatives need to urge our fellows across the country to get out and vote this November. Our country is supposedly 80% conservative. There should be ablolutely no reason why a liberal should win ANY election.
