Tuesday, June 22, 2010

From the Center-Left now .. the reality sinks in on "O" ..RICHARD COHEN:"Who is this guy? What are his core beliefs?"

Churchill NOT and Lincoln  photo-landscape-thumb-260x184.pngWell, to the realistic and/or cynical in the center and to the right of center, and I mean JUST right of center, the awful truth has been awful obvious. It was there from the days in the campaign when his appointments and choice of churches and friends belied his words and ambition.

Then as the radical appointments post inauguration became unsustainable, and he was compelled to back away to some degree, questions began on the far left. 'Was he the guy?', they wondered as Van Jones made his Marxian way from the govt to the Center for American Progress for some more Sorosian checks.

Businessmen and hardheaded analysts gawked in suspended disbelief as O went to bat for Chicago before the Olympic committee without knowing the outcome beforehand. Speech after speech, appearance after appearance, the dull toothache of words gradually ground it's way into back ground noise.

The cynical right was even surprised at his lack of vision in the middle east (if that is what it was), his abandonment and insult to allies, his bowing, his apologies, his disdain for american hopes for individual wealth (i.e. COMPLETE FREEDOM .. 'I mean at some point you just have enough' .. and no doubt O will inform you of when)

And now the Center Left sees the some light. From RealClearPolitics.com:

The Riddle of an Enigma

By Richard Cohen

It can seem that at the heart of Barack Obama's foreign policy is no heart at all. It consists instead of a series of challenges -- of problems that need fixing, not wrongs that need to be righted. As Winston Churchill once said of a certain pudding, Obama's approach to foreign affairs lacks theme. So it seems does the man himself.

For instance, it's not clear that Obama is appalled by China's appalling human rights record. He seems hardly stirred about continued repression in Russia. He treats the Israelis and their various enemies as pests of equal moral standing. The president seems to stand foursquare for nothing much.

This, of course, is the Obama enigma: Who is this guy? What are his core beliefs? The president himself is no help on this score. When it comes to his own image, he has a tin ear. He hugely misunderstood what some people were saying when they demanded that he get angry over the Gulf oil catastrophe and the insult-to-injury statements of BP chief executive Tony Hayward. (Wayward Hayward, he should be called.)


By the way, Richard, here is what he is:

An elite academic leftist radical who is questioning his own ability to carry out what he wants, and whether his ideas placed in the framework of objective reality - WORK. Unfortunately he cares about this only to the extent that it affects him and his place in history. Add those together and you get - radical uncomprehending incompetence

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5 comments:

Always On Watch said...

For about a year, Cohen has been showing signs of souring on Obama.

Always On Watch said...

Epa,
Have you taken a look at the comments at the WaPo article?

Epaminondas said...

No but I will now, on RCP or the WaPo?

Epaminondas said...

Okay I (mildly for me) put my .02 in at WaPo

Always On Watch said...

Epa,
At the WaPo.