Why were they fooled about Obama?
NY Post columnist Michael Goodwin offers his Obama mea culpas:
I am afraid — actually, certain — we are losing the heart and soul that made America unique in human history. Yes, we have enemies, but the greatest danger comes from within…President Obama, for whom I voted because I believed he was the best choice available, is a profound disappointment. I now regard his campaign as a sly bait-and-switch operation, promising one thing and delivering another. Shame on me.
I applaud Goodwin for at least being able to publicly admit his previous lack of judgment. Better late than never.
But not better enough. We are all stuck with the consequences of the actions of people such as Goodwin, multiplied by millions.
So, how did someone like Goodwin—and so many of the others—get taken in? Let me count the ways:
(1) Do not underestimate the desire to atone for America’s racial sins by electing the first black man to have been nominated for president by a major party.
(2) Wordsmiths were especially taken in by Obama, a phenomenon I explored in depth during the campaign, here.
(3) We have been lucky in America until now. Yes, we are used to politicians who lie. But we have had little or no experience of being lied to by a politician in such a smooth but fundamental way, about the very nature of his basic political orientation. That was Obama’s specialty, and many people lacked the imagination to believe it possible.
(4) Goodwin and many others simply didn’t do their homework. This is especially unforgivable in a journalist, although all too common.
(5) As Obama himself acknowledged, he cleverly exploited the blank screen phenomenon, purposefully encouraging people to project their own wishes and desires onto him, making him into whatever they needed/wanted him to be.
(6) Many people are eager to hop on the bandwagon and be in with the in crowd. And the in crowd decidedly favored Obama—including an MSM that was pathetically and tragically eager to cover up for him.
There seems to be a growing failure of what used to be known as common (or horse) sense, including the ability to size people up. The truth is that almost all of Obama’s flaws were obvious by the time election 2008 rolled around, and ignoring them was an exercise in willful denial.
The blank screen phenomenon was created in part by the decades of negative portrayal of the right. We have slowly learned that there is nothing more important than being fashionable. At the same time, we have learned that being liberal was the most fashionable thing to be. This has been done, paradoxically, by demeaning the preferences of the common people. It is anti-fashion, the sweet drug of believing you are more discerning, smarter, and ultimately more fashionable than the masses. A majority now believe they are above-average (which would be humorous if it weren’t so pathetic).
The fear of being associated with an outgroup is very powerful. A blank screen candidate does not have to provide much beyond suggestions; the individual’s own ego will do the rest of the work unaided.
Excellent observations. I noticed that combat veterans sized up Obama as ridiculously unqualified for the presidency early on (I worked at the Marine Museum in Quantico hence I met many). Apparently their OJT in character analysis gave them an edge up on the adolescents who voted on the basis of sex appeal. The vets I encountered also agreed he is going to get a lot of people killed.
re your (3):
(3) We have been lucky in America until now. Yes, we are used to politicians who lie. But we have had little or no experience of being lied to by a politician in such a smooth but fundamental way, about the very nature of his basic political orientation. That was Obama’s specialty, and many people lacked the imagination to believe it possible.
First, highlighting “… many people lacked the imagination” – neo is not merely speaking of lacking the imagination to conceive lies. Note her “very nature of his basic political orientation”. Voters were caught off guard by a candidate who wanted to “FUNDAMENTALLY change this nation.” Voters heard it, yet didn’t believe it. Such had never happened before, and voters suffered cognitive dissonance. Voters believed the candidate couldn’t have actually meant he wanted to fundamentally change this nation. Such did not compute. Voters expect a candidate to run for office b/c he loves the nation – not b/c he wants to overhaul the fundamental principles and values of the government/society/culture. Voters heard “change”, and Barack’s first choice was “CHANGE”.
Second, voters trusted the major parties to act as gatekeepers: to keep out candidates who wanted to overhaul the principles and values of the government/society/culture. Voters can no longer rely on the Democratic Party to act as a dependable gatekeeper. Long term, this loss of trust will damage the Democratic Party. It will take a while, but the damage will become apparent.
Excellent summary, Neo.
Obama did not invent the blank screen technique for his Senate campaign. He had been operating that way for a long time. Most likely he originated the blank screen technique in childhood. I go for Indonesia, where it became a way to fit into a foreign environment. I may be a foreigner, but I agree with you. He probably imitated the academic discourses he heard from his mother. Here is an article from the NYT on his time at Harvard Law: In Law School, Obama Found Political Voice .
Given that the article shows how Obama’s MO at Harvard law was to not commit himself to a given stand on an issue, the title of the article is either ironic or fitting, depending on your point of view.
While one should not copy/paste long sections of articles, I could not resist.
For all my dislike of editorial stances of the NYT, this article nails it. Anyone who voted for Obama after reading this article does not think the same way I do.
Gringo,
I am inclined to delete the last five words of your comment. Factors other than the litttle gray cells were at work in deciding those votes.
One problem might be decades of dumbed down education, where civics is not taught, where no body can recite what the first ten ammendments to the constitution are, where the vast majority can not even tell you how many seats there are in Congress. Has any high school student been assigned the reading of the constitution? Do most citizens anymore know how their government even works? American history has degenerated, for the most part into a screed of white European exploitation of a) native Americans, b) the land, c) our hemispheric neighbors, d) the world at large. Free enterprise is looked at askance when not outright condemned as the engine of greed and corruption. The very notion of limited government, of by and for the people is regarded as quaint and hopelessly out of date. The concept of inalienable rights, duh, what’s that? Aren’t the rights of individuals conferred on them by the government? Woe to anyone who would argue the opposite. Why teach mundane crap like math or algebra? Teach something relevant! One thing I noticed years ago, while watching Ken Burn’s The Civil War was how much more literate the average young man was to today’s high-school, hell college educated student, y’know? I mean like w’sup with that?
Being a free man/woman and actively participating in a democratic form of government comes at a price.
It is incumbent on the citizenry to be informed and engaged. While it’s true that in this past election more so than in any recent election, the media deliberately promoted the lies, half-truths and mis-conceptions in the aid of furthering a specific political agenda. When haven’t they? There is no law that says they must not be partisan. Nor should there be. It is our duty to read past the headlines. It is our duty to try and be informed and make the best choices we can. Sadly many citizens are too stupid/lazy/unconcerned to care. We have been fat, dumb and happy for far too long. Now the bill is coming due.
So now, fatuous idiots like Richard Goodwin realize their error. “Oh woe is me!”, he says. “I didn’t know, how could I have?”
I say bullshit. Mr. Goodwin should have pulled his head out of his pompous ass long enough to take in the view instead of riding his moral high-horse of liberal guilt expiation in the cause of the high holy church of liberalism. He’s just another rat leaving the sinking ship. Reminds me of Peggy Noonan.
So much for Mr. Goodwin’s holy cause. I agree with Eric Hoffer’s analysis, “Faith in a holy cause is to a considerable extent a substitute for lost faith in ourselves.”
A lot of it probbly comes down to a fundamental flaw in logic, viz., the old (but nevertheless valid) chestnut that absence of evidence does not necessarily imply evidence of absence.
In this context, not perceiving any reason not to vote for Obama is not equivalent to perceiving a reason to vote for him. Put another way, the perceived absence of a negative is not a positive.
Presidential candidates, unlike fry cooks at Burger King, should be ruled in, not ruled out. This small point escaped 52% of the electorate.
Tim P,
I’m in the middle of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. Although it is fiction, I find it totally believable that the characters of the WWII era were able to return to the literary culture of Britain to sustain them. Someone had taught them something of their culture to begin with. It was something they shared.
Occam’s,
When you don’t want to recognize the dangers that we face and you want to blame Bush for exaggerating, then you seek refuge in someone who can discuss Reinhold Niebuhr with you. It is especially easy when said person has never done anything meaningful that flies in the face of his alleged philosophy because he has never done anything.
Nobody was fooled by Obama. Those who promoted him, especially the MSM; Especially the MSM who we know for sure are sophisticated enough to have known better; and the various ethnic and cultural crowds who voted for the Obama machine for nothing more than a vague “hope and change and redistribution” shuck and jive routine, the shallowest of reasons, all knew exactly what they were doing. This was the logical succession to the Hard Left (the West Coast and East Coast Dems and the Soros crowd), the Democrat’s long and very, very smug and carefully orchestrated Bush hater campaign; a crowd campaign a lot of people thoroughly enjoyed. Though I have a certain amount of sympathy for some aspects of the healthcare controversy, too bad this trillion dollar issue is not being addressed carefully and thoroughly by developing a dozen separate bills over several years, as would be appropriate for something of this magnitude; but it’s easy to see by how it’s being pushed, that the Dems rush job isn’t about healthcare, it’s just an obvious power grab. The people who went along with the crowd all along, ignoring readily available information on the internet, and are now claiming they were betrayed, need to step to the front now with their pitchforks in hand, and scream bloody murder; because by the time this spending spree culminates in a cap and trade debacle, we’re all going to be a lot poorer, and the poor are going to be more destitute than ever. Some character today asserted that those of us who oppose the Dems are in bed with racists, blah, blah, the usual; needless to say this is becoming very personal…
Niebuhr? Didn’t he get sent back down to triple A?
Seriously, though, Obama’s favorite theologican is Niebuhr, and yet he spent 20 years in Wright’s church? Am I the only one who finds those two statements somewhat…discordant, shall we say?
Occam,
From Wiki, “During the 1930s, Niebuhr was a prominent leader of the militant faction of the Socialist Party of America. He promoted adoption of the United front agenda of the Communist Party USA, a position in sharp contrast to ideas later in his career…”
So I’d say no Obama’s actually not that far from a young Niebuhr.
Not that Wright is a Communist, he’s just a bigot who hates America. My mistake.
As for Buraq spending 20 years in Wright’s church, he’d have spent 20 years in hell if it furthered his career. Buraq was just trying to gain credibility in his community. A career move, if you will. It had nothing to do with faith.
Well, heck-fire, Mr. Godwin – thanks for that realization. A bit late but … oh, what the hell. I’m not a combat veteran, like Bob from VA noted, but I had Mr. Obama pegged for a sweet-talking, smooth-dressing cipher and product of the Chicago political machine shortly after he swam (like an unflushed bit of solid sewage waste!) to the top of our national consciousness. I knew that he was a gorgeous, well-spoken empty suit (with very unfortunate friends, like the Rev. Wright), one of those favored few who moved upwards from job to job so fast that no one ever connected their presence with the damage they did … and I saw how the main-stream media (to include tools like Mr. Godwin!) dragged him over the finish-line like a juggernaut – and I have the blog entries to prove it, from yea these many months ago. (Just go to http://www.ncobrief.com and search for ‘Obama’ or even ‘Clinton’)
So, nice apology, Mr. Godwin. You doubtless get paid a tidy sum for your columns to not see what is obvious to me – an unpaid, credentialed blogger. Thanks for your perception – and where the hell was it, 18 and 20 months ago? Any thoughts as to why the hell we should pay any attention to you and your ilk, from now on?
In a democracy, the quality of government depends on the quality of the electorate. That’s our basic problem these days. The quality of our electorate is very poor.
I keep remembering those seemingly sharp people coming out of a voting booth in a Democratic primary saying “She’ll be great!” when asked by a reporter if Obama’s choice of Sara Palin to be the VP candidate was a good one.
We should make people take a test before being allowed to vote. We require a test to be passed to be able to drive, don’t we? How much damage can a bunch of poorly informed voters do?
Tim,
A career move, if you will. It had nothing to do with faith.
Exactly. Obama must have some core beliefs, somewhere; God knows what they are, but in any case, they clearly play second fiddle to Obama’s professional aggrandizement.
To Sgt. Mom’s point, how is it that anyone could not see Obama for what he was – a con artiste? What kind of a fool trusts someone he does not at least think he understands? But many Obamanauts admit that they don’t understand the man, yet they trust him. Amazing. Truly amazing.
I read the linked article, and Goodwin doesn’t sound like a doctrinaire leftist. Which makes him a plain, garden-variety fool.
On the other hand, I understand that a lot of leftists are upset with the healthcare bill, because it doesn’t go straight for single-payer in one fell swoop.
I don’t think we can overlook the two-fer at sticking it to the bitter clingers.
Not only is he a liberal, he’s BLACK! Take that, rednecks.
rickl: as far as I can tell, Goodwin is not a leftist at all. He seems to be more or less middle-of-the-road. If he were a leftist, he might be writing a “mea culpa” column, but it would be for entirely different reasons. He wouldn’t be frightened of Obama now, just disappointed.
Richard Aubrey, in honor of sticking it to the ‘necks, here is Jerry Jeff Walker doing Ray Wiley Hubbard’s Up Against the Wall, Redneck Mother. I didn’t link it to the one with the pickup, as some might have been offended. It is uncanny how often the “stupid bigoted” theme comes up when the libs talk about those who disagree with them.
And has already been pointed out, ∅bama got a fair amounta votes from dem as tot dey could prove dey wuz enlightened and fulla knowledge and not like dem ‘necks by votin’ Demo in ’08.
Expat: re taking out the sentence of my post re thinking differently: thinking also includes premises one uses. As you point out, the premises were different.
Tim P,
I’ve noticed the same thing about the poor education system we have today v. the high quality of even minimally educated people from generations ago. Ken Burns’ The Civil War contains, as you say, some excellent examples. It’s instructive to have a look at the McGuffey Reader from those years ago. Most of our college grads today could not begin to wade through it, and yet it was meant for ordinary grammar school students at the time. When I was teaching geology to public university students some years back, I had education majors tell me they couldn’t do long division (in the event, as an application for deciphering map scales) because they weren’t gifted in math. Say, what?
I’m a bit unsettled about the notion that Obama’s and the Dem’s ploys are all about getting power, period, nothing more. I confess I don’t understand this. I’ve read the same thing in Alinsky (not an exhaustive reading, to be sure). I’m not sure I agree, but maybe I just don’t understand the whole thing. Anyway, it strikes me that it has to be about seeking power in the service of some agenda. If all they wanted was power, they could have it by serving the popular will, no? But they are at pains to ignore, even to disparage, the popular will. This tells me that they are after power in the service of something. In this case, it seems to be about power in the service of a Leftist program. They believe in that, not just in power–whose exercise, after all and when it is attained, ticks leftward. Can someone tell me how it can be interpreted as a power play, pure and simple? Because I don’t get that part of it.
Betsy, perhaps I’m one who alludes to what you’re questioning; but I don’t disagree with you at all. It’s not exclusively a power play, but the method to their madness seems one of testing every possible scenario which will maximize left-wing party culture, in and out of the government. Orchestrating this immense project at what amounts to a breakneck pace indicates to me that they are more concerned about imposing their party influence and agenda than objectively solving the problems. My understanding is that much, if not most of the actual composition of these several thousand page bills has been long-ago authored by Soros connected left-wing think tanks.
Check out the Wall Street Journal article today, all about the Dems power agenda: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704398304574598130440164954.html
betsybounds: The Leftist agenda, unlike that of the Right, is about the increase of government power and control. And so their agenda is about power, and power is their agenda.
This is not true of conservatives, who in most cases have a “less is more” attitude towards governmental power (with the sole exception of certain issues of morality, and national defense). Libertarians advocate a government that has the least power of all.
So, in summary, the Left wants to come to power in order to seize, expand, and hold power. Conservatives want to come to power in order to expand and hold power in only certain limited arenas. Libertarians want to come to power in order to cede power.
Recall.if you are my age, that Carter got in by pretending not to be a McGovernist. Once discovered as such he was finished. Obama’s future is similarly clear.
To my fellow boomers: we have no one to blame but ourselves. We raised a generation of children who think your don’t have to know anything, you don’t have to do anything, all you need is to look cool.
It’s positively McLuhanesque!
Most people are not very good at consequential thinking: if I do A, then B will result.
Add to that the problem of unintended consequences, of which proper conservatives never lose sight.
People show risk aversion for THEIR risks, but act in extremely risky ways when someone else is at risk.
People discount future trouble at too high a rate, forgetting that they will have to live in that future.
Big trouble ahead.
Here’s some pertinent watching. Part 2 is where the rubber meets the road. If anything, watch that.
How the Democrat party has changed over the last 30 years, who they are now and their agenda, (remarks of a former Carter aide):
Part One
Part Two: (especially good)Part Two: (especially good)
Everybody’s jumping on the circus train.
Some jump high, some jump off again.
And the razzmatazz is rolling, women folk unveiled.
All truths to light, all crosses nailed.
Aiming high where the eagle circles —
Where he keeps his tail feathers clean.
And wonders “am I still a free bird?
Or just a part of the machine.”
==================
So, so you think you can tell Heaven from Hell,
blue skies from pain.
Can you tell a green field from a cold steel rail?
A smile from a veil?
Do you think you can tell?
And did they get you to trade your heroes for ghosts?
Hot ashes for trees?
Hot air for a cool breeze?
Cold comfort for Change?
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage?
How I wish, how I wish you were here.
We’re just two lost souls swimming in a fish bowl, year after year,
Running over the same old ground.
What have you found? The same old fears.
Wish you were here.
On this sacred day (Dec22) for me, let me share my last action with you.
A copy of my last post will do the trick, I believe:
(sent to Instapun***k.com – article: “The future”)
http://www.instapunk.com/#IP1981:
AcidPoP 2009-12-23 01:02:00
“I just sent a new post to AT. Hope the added publicity doesn’t bother you too much. Hopefully not. I can’t judge right all the time. All I know is that since my post was published by AT, they approved of the move completely. I am in friendly territory there. Like with neo-neocon of course, and Fox) – It’s just a silent, but strong, approval. For how long it will have to stay this way, I don’t know. Maybe until both America and Persia got rid of their despots. Years?
… I only talk the way I do in order to reach freedom for me, and for our respective countries. I talk now so that I wont have to talk in the future. Just enjoy life.
So thanx!! we are too often surrounded by prima donnas, intent to muzzle those of us who don’t really care about them. And I mean people supposedly on our side. Forget the left. I have completely boycotted them.
Love Steve Crowder and ZO too. Remember the video “Where is My Stimulus Money?”
Anyway, this is my post and this is the link:
http://comments.americanthinker.com/read/42323/502813.html
“Posted by: AcidPoP
Dec 23, 10:23 AM
The name calling (i.e. Tea-baggers) should be the least of our concerns. We welcome it. Just make sure you don’t call yourselves that way. Why would you?
Actually I have addressed that question quite nicely some time ago, then updated it with more goodies. Please don’t despair.
We wont need violence to undo the damage but unity, wisdom, lightness and confidence. All the things America by tradition possess:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m7_oNlT2L0c]
Merry Christmas!! We will beat these creeps in congress sooner or later. For the sake of Freedom, Beauty and America!
Our worst enemy is fear, anger directed towards our own, and despair. Keep your sense of humor at every turn. But never stop the action. Be right and fair in all your judgments and assertions.
LOVE,
AcidPoPArtist, Punkette and first class Painter! & not alone. Not forever anyway.”
Good Luck!”