Obama: just too nice a guy
The spin from the Obama camp as reported by Politico is that Obama’s just too nice a guy for politics, too focused on the truth and too interested in getting it out to the American people. Some excerpts, some of which are unintentionally funny:
Senior Obama adviser David Axelrod said on a conference call with reporters that Obama would reassess his approach in future debates with Romney ”” confrontations for which the president is “very, very eager,” Axelrod said…
Asked why Obama did not bring up several of the central themes in his brief against Romney, Axelrod answered: …“His interest was in honoring the American people with honest answers to serious questions.”
Obama has never been the nation’s most forceful debater, and he makes no secret of his disdain for the theatrical side of politics. If his conduct on the debate stage with Romney seemed oddly passive, it was in some ways just another manifestation of the president’s restrained approach to communicating with the electorate, whom he seems to believe ”” in the face of all existing evidence ”” are not swayed by electoral artifice…
This is somebody who, at his core, wants to have smart, rational conversations that result in people using common sense. He’s not a fire-breathing divider,” said Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak, the vice chairman of the Democratic National Committee…
An early Obama endorser in the 2008 cycle, Rybalk recalled that all through that race “people were saying he should go for the jugular more with Hillary [Clinton] or with [John] McCain.”
“He’s not a person who necessarily loves or lives in the world of radical attack politics,” Rybak said.
And here’s my personal favorite:
“Gov. Romney may dance around his positions. But if you want to be president, you owe the American people the truth,” Obama said.
I said a lot of those quotes were unintentionally funny. But here’s something that’s intentionally funny (hat tip: Ace) from The Onion: “Mitt Adopts New ‘Ronnie Ferocious’ Persona for Debates”:
…Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney appeared tonight at the University of Denver’s Magness Arena as Ronnie Ferocious, the aggressive, no-rules punk-rock persona he has reportedly adopted for his three debates against President Barack Obama.
Wearing a sleeveless cutoff suit jacket, tight leather pants, and a blue tie knotted around his head of spiky, red-white-and-blue-streaked hair, Romney swaggered on stage, took his position beside Obama, and ordered debate moderator Jim Lehrer to “f**king do this already.”
“You know what? I’ll ask the first question,” the former Massachusetts governor said before putting out his cigarette on his forearm and flicking the butt at Lehrer.
And perhaps the strangest thing about the Onion piece is that, as best I can tell, it appears to have been written before the debate.
“He’s not a person who necessarily loves or lives in the world of radical attack politics,”
I am so relieved that I can stop clinging to my guns… my hands were starting to cramp. Memo to self: purchase more reloading supplies. 😉
The Klein quote in the earlier post and the Axelrod quote here, plus all the left-leaning commentary I read have been steadfastly consistent with the overriding theme form the Obama campaign and its supporters: Romney, Ryan the GOP, and the Tea Party lies to you.
I went to a local Democrats club meeting with a Democrat congressman a few weeks ago. Same thing, over and over: Romney, Ryan, and the Republicans are lying to you.
Iotw, the Dems will return to the them of it doesn’t matter who appeared to win the debate or even the campaign because everything Romney the bamboozler says is a lie. Whatever Obama and the Democrats say is the truth (and the Truth).
My neighborhood is roughly divided 60-40 between those who tend to vote R or D. As I was walking the dogs this afternoon I noted the political signs in the neighborhood. There are very few Obama-Biden signs; but more tellingly there are yards with signs supporting our democrat DC rep that do not have a BHO sign. I know my neighbors. The pro-democrats will be voting for our D rep, but most of them will not be voting for BHO; they will not cast a presidential vote and a few of them will vote for Romney.
It too late baby, BHO is going down.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5TxpJVKKQ8
Is it even theoretically possible for Axelputz to have his insipid head crammed further up his own anal pore..?
It IS possible? Oh.
Well, we know here that Obama is NOT a nice guy…
nor does Obama listen.
Obama might’ve had an easier time debating Romney if he was a listener. But he hasn’t taken any statement from Romney or Ryan seriously.
Everyone saw Obama looking down on Ryan during the Obamacare debate. Obama didn’t address ANYTHING Ryan said and he just dismissed all of that to go on a monologue.
Nobody on the left really paid much attention to that.
However… 67 million people paid a lot of attention to last night. Left and Right.
Yeah, I’d hear that line from true believers in the bay area (Obama is just so nice so it is hard to deal with the republicans). Almost always young people.
“governor said before putting out his cigarette on his forearm and flicking the butt at Lehrer.”
I preferred the palm of the hand back in the day. Good Times.
Eric Says:
“I went to a local Democrats club meeting with a Democrat congressman a few weeks ago. Same thing, over and over: Romney, Ryan, and the Republicans are lying to you.”
Its funny how many revision their arguments have gone though (as they were found lacking / wrong). Like the whole Warren Buffet and how much people pay in taxes. It has been revised at least four times and the current version of the argument is still bs.
PS
these are also people who think Michael Moore movies have real facts and arguments….
It’s been interesting to look at the headlines off and on through the day today and see the left’s take on the debate, after their initial shock, converge on “Romney is lying” (with “Obama’s too good for this” a sort of corollary). Why, it’s almost as if…they all think alike.
Not all that far behind “Romney is lying” is “Romney wants to kill Big Bird.”
That *is* pretty funny about Obama’s dedication to dialogue. It’s more like “‘Shut up,’ he explained.”
“His disdain for the theatrical side of politics?”??
President “Styrofoam Greek Columns in Football Arenas” with “His Own Personal Presidential Logo?”??
That guy??
Oh, my God. They have gone quite round the twist, haven’t they?
JournoList is alive and well. You will hear the Same Phrasing and Talking Points every day from everyone in the Cabal.
They’re so bloody obvious.
Man alive! There is just every excuse being made except for the real reason – Obama never takes responsibility for anything – never!
He really is the product of affirmative action. It is Bush’s fault, It is Hillary’s fault, The other guy made me do it, The air is too thin up here, and he’s just too nice a guy!
I’d call him Urkel except Steve Urkel would at least ask “Did I do that?”
Beverly, RE: “His disdain for the theatrical side of politics?”??
President “Styrofoam Greek Columns in Football Arenas” with “His Own Personal Presidential Logo?”??
That was EXACTLY what I thought of as well. The man is all about theatrics without substance. If the best Obama’s followers can do is claim he’s too nontheatrical to win a debate, they really ARE aware that he’s in over his head.
The best excuse though has been Al Gore saying that the altitude of Denver was to blame. http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2012/10/04/al_gore_altitude_might_be_to_blame_for_obamas_debate_performance.html
Ah, it’s our old friend projection again.
Due to an LA traffic jam Wed night, I had to listen to 3/4 of the debate on the radio with my fellow commuters. I then watched it on the net.
Watching the faces made MR seem even better and BO seem even worse. ONE THING that was missing was BO’s grin, except: WAIT! There it is. and then again, 4, 5 min later. He FLASHES it! It is COMPLETELY different from how he is feeling. Clearly, he felt like “crap”, but he cold flash that grin WHEN HE remembered to script it in.
How false is that grin. It comes out of no where. A true smile is in the heart and in the eyes, not the teeth. He must have thought the grin would be compelling, but it only made it seem like he wasn’t listening, wasn’t involved.
You have to wonder if these people were even watching the same debate. Sheesh.
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2012/10/04/obama-collapse-in-illinois-tied-in-liberal-district-he-won-by-23-points-in-08
Neo, I predicted that Illinois mightgo Romney!
the above poll was pre debate
Axelrod is here spinning one of Obama’s worst faults, cowardice. “The Diplomad” sums it up:
“He also came off as a coward. Yes, a coward. He is used to having others do his hit jobs for him; used to hurling insults and slanders from a distance, and then retreating behind his “charm,” smile, and silky voice. He is not used to face-to-face confrontation. He is not used to having the man he has insulted and lied about standing a few feet away. He was clearly intimidated by Romney, and let himself be dominated.”
http://thediplomad.blogspot.com/2012/10/one-more-thought-on-debate-is-obama.html#comment-form
The problem with saying that Obama was just being “nice” (apart from the fact nobody believes it) is that being forceful and persuasive is part of the job description for POTUS. If Obama can just say “Oh, well” and let Romney have his way with him in something as important as a presidential debate, what assurance do Americans have that he’ll be tough with Putin or China or Congress, or anyone else he needs to be tough with?
I think that’s one reason Obama’s closing remarks (which haven’t seemed to get that much attention compared to his overall performance) struck me as so weak. I haven’t gone back to re-watch it, but it sounded almost perfunctory in tone and concluded with something like “. . . and if you re-elect me, I’ll continue to fight for you.” But, irony of ironies, he hadn’t shown any desire to fight in the entire preceding 90-minute debate. If I were one of his supporters, I’d be screaming at the TV: “You couldn’t even fight for us for the last hour and a half, forget four more years!”
Based on this, I think it’s a big mistake for Obama to try to lavish everyone with excuses suggesting he simply wasn’t that interested in attempting a spirited defense of his performance as president. Again, if I were a supporter, I’d find that extremely disheartening. And simply as a citizen, it’s disturbing to know that Obama can’t necessarily be counted on to make a forceful, compelling case for America’s interests, not because he doesn’t construe those interests the same way I do (although that’s clearly an issue as well), but because he wants to stay cool and aloof instead of being “theatrical.”
The spin from the Obama camp as reported by Politico is that Obama’s just too nice a guy for politics
Alice Palmer and Jack Ryan were unavailable for comment.
Joe the Plumber, the cop who acted stupidly, and George Zimmerman also unavailable for comment.
The Ambassador Stevens was also “not available for comment”.
….
these pieces are all about “telling you waht you shoudl think” not informing you so you can form your own thoughts..
one thing my freaky memory does is let me know sociopaths and people who play certain games… now, normal people do these things too… in fact, most abnormal behaviors are normal in action, abnormal in extreme or lack..
one thing that people who orchestrate do, is habitually lie or create different answers and imagery for different groups. this is a throwback before we became more social (ergo sociopaths are throwbacks… a society that eventually get dominated by that, becomes lizard like, not more human – its a throwback to times when such served)
well, this is often where i get my knowing from. kind of like the way astronomers see waht change by flipping back and forth.
so what others dont see, i see very clearly…
imagine what his Riefenstahl campaign sets would look like if he loved the theatrical side!
would the doric columns been bigger?
would the stalinesque images of him imposed over the glorious crowd, be toned down?
basically, they say whatever they think at that short term moment will serve to maximize the response from that local group watching or participating… (no guilt doing this)
so they will literally say whatever comes to mind irregardless of the past. as remembering the past and comparing is an act of merit, they don’t do it.
image vs substance
and if you notice it keeps boiling down to that over and over and over..
to say what they just said, is to attempt to create an image… in this case an image that changes the past which is not as good an influence as the new inserted information.
i havent read the other posts, but what your going to see, is what sociopaths do all the time…
and thats get you to doubt your own memory! tell you what you think isnt what you think, then dont let you compare to see whose right (After all, in real life it can go either way)
so they are going to tell you that sanger isnt about killing blacks, despite all those speeches with the KKK and her eugenics magazines, and the others too, and the decline of a race till genocided past their event horizons, etc.
so… they are now going to tell you what you saw was not what you saw. obama will become someone else, as that someone else will be a better person in that situation… so htats what they will describe.
people that respond to this and who are used to such bs from their ideological positions all their life (like feminists), will know to believe the new truth and forget the old one, and not care if there is any consistency..
like the serial killer caught by police who cries and says all kinds of things, they cry for themselves ,not their victims… they give the lines that people with guilt, emotions, loose memory, and so on will respond to by examining themselves not the other!
behave normally with them, and not change how you regard such, and you will be a victim for that reason alone…
In essence, Artfldgr Obama’s apologists are saying “Who you gonna believe, me or your own eyes?”