DOES HE REALLY SEEM CAPABLE OF LOVE OR HATE?:

Barack Obama's lonely presidency (Clarence Page, October 12, 2011, Chicago Tribune)

In this, President Barack Obama's autumn of discontent, a new and potentially disastrous media narrative is emerging about him: He's the kind of liberal who loves humanity but hates people. [...]

But, before Obama's rivals on the political right become too gleeful over his political misfortunes, they should take his tale as a cautionary note about presidential campaigns in both parties: The qualities that look most attractive in a presidential candidate can prove to be disastrous in a president.

We loved Bill Clinton's jolly, freewheeling charm and lust for life -- before those qualities looked in the White House like a serious lack of discipline and organization, costly to the power and majesty of his office.

And we similarly were wooed by candidate George W. Bush's folksy, straightforward and resolute certainty. But after debacles like Hurricane Katrina and Iraq's non-existent weapons of mass destruction, his reassuring certainty looked like old-fashioned, irrational stubbornness.

We think we're voting for candidates, but we're really voting for narratives, the grand epic presidential story that we hope will come true. President Barack Obama offers us yet another case of a winner whose narrative is turned unfavorably on its head by his presidency. He has a year to turn his story around or, at least, hope his opponent spins a narrative that sounds even worse.

Mr. Page misses his own point.  Bill Clinton won a second term, survived impeachment and will be judged by history to have had at least a near great presidency because his personal weaknesses jibed with his strengths. Sure, he was all appetite, but that appetite included policy and work as well as women.  Likewise, W's stubbornness prevented him from bailing on Iraq when the rest of the Beltway wanted to and left him and a billion Muslims the big winners in the Islamic World.

But Barrack Obama's narrative was silence.  His election depended on him remaining a blank upon which people could project whatever image they wanted.  To the extent he has remained a void he comes off as creepy, to the extent he filled in the blank he's diverged from the ideal image folks produced.  Thus both action and inaction are losses for him. 

Posted by oj at October 12, 2011 6:58 AM
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