IN WHICH REGARD HE IS AN AVATAR OF THE LEFT:

All Things to All People: His fans call it Obama’s “complexity.” Lee Siegel calls it delusional. (Lee Siegel, 12/05/09, Daily Beast)

When Obama gives a speech now, you think of people with no credit who want to buy a house with nothing down; of consumers of the news who want their information instant, accurate, and free; of the anonymous Internet hustler who promises different things to different people; of already wealthy investors who defraud their clients in order to become giddily wealthy; of champion athletes who take steroids to attain superhero status; of fame-hounds who want to hoax their way into a celebrity-life; of a certain rich and famous golfer, with a beautiful and by all accounts substantial wife, who seems to want to have sex with every woman he sees.

Obama got elected the way people used to rush out to get cortisone from their doctors once that miraculous-seeming drug became available. He was elevated by hope for an antidote to what felt like a toxic, degenerative condition. But rather than a cure for what ailed us, he more and more resembles the chronic condition itself—the contemporary American condition of wanting it all, right now, no matter the contradictions, and without having to give up anything in exchange.

Now? He ran on not making any decisions. Remember, "I am the change."

Posted by Orrin Judd at December 5, 2009 6:28 AM