{"id":955,"date":"2010-10-31T21:44:19","date_gmt":"2010-11-01T03:44:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.orderofephors.com\/?p=955"},"modified":"2010-10-31T21:44:19","modified_gmt":"2010-11-01T03:44:19","slug":"the-beginning-of-the-end","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.orderofephors.com\/?p=955","title":{"rendered":"The Beginning of the End"},"content":{"rendered":"

Two articles languishing in my \u201cto be read later\u201d folder make a strong case for what appears to be the \u201cbeginning of the end\u201d for the Obama Administration.\u00a0 In a New York Times<\/em> op-ed column titled, \u201cThe Agony of the Liberals.\u201d\u00a0 Writer Ross Douthat tells us, \u201cThey doubted him during the health care debate. \u00a0They second-guessed his Afghanistan policy. \u00a0They\u2019ve fretted over his coziness with Wall Street and his comfort with executive power. \u00a0But now is the summer of their discontent\u2026 From MSNBC<\/a> to \u2018The Daily Show<\/a>,\u2019 from The Huffington Post<\/a> to the halls of Congress<\/a>, movement liberals have had just about enough of Barack Obama. \u00a0<\/p>\n

The catalyst, Douthat tells us, was Obama\u2019s June 15 Oval Office address<\/a> on the BP oil spill.\u00a0 He complains, \u201cMany liberals look at this White House and see a presidency adrift \u2013 unable to respond effectively to the crisis in the gulf, incapable of rallying the country to great tasks like the quest for clean energy, and unwilling to do what it takes to jump-start the economy\u2026\u201d\u00a0 But, true to form, Douthat fails to say what he means by the term \u201cclean energy.\u201d<\/p>\n

In his Oval Office address, Obama spewed forth his standard \u201cpro-clean energy,\u201d anti-oil, anti-lobbyist diatribe.\u00a0 Without assigning blame where it belongs\u2026 to radical environmentalists and congressional Democrats\u2026 he said, \u201cFor decades, we have known the days of cheap and easily accessible oil were numbered.\u00a0 For decades, we\u2019ve talked and talked about the need to end America\u2019s century-long addiction to fossil fuels.\u00a0 And for decades, we have failed to act with the sense of urgency that this challenge requires.\u00a0 Time and again, the path forward has been blocked \u2013 not only by oil industry lobbyists, but also by a lack of political courage and candor.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cLast year, the House of Representatives acted on these principles by passing a strong and comprehensive energy and climate bill \u2013 a bill that finally makes clean energy the profitable kind of energy for America\u2019s businesses.\u201d\u00a0 He concluded by saying, \u201cEven if we\u2019re unsure exactly what (our energy future) looks like\u2026 even if we don\u2019t yet know precisely how we\u2019re going to get there\u2026 we know we\u2019ll get there.\u201d<\/p>\n

Obama\u2019s climate bill (cap and trade) makes clean energy \u201cprofitable?\u201d\u00a0 For whom, and at what cost to the consumer?\u00a0 Obama\u2019s cap and trade bill is the worst possible prescription for jobs and the health of the economy.\u00a0 Listening to Obama\u2019s pronouncements on \u201cclean energy,\u201d one visualizes a large box labeled \u201cClean Energy\u201d being delivered to the White House.\u00a0 Inside the box is a message saying, \u201cMr. Obama.\u00a0 Enclosed herewith is a supply of clean energy to help you heat and cool the White House.\u00a0 If you decide to take another trip on Air Force One, just let us know and we\u2019ll send a larger box.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

The box, of course, would be filled with\u2026 absolutely nothing.\u00a0 Perhaps one day our Republican friends in Congress will find the courage to ask Democrats how windmills and solar panels are going to help us propel our cars, trucks, buses, trains, and planes across this vast country.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Times<\/em> op-ed continued, \u201cThis the same Barack Obama, after all, who shepherded universal health care, the dream of liberals since the days of Harry Truman, through several near-death experiences and finally into law. \u00a0It\u2019s the same Obama who staked the fate of the American economy on a $787 billion exercise in Keynesian pump-priming. \u00a0It\u2019s the same Obama who has done more to advance liberal priorities than any president since Lyndon Johnson. \u00a0Yet many on the left are talking as if he\u2019s no better for liberalism than Bill Clinton circa 1996 \u2013 another compromiser<\/a>, another triangulator, and another disappointment\u2026<\/p>\n

\u201cBut it\u2019s here, with the looming fiscal crisis, that the more legitimate liberal fear comes in. Liberals had hoped that Obama\u2019s election marked the beginning of a long progressive era \u2013 a new New Deal, a greater Great Society. \u00a0Instead, from the West Coast to Western Europe, the welfare state is in crisis everywhere they look. The future suddenly seems to belong to austerity and retrenchment \u2013 even, perhaps, to conservatism.\u00a0 In this environment, the rage against Obama for not doing more, now, faster, becomes at least somewhat understandable. \u00a0It\u2019s not that he hasn\u2019t done a great deal for liberals\u2026 It\u2019s that liberalism itself may be running out of time.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

The second article is a most biting appraisal of Obama from Canadian poet and essayist David Solway.\u00a0 In an article for FrontPage Magazine<\/em>, Solway had this to say of Obama:\u00a0 \u201cIn thinking of Barack Obama\u2019s presidency, I can\u2019t help recalling the Comte de Lautr\u00e9amont<\/a>\u2019s definition of Surrealism as the quintessence of the Absurd: \u2018the encounter of an umbrella and a sewing-machine on a dissection table.\u2019 \u00a0For this is certainly the most surreal presidency since Jimmy Carter\u2019s, or even Andrew Jackson\u2019s \u2013 or more likely, the most implausible and Absurd administration in the entirety of American history.<\/p>\n

\u201cLet us see how Lautr\u00e9amont applies. \u00a0It is raining debt and joblessness on the United States, but Obama and his crew are protected by an umbrella so vast it resembles Muammar Gaddafi\u2019s tent. \u00a0Obama enjoys the top job in the country and avails himself lavishly of all its perks, posting as well an annual income in the millions of dollars<\/a>, over five million<\/a> in 2009 alone\u2026\u00a0 Home foreclosures and job terminations are not an issue for people who are good at theoretical empathy and not much else\u2026 apart from making the situation even worse than it already is. \u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cAs for the sewing-machine, it is busy at work stitching a fabric of lies and subterfuges, from global warming to Green energy, to cap-and-trade, to socialized medicine. \u00a0And on the dissection table an entire nation is being cut to shreds to the jubilant disbelief of America\u2019s dedicated enemies. \u00a0The borders are porous, military spending is being reduced, terrorists are Mirandized, geopolitical adversaries are regarded as aggrieved friends-in-waiting and real friends are given the cold shoulder. \u00a0On the domestic front, genuine popular movements (Tea Party activists) seeking beneficial change are slandered as an army of thugs and seditionists\u2026 \u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat many have failed to recognize until recently is that Obama is no wonder-worker, no farsighted statesman, no honest broker, no competent chief executive, no bipartisan healer \u2013 and in point of fact, he is simply not presidential material at all<\/em>. \u00a0Obama has absolutely no idea of how to go about running a country. \u00a0But it would be a mistake to assume that he is nothing more than an untalented bungler, for he is blessed with thespian aptitudes that none of his predecessors could have mustered. \u00a0Obama is a man with a r\u00e9sum\u00e9 so thin it would look sideways head-on, but he is unexcelled as a performer.<\/p>\n

\u201cObama is essentially an actor in a kind of Brechtian drama promoting a neo-Marxist ideology, say, The Caucasian Chalk Circle<\/em>, mixed with robust elements of Beckett\u2019s Waiting for Godot<\/em>. As with Brecht, Obama believes in the redistribution of income as the central program of the welfare state\u2026 \u00a0At the same time, there is a sense in which Obama resembles Beckett\u2019s elusive Godot who is eagerly awaited but never actually arrives. \u00a0He intends to show up later in the day, tomorrow, the day after tomorrow, but the promise is never realized\u2026 Obama also mirrors the character Estragon whose trousers fall to his ankles without him noticing it, a fitting end to the play in which the character\u2019s naked ineffectualness and perpetual dithering is finally exposed.<\/p>\n

\u201cAmerica is now living under the simulated presidency of an impressive actor for whom all the world\u2019s a stage and all the people in it merely suckers. \u00a0Displaying the quirkiness and ostentation of the inveterate ham, he soliloquizes in Cairo, postures in Copenhagen, preens in Oslo, orates in Washington, warbles \u201cHey Jude<\/em>\u201d<\/a> with a merry sing-along gang in the White House\u2026 awarding Paul McCartney the Library of Congress Gershwin Award for Popular Song \u2018on behalf of a grateful nation,\u2019 while the real, neglected nation groans\u2026 looks fetchingly troubled when examining oil slick on the Gulf coast, relishes photo-ops, and relies on a teleprompter the way actors depend on the souffleur<\/em> (prompter) beneath the planks.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs president, he manifests on the one hand the futility and ineptitude of Jimmy Carter taken to the nth<\/em> degree, in particular with regard to the Iranian threat, and on the other the idiosyncratic behavior of Andrew Jackson\u2014though it must be acknowledged, without Jackson\u2019s native gumption and profoundly held convictions.<\/p>\n

\u201cIndeed, Obama is a weird bird. \u00a0To be fair, he does bring a parcel of convictions with him, albeit of a distinctly socialist stamp, which he seems determined to impose on a once-largely unsuspecting public\u2026 It is as if he needs to have something controversial, something startling to say in order to convince himself, as well as others, that he exists, and requires a platform on which to exercise his repertoire of roles. \u00a0An utter prima donna, he is so consumed with his own histrionic self, and his ability to adopt whatever pose the situation demands, that he seems nothing so much as an absence made concrete, a flamboyant nullity inadequate to the problems he confronts, adept only at speeches, monologues, and striking gestures. \u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2026 the time inevitably comes when he begins to look inauthentic and faintly ridiculous, and ultimately as\u2026 as a character in an Absurdist play who faces alarmingly incomprehensible predicaments before which he remains helpless and unbuttoned. \u00a0Such, of course, is the nature of the genre, as it is of this presidency\u2026 Obama\u2019s tenure in the White House will be remembered as a national aberration, a piece of avant-garde theatre and a surreal installment in the far more serious drama of unforgiving realpolitik<\/em>. \u00a0Meanwhile, the umbrella is open wide, the sewing machine keeps humming away and a country is laid out flat on the dissection table.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

November 2, 2010, Obama\u2019s day of reckoning, has finally arrived\u2026 and not a moment too soon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Two articles languishing in my \u201cto be read later\u201d folder make a strong case for what appears to be the \u201cbeginning of the end\u201d for the Obama Administration.\u00a0 In a New York Times op-ed column titled, \u201cThe Agony of the … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.orderofephors.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/955"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.orderofephors.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.orderofephors.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.orderofephors.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.orderofephors.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=955"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.orderofephors.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/955\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":956,"href":"https:\/\/www.orderofephors.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/955\/revisions\/956"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.orderofephors.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=955"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.orderofephors.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=955"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.orderofephors.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=955"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}