New Republican meme

Barack Obama: as bad or worse than Bill Clinton.

All the great presidents of the media age, FDR, JFK and Reagan, were great actors of the presidency. (The one non-great president who was their equal in this, Bill Clinton, proved that acting is not enough.)

We're somehow supposed to know exactly what that means. It's now assumed that the 90s were some of the worst years for America I suppose, flanked on either side by the enormously successful Reagan years of the 80s and the enormously successful turn-of-the-centruy Bush years. W just doesn't come across as well on camera, you know. Not as well as Barack Obama does. Speaking of Obama:

What does he believe? What does he stand for? This is, after all, the central question. When it is pointed out that he has had almost--almost--two years in the U.S. Senate, and before that was an obscure state legislator in Illinois, his supporters compare him to Lincoln. But Lincoln had become a national voice on the great issue of the day, slavery. He rose with a reason. Sen. Obama's rise is not about a stand or an issue or a question; it is about Sen. Obama. People project their hopes on him, he says.

He's exactly right. Just so we all know it's projection.

He doesn't have an issue, he has a thousand issues, which is the same as having none, in the sense that a speech about everything is a speech about nothing. And on those issues he seems not so much to be guided by philosophy as by impulses, sentiments. From "The Audacity of Hope," his latest book: "[O]ur democracy might work a bit better if we recognized that all of us possess values that are worthy of respect." "I value good manners." When not attempting to elevate the bromidic to the profound, he lapses into the language of political consultants--"our message," "wedge issues," "moral language." Ronald Reagan had "a durable narrative." Parts of the book, the best parts, are warm, anecdotal, human. But much of it pretends to a seriousness that is not borne out. When speaking of the political past he presents false balance and faux fairness. (Reagan, again, despite his "John Wayne, Father Knows Best pose, his policy by anecdote and his gratuitous assaults on the poor" had an "appeal" Sen. Obama "understood." Ronnie would be so pleased.)

Obama's a poser. Because he wrote a book describing the American psyche and politics in broad terms and mentioned Reagan. Democrats just don't know how to speak of the hallowed one. They just don't get it. They just know how to, you know, be liberal.

Sen. Obama spent his short lifetime breathing in the common liberal/leftist wisdom, which he exhales at length. This is not something new--it's something old in a new package. And it is something that wins you what he has, a series of 100% ratings from left-liberal interest groups. ...

But again, what does he believe? From reading his book, I would say he believes in his destiny. He believes in his charisma. He has the confidence of the anointed. He has faith in the magic of the man who meets his moment.

Uh oh. I think we all know what's about to mentioned next...

It seems to me that our political history has been marked the past 10 years by lurches, reactions and swerves, and I wonder if historians will see the era that started in the mid-'90s as The Long Freakout. First the Clinton era left more than half the country appalled--deeply appalled, and ashamed--by its series of political, financial and personal scandals.

It's all the Clenis' fault. The blowjob started a cataclysmic series of events to where Bush had no choice but to squander the budget surplus, alienate allies and launch us into the Iraq quagmire. If you choose Obama, you'll only make it worse.