HOMEY CLOWNS:

Where Is Obama’s ‘Center’?: Look at his Rolodex and then figure out just where such a man would estimate it to be. (Mark Steyn, 9/12/09, National Review)

The New York Times’s in-house conservative David Brooks was an early champion of Obama and is profiled in the current edition of The New Republic cooing paeans to the then-senator”s “pant leg and perfectly creased pant.” Alas, for David Brooks, the bottom has dropped out of Obama’s perfectly creased pants. The other day he was tutting that the Obama administration is in trouble because “it joined itself at the hip to the liberal leadership in Congress.” My National Review colleague Jay Nordlinger was reminded of an old observation by the great Theodore Dalrymple. During his time as an English prison doctor, Dalrymple frequently met ne’er-do-wells who said they’d “fallen in with the wrong crowd,” but, oddly enough, in all those years, he never met the wrong crowd.

Likewise, Obama didn’t “join” himself to the liberal leadership; he is the liberal leadership. The administration didn’t fall in with the wrong crowd; they are the wrong crowd. Van Jones, Yosi Sergant, and ACORN are where Barack Obama has chosen to live all his adult life. Even if he wanted to be the bipartisan centrist of David Brooks’s fantasies, look at his Rolodex and then figure out just where such a man would estimate the “center” to be.

If you hire a guy with chief executive experience he knows executives. Hire a community organizer and he knows mainly lunatics.

Posted by Orrin Judd at September 12, 2009 7:31 AM