What Happened to Barack Obama? Um, He Had to Win Reelection
The class of writers like John Cook with a sad because Barack Obama isn’t the adult standing above the fray he was in 2008 shows a lot of naivete about politics. Why is Obama using terms like “Romnesia?” Oh, I don’t know. Maybe because the Republicans have shown for the last 3 1/2 years how trivializing politics into soundbites can be tremendously effective in destroying the president? Because unlike in 2008, when a schmuck like John Edwards would have walked all over John McCain, Obama is in the fight of his life? Because the American public is silly? I can think of lots of reasons that Obama would act like, gasp, a politician.
That we have those who take themselves very seriously complaining about this in late October just before the election shows that there’s a class who is paid to write about politics but actually don’t understand how politics work.
Gawker political writers are a bunch of glib, know-nothing Brooklynites. Just because they’re closer to my political persuasion than, say, Halperin and his ilk doesn’t mean I think they’re any smarter (they’re not).
Dude’s writing in flipping Gawker to bemoan a lack of dignity. Talk about your glass houses …
American politics is fncked, but that’s not the fault of the zingers. Yes, Zingers are empty calories, but there have been zingers in politics forever. You can buy whole books of Churchill’s zingers, and – whatever you think of his judgment – you can hardly question his gravitas, or his exaggerated self-importance and sense of dignity. It’s the fault of a media that reports the debates based on demeanor, not on facts, that cares more about aromas than arithmetic.
And it’s about an American political dynamic that last night required Obama to deny he was negotiating with Iran, when he obviously should and almost certainly is. Because god forbid we should take Churchill seriously when he wrote that “Jaw, Jaw is better than War, War”.
Exactly. I don’t mind a pol having some gags, as long as that’s not all he has. Obama brings the substance. It’s not like Bush having the phrase “Fuzzy Math” as his sole rejoinder to Gore’s fiscal argument.
Ah, conduplicatio. Is there anything it can’t do?
repeat itself
Touche, touche.
Now, now.
And yet Jar Jar is worse than either.
Jar Jar is better than Duran Duran.
Jar Jar has never been hungry like the wolf.
Obama shows gravitas by quoting Churchill to Romney in the debates:
“Tomorrow I’ll be sober, and you’ll still be ugly.”
See, the thing about that quote that always bothered me was that Churchill would not be sober for very long tomorrow.
Yes, but “Tomorrow between waking up and breakfast I’ll be sober” doesn’t really have the same ring to it.
Wasn’t Cook the guy who said that Obama coming out for SSM didn’t count because he didn’t immediately pledge to unilaterally make same-sex marriage a national right or something?
I should add that, election season or not, if he has a substantive criticism of Obama, fine — no reason not to discuss it when people are paying attention. But because he brings a couple of decent middlebrow joke lines to a debate — who gives a fuck? Like it doesn’t count for Democrats to win unless they don’t actually try?
That’s the problem with “earnestness.”
The binders, Big Bird, bayonets and horses have been *fun.* So was making fun of 9-9-9 and three…oops. That’s not allowed, apparently.
All the media asks of a Republican is to win. Whatever toilet-wipings spewed in such cause will be retconned into “resonating with the electorate”.
That’s a direct offshoot of “tone”, as in “when the mainstream press worries about a Democrat’s tone, that Democrat is winning”, so the press has to navel-gaze about the tone a Democrat takes, fainting couch and smelling salts at the ready.
So it naturally follows that of course it doesn’t count when Democrats win “the wrong way”.
Dude. Who’s your dealer?
I do think that statement does accurately reflect how a lot of young people felt in 2008, which helps explain both the adoration so many people expressed to an obviously centrist Democrat in 2008 and the shock that he was just another politician by late 2009 (and horrible turnout in 2010 which is related to the latter).
Seriously, some folks did think Obama was going to come in and fix everything. As Atrios points out sometimes, people disagree about stuff.
I did think Obama would bring change, and I described the type of change quite specifically: I thought Obama would bring marginal competency. More jobs, less corruption, fewer stupid wars, and fewer times when thousands of dead fill the streets of an American city. And he did it. Frankly, finding and killing bin Laden exceeded my expectations, as did his endorsement of same-sex marriage.
My major disappointment, maybe my only one, was the ‘looking forward not backward’ that allowed the whole gang of financial pirates to escape public scrutiny, let alone legal consequences.
I am aware that there wasn’t much the law could do, but some serious, probing congressional investigations to lay the facts before the public.
That and no “Simpson-Bowles” for employment.
serious, probing congressional investigations
Oxymoron alert . . .
Except that the president really doesn’t have anything to say about congressional investigations…. especially when the House is controlled by the Republicans and the Senate is infested with Blue Dogs…
I was disappointed that he broke his promise on ending the federal crackdowns on medicinal marijuana in states that its legal, though I thought I understood that broken promise a bit more after reading the Coates article on it.
Astonishing how little one heard about such modest expectations at the time.
Given that Obama got zinged with Romney’s zingers at the first debate, suffering as he was from what we could call (in the spirit of Romnesia), Obamalepsy, I don’t blame him and his team in the slightest for coming back with soundbites of their own. Waving binders around is the sort of undignified task veep candidates are frequently assigned to do and Biden at least is doing it with gusto.
Yeah, I don’t have an NYT column.
I’ll also admit that most folks might not find “marginal competency” to be particularly inspiring. I’ve decided that the alternative is the idiot lunatic brigade, and given those choices marginal competency is a revelation.
I didn’t mistake you for Thomas Friedman. I merely continue to be surprised at the number of people who avowedly expected so little.
(Many of them are also inclined to sniff at those who were/are audibly disappointed, as if they were suckers who just failed to read the fine print in the contract.)
Who says that reaction’s wrong? I certainly knew who I was voting for because he had an actual record. There was a real record there.
I also remember arguing about how that “real record” was comparable to John Edwards’ “real record”. Everyone really likes to project stuff that isn’t true, but if they’re serious about politics they should really work harder to not take what politicians say at face value.
What do we want? Marginal competency!
When do we want it? In a reasonable time frame agreed upon by all parties!
I heard it. I still hear it. Not my fault many people didn’t listen beyond HOPE n CHANGE. (And perhaps assumed more than what his record actually suggested because he was Black.)
Remember the famous letter by the 20-something girl who didn’t believe in Obama anymore because he didn’t instantly make gay equality the law of the land? Or something?
There were so many, many sads by so many, many young people because politics is, well, politics and not a Disney cartoon where happily ever after happens as soon as the wicked witch is destroyed. Oh are they in for some bitter times.
Of course, Barack Obama has tried to remind people, and I assume it’s mostly aimed at those young sads, that politics is politics and you’ve gotta keep the pressure on just like the opposing groups and the lobbyists do. It has not found a receptive audience.
Maybe they need a new Barbie doll: “Politics is hard”
I agree. Lots of Americans would like their politics served to them without the messy politics, filled with spiritual uplift but without calories, guilt, or regret. With his post-partisan shtick that he would transcend the battles of the last 20 years through the sheer force of his own awesomeness, Obama spoke to that need and profited from it. If you can get Ezra Klein to write patently embarrassing sentences about how your speeches are “the word made flesh” (wasn’t that St. John’s description of Christ?), you are tapping the motherlode. Once folks realized that wasn’t happening, a certain amount of disillusionment was inevitable, although getting more people (including the president) to realize that politics is political can only be a healthy development. Our political leaders aren’t our spiritual leaders, mommies, daddies, or ethical guides. They’re just people we choose to help us get things for ourselves and our community, and if they can do that through zingers, slogans, or even overtly partisan rhetoric, more power to them – they’re doing their jobs.
Lots of Americans would like their politics served to them without the messy politics
This is a great line, and a great comment overall.
This notion that politics — which by its very definition involves the give and take of opposing interests — is some kind of tragedy, rather than a simple fact of life, is just maddening. It’s right up there with “American Exceptionalism” as evidence of the fundamentally childlike nature of our political discourse.
How old is Cook? Because a lot of people in my approximate age bracket – I was 23 when Obama got elected – thought that way because they didn’t have enough experience with politics to know otherwise. Someone a couple of years younger than me would have been voting in their first presidential election in 2008, and may not have understood or paid much attention to the other ones that occurred in their lifetime. Someone my age is old enough to have voted in Kerry vs Bush in 2004 and that’s it. I had a better idea what to expect because I started paying attention to politics very early in life, but even I got suckered on one particular set of issues – I really thought that Obama’s background as a constitutional law prof meant that he’d be eager to get rid of the Patriot Act, warrantless wiretapping, etc, and we know how well that turned out. Because even with my having cared about politics early in life, read a history of the ACLU, etc, I hadn’t internalized that presidents just don’t remain civil libertarians on security-state issues once they’re in office. Didn’t have enough political memory.
A interesting related phenomenon that I see among some young liberals is Clinton nostalgia. They don’t actually know how centrist Clinton was, because they were 13 or 14 when he left office. They remember things being considered pretty good in the ’90s, and they remember their Democratic parents loving Clinton. I’ve managed to convince a couple of my friends who are 25 now that Clinton was actually a lot more centrist than they thought he was by providing facts and history – they had previously been wishing that Obama would be a real liberal like Clinton was back when they were kids.
post bush order of the day: a kinder, gentler rhetoric … a fairly competent imperial manager … we’re not flying kites in the park here, it’s levers of power and whistlin’ past the mayan galatic calendar implosion … i’m old & misanthropic and don’t even give sh*t that i am
and get off my lawn
unless you have goats… you can leave them to trim it up a bit… clay henry (all of them) were great drinking buddies and superb drunken lawn mowers
Also, I will go on record as saying how much I cannot stand Gawker and Nick Fucking Denton.
Never saw much in Gawker worth reading and never heard of Nick Fucking Denton.
ok, weird
also weird and GIGANTIC NEWS
How can you even read a fucking article on that site?
One sentence.
Unrelated link.
Another sentence.
Unrelated link.
Try getting drunk before you read it.
it Doesnt help.
try the pumpkin pie
Yeah, but at least you’re drunk.
At about 12:30 here if the link works is someone who demands the Scott Lemieux treatment. Or not because he’s out to split the Republican vote because “there’s not a dime’s worth of difference” between Romney and Obama.
It’s just sad to see Erik now apologizing for Obama’s behavior. Used to Erik expected higher standards of the politicians he supported.
Now, it’s just SUCK UP.
As I’ve said many times before, the time to start criticizing Obama again is the day after the election.
when he won’t be paying attention and probably won’t need to pay attention for quite some time if ever
Please to be substantiating your claim that Erik ever demanded his politicians forego dismissive one-liners when they were deserved. Or do you think Romney’s 1917 Navy argument deserved more respectful treatment?
Once Erik was cool, and was obsessed with the question of whether politicians used scripted lines at debates, the most important question of our time. Most of us, like John Cook, supported Obama not so much because he was “despite being a moderately liberal Democrat at best infinitely superior to the Republican alternative,” but because he tried not to use somewhat cheesy one-liners.
But now Erik has totally sold out, man. I demand that he start writing about the frequency with which Obama uses snarky zingers.
Loomis, however, has never stopped demanding high standards from his garbagemen. Why, they can’t just drive a truck around picking trash up, they’ve got to do without smelling bad.
John Cook is too good for politics. Also, too good for the species and maybe the planet. Maybe he should move.
Does anyone here know when the rhetoric of politics starting getting inflected by the rhetoric of military “campaigns,” American-style?
I’ve spent a number of hours in the last few days on the phone with my daughter, a recent law school grad (lives in Brooklyn, of all places, John! and she actually has a job awaiting her in a few months, Paul Campos!), as she adjusts to life in the midst of a political campaign. She’s working full time over the next two weeks in a battle ground state for Obama. Having just arrived at “the general’s” headquarters in this state, she’s feeling adrift, or at least, like her talents and time are not being utilized fully. I try to assure her: that’s the way political campaigns work. I offer parallels from my work here in Elizabeth Warren canvassing and such. It’s like the military. Extraordinary waste. You hurry up and wait. Chefs are assigned to the signal corps, train signalmen are assigned to KP. (Hello, Kilroy.) You just have to trust in the generals and give your all at whatever it is you’ve been asked to do. And jump at chances to do more: people will take you up on it. Everybody’s feeling desperate. The generals included. They’re depending on your dumb just-do-it as well as your imagination and initiative.
Democrats would get Villager sads for bringing bandaids to a knife fight.
It’s part and parcel of the whole “respect for the office” charade that permeates Villager thinking, and it centers primarily, or even exclusively, around Democratic presidents who either openly dislike Republicans and zing them with one-liners too often or like sex too much. Or both.
Strangely enough, this critique doesn’t extend to Republicans who illegally sabotage ongoing peace talks during a war in order to win an election, who illegally sell arms to terrorists who kill Americans (and hand the profits to government that rape and murder nuns), and who institute an illegal torture and gulag regime while lying us into a war. The word Villagers have for that behavior is “gravitas”.
This Obama fellow is just not up to standards.
I mean real serious presidents like FDR – do you think the Fala speech was full of cute jokes?
Good grief! It’s not as if Obama has always been completely sober and serious. Obama quoted Jay-Z songs in 2008! And I don’t have the 2008 debates memorized, but I’m sure that he had some pre-scripted jokes in those, too.
Obama didn’t have to win re-election, because he didn’t have to seek it.
He could have resigned, mid-term, rather than continue to be complicit in all the evil, and let Biden finish out the term. Or at least pulled an LBJ. (Biden’s a politician and as a result doesn’t have a soul, so it couldn’t have done him any harm.)
Think of the message that would have sent, and the inspiring example we would all have been given to follow.
I realize what with a family and all, withdrawing into a monastery for the rest of one’s days to do penance really wasn’t an option, but it’s worth considering.
Republicans are largely successful with the sloganeering and dumb politics because of the audience they are targeting.
I suspect that a good portion of the people Obama has a chance to sway would treat “Romnesia” with an eye roll.
I’ve been in rooms full of the upper-middle-class-to-wealthy Democratic activists who haunt the cliched dreams of Erik Erikson. People who work in FIRE or law or academia and drive Volvos and dress like Squid and the Whale Jeff Daniels or Rosa DeLauro. You’re giving them too much credit.
On the other hand, the union guys aren’t really likely to titter about it. And your general point is correct: there would never be a “Romnesia” equivalent of the giant flip-flop sandals or tire gauges that made the rounds at Republican conventions.
Or Purple Heart bandaids.
Oh, yeah. The people who amuse themselves online by calling Republicans the Reich Wing, etc are not my favorite people.
Depends who you think the audience is. If it’s “swing voters” ie, people who’ve just started to pay attention to the election, I can imagine almost anything working.
It all seems pretty high brow when you think back to Freedom Fries. That was a bipartisan embarassement.
This post was making me think about pundit laziness syndrome and delving into those issues. Then I realized that my thoughts could be summed up in one line: I miss Molly Ivans.
We need a pithy term for those who want Dems to be “above that sort of thing” even if it means they will almost always lose. Or does it already exist and I missed it?
Yeah it’s called “Democrats”
“I yoostabee an Obama campaigner, but ever since ["Romnesia"|going to work for Gawker], I’ve become [concerned about zingers|a concern troll].”