This columnist says that even after almost 2 years, we still don't know Barack Obama. Do you agree?
Pragmatism is fine -- as long as it is complicated by regret. But that indispensable wince is precisely what Obama doesn't show. It is not essential that he get angry or cry. It is essential, though, that he show us who he is. As of now, we haven't a clue.
washingtonpost.com
President Obama's enigmatic intellectualism
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Accountable
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President Obama's enigmatic intellectualism
Thats a good point and one I hadn't thought about. No we don't know Obama on a personal level. I wonder which Presidents we actually have really known.
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Accountable
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President Obama's enigmatic intellectualism
YZGI;1317906 wrote: Thats a good point and one I hadn't thought about. No we don't know Obama on a personal level. I wonder which Presidents we actually have really known.
I think we watched GW grow up in office. He was forced to decide what he was going to stand for, then act on his convictions.
Clinton wasn't so much a leader as a facilitator. He figured out where the country wanted to go and tried to clear the way. He was a pleaser to a fault, but it did help him to stay out of the dot-com juggernaut's way and let the economy improve.
GHW was a bit enigmatic at first, but in retrospect he firmly believed in a true balance of powers. That's why we likely won't remember him and why I believe he was the best president of my lifetime.
I truly believe we knew Ronald Reagan. I think he was genuine from the word go.
Anyone before him was lost in my fog of self-indulgence, since I was just a kid.
I think we watched GW grow up in office. He was forced to decide what he was going to stand for, then act on his convictions.
Clinton wasn't so much a leader as a facilitator. He figured out where the country wanted to go and tried to clear the way. He was a pleaser to a fault, but it did help him to stay out of the dot-com juggernaut's way and let the economy improve.
GHW was a bit enigmatic at first, but in retrospect he firmly believed in a true balance of powers. That's why we likely won't remember him and why I believe he was the best president of my lifetime.
I truly believe we knew Ronald Reagan. I think he was genuine from the word go.
Anyone before him was lost in my fog of self-indulgence, since I was just a kid.
President Obama's enigmatic intellectualism
Accountable;1317924 wrote: I think we watched GW grow up in office. He was forced to decide what he was going to stand for, then act on his convictions.
Clinton wasn't so much a leader as a facilitator. He figured out where the country wanted to go and tried to clear the way. He was a pleaser to a fault, but it did help him to stay out of the dot-com juggernaut's way and let the economy improve.
GHW was a bit enigmatic at first, but in retrospect he firmly believed in a true balance of powers. That's why we likely won't remember him and why I believe he was the best president of my lifetime.
I truly believe we knew Ronald Reagan. I think he was genuine from the word go.
Anyone before him was lost in my fog of self-indulgence, since I was just a kid.
I think GW was manipulated more than we care to know.
I agree with Clinton. He loved the idea of being President and all the amenities that went with it. You want this? Here you go. Now what do you guys want?
GHW you may well be right. Once he got into office he did what he thought was right irregardless of popular opinion. ie. "No new taxes". It probably cost him a second term.
I also thought Reagan was genuine until after he left office and we found out he was asking psychics for advice.
Clinton wasn't so much a leader as a facilitator. He figured out where the country wanted to go and tried to clear the way. He was a pleaser to a fault, but it did help him to stay out of the dot-com juggernaut's way and let the economy improve.
GHW was a bit enigmatic at first, but in retrospect he firmly believed in a true balance of powers. That's why we likely won't remember him and why I believe he was the best president of my lifetime.
I truly believe we knew Ronald Reagan. I think he was genuine from the word go.
Anyone before him was lost in my fog of self-indulgence, since I was just a kid.
I think GW was manipulated more than we care to know.
I agree with Clinton. He loved the idea of being President and all the amenities that went with it. You want this? Here you go. Now what do you guys want?
GHW you may well be right. Once he got into office he did what he thought was right irregardless of popular opinion. ie. "No new taxes". It probably cost him a second term.
I also thought Reagan was genuine until after he left office and we found out he was asking psychics for advice.
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chonsigirl
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President Obama's enigmatic intellectualism
I thinnk his wife did that, YZGI.
We knew Reagan well, but then, since he was governor for 8 years we knew him before he took that office.
Carter-we knew him and his wife well too.
Ford-not as well, but then, he was the fall guy in the whole Nixon debacle.
Nixon-we never knew him really, until afterwards.
Johnson-yup, we knew him, and his family well too. I was early teens, and I still knew about them.
We knew Reagan well, but then, since he was governor for 8 years we knew him before he took that office.
Carter-we knew him and his wife well too.
Ford-not as well, but then, he was the fall guy in the whole Nixon debacle.
Nixon-we never knew him really, until afterwards.
Johnson-yup, we knew him, and his family well too. I was early teens, and I still knew about them.
President Obama's enigmatic intellectualism
By Alan Caruba
I have this theory about Barack Obama. I think he’s led a kind of make-believe life in which money was provided and doors were opened because at some point early on somebody or some group took a look at this tall, good looking, half-white, half-black, young man with an exotic African/Muslim name and concluded he could be guided toward a life in politics where his facile speaking skills could even put him in the White House.
In a very real way, he has been a young man in a very big hurry. Who else do you know has written two memoirs before the age of 45? “Dreams of My Father was published in 1995 when he was only 34 years old. The “Audacity of Hope followed in 2006. If, indeed, he did write them himself. There are some who think that his mentor and friend, Bill Ayers, a man who calls himself a “communist with a small ‘c’ was the real author.
His political skills consisted of rarely voting on anything that might be deemed controversial. He went from a legislator in the Illinois legislature to the Senator from that state because he had the good fortune of having Mayor Daley’s formidable political machine at his disposal.
He was in the U.S. Senate so briefly that his bid for the presidency was either an act of astonishing self-confidence or part of some greater game plan that had been determined before he first stepped foot in the Capital. How, many must wonder, was he selected to be a 2004 keynote speaker at the Democrat convention that nominated John Kerry when virtually no one had ever even heard of him before?
He outmaneuvered Hillary Clinton in primaries. He took Iowa by storm. A charming young man, an anomaly in the state with a very small black population, he oozed “cool in a place where agriculture was the antithesis of cool. He dazzled the locals. And he had an army of volunteers drawn to a charisma that hid any real substance.
And then he had the great good fortune of having the Republicans select one of the most inept candidates for the presidency since Bob Dole. And then John McCain did something crazy. He picked Sarah Palin, an unknown female governor from the very distant state of Alaska. It was a ticket that was reminiscent of 1984’s Walter Mondale and Geraldine Ferraro and they went down to defeat.
The mainstream political media fell in love with him. It was a schoolgirl crush with febrile commentators like Chris Mathews swooning then and now over the man. The venom directed against McCain and, in particular, Palin, was extraordinary.
Now, nearly a full year into his first term, all of those gilded years leading up to the White House have left him unprepared to be President. Left to his own instincts, he has a talent for saying the wrong thing at the wrong time. It swiftly became a joke that he could not deliver even the briefest of statements without the ever-present Tele-Prompters.
Far worse, however, is his capacity to want to “wish away some terrible realities, not the least of which is the Islamist intention to destroy America and enslave the West. Any student of history knows how swiftly Islam initially spread. It knocked on the doors of Europe, having gained a foothold in Spain.
The great crowds that greeted him at home or on his campaign “world tour were no substitute for having even the slightest grasp of history and the reality of a world filled with really bad people with really bad intentions.
Oddly and perhaps even inevitably, his political experience, a cakewalk, has positioned him to destroy the Democrat Party’s hold on power in Congress because in the end it was never about the Party. It was always about his communist ideology, learned at an early age from family, mentors, college professors, and extreme leftist friends and colleagues.
Obama is a man who could deliver a snap judgment about a Boston police officer who arrested an “obstreperous Harvard professor-friend, but would warn Americans against “jumping to conclusions about a mass murderer at Fort Hood who shouted “Allahu Akbar. The absurdity of that was lost on no one. He has since compounded this by calling the Christmas bomber “an isolated extremist only to have to admit a day or two later that he was part of an al Qaeda plot.
He is a man who could strive to close down our detention facility at Guantanamo even though those released were known to have returned to the battlefield against America. He could even instruct his Attorney General to afford the perpetrator of 9/11 a civil trial when no one else would ever even consider such an obscenity. And he is a man who could wait three days before having anything to say about the perpetrator of yet another terrorist attack on Americans and then have to elaborate on his remarks the following day because his first statement was so lame.
The pattern repeats itself. He either blames any problem on the Bush administration or he naively seeks to wish away the truth.
Knock, knock. Anyone home? Anyone there? Barack Obama exists only as the sock puppet of his handlers, of the people who have maneuvered and manufactured this pathetic individual’s life.
When anyone else would quickly and easily produce a birth certificate, this man has spent over a million dollars to deny access to his. Most other documents, the paper trail we all leave in our wake, have been sequestered from review. He has lived a make-believe life whose true facts remain hidden.
We laugh at the ventriloquist’s dummy, but what do you do when the dummy is President of the United States of America?
I have this theory about Barack Obama. I think he’s led a kind of make-believe life in which money was provided and doors were opened because at some point early on somebody or some group took a look at this tall, good looking, half-white, half-black, young man with an exotic African/Muslim name and concluded he could be guided toward a life in politics where his facile speaking skills could even put him in the White House.
In a very real way, he has been a young man in a very big hurry. Who else do you know has written two memoirs before the age of 45? “Dreams of My Father was published in 1995 when he was only 34 years old. The “Audacity of Hope followed in 2006. If, indeed, he did write them himself. There are some who think that his mentor and friend, Bill Ayers, a man who calls himself a “communist with a small ‘c’ was the real author.
His political skills consisted of rarely voting on anything that might be deemed controversial. He went from a legislator in the Illinois legislature to the Senator from that state because he had the good fortune of having Mayor Daley’s formidable political machine at his disposal.
He was in the U.S. Senate so briefly that his bid for the presidency was either an act of astonishing self-confidence or part of some greater game plan that had been determined before he first stepped foot in the Capital. How, many must wonder, was he selected to be a 2004 keynote speaker at the Democrat convention that nominated John Kerry when virtually no one had ever even heard of him before?
He outmaneuvered Hillary Clinton in primaries. He took Iowa by storm. A charming young man, an anomaly in the state with a very small black population, he oozed “cool in a place where agriculture was the antithesis of cool. He dazzled the locals. And he had an army of volunteers drawn to a charisma that hid any real substance.
And then he had the great good fortune of having the Republicans select one of the most inept candidates for the presidency since Bob Dole. And then John McCain did something crazy. He picked Sarah Palin, an unknown female governor from the very distant state of Alaska. It was a ticket that was reminiscent of 1984’s Walter Mondale and Geraldine Ferraro and they went down to defeat.
The mainstream political media fell in love with him. It was a schoolgirl crush with febrile commentators like Chris Mathews swooning then and now over the man. The venom directed against McCain and, in particular, Palin, was extraordinary.
Now, nearly a full year into his first term, all of those gilded years leading up to the White House have left him unprepared to be President. Left to his own instincts, he has a talent for saying the wrong thing at the wrong time. It swiftly became a joke that he could not deliver even the briefest of statements without the ever-present Tele-Prompters.
Far worse, however, is his capacity to want to “wish away some terrible realities, not the least of which is the Islamist intention to destroy America and enslave the West. Any student of history knows how swiftly Islam initially spread. It knocked on the doors of Europe, having gained a foothold in Spain.
The great crowds that greeted him at home or on his campaign “world tour were no substitute for having even the slightest grasp of history and the reality of a world filled with really bad people with really bad intentions.
Oddly and perhaps even inevitably, his political experience, a cakewalk, has positioned him to destroy the Democrat Party’s hold on power in Congress because in the end it was never about the Party. It was always about his communist ideology, learned at an early age from family, mentors, college professors, and extreme leftist friends and colleagues.
Obama is a man who could deliver a snap judgment about a Boston police officer who arrested an “obstreperous Harvard professor-friend, but would warn Americans against “jumping to conclusions about a mass murderer at Fort Hood who shouted “Allahu Akbar. The absurdity of that was lost on no one. He has since compounded this by calling the Christmas bomber “an isolated extremist only to have to admit a day or two later that he was part of an al Qaeda plot.
He is a man who could strive to close down our detention facility at Guantanamo even though those released were known to have returned to the battlefield against America. He could even instruct his Attorney General to afford the perpetrator of 9/11 a civil trial when no one else would ever even consider such an obscenity. And he is a man who could wait three days before having anything to say about the perpetrator of yet another terrorist attack on Americans and then have to elaborate on his remarks the following day because his first statement was so lame.
The pattern repeats itself. He either blames any problem on the Bush administration or he naively seeks to wish away the truth.
Knock, knock. Anyone home? Anyone there? Barack Obama exists only as the sock puppet of his handlers, of the people who have maneuvered and manufactured this pathetic individual’s life.
When anyone else would quickly and easily produce a birth certificate, this man has spent over a million dollars to deny access to his. Most other documents, the paper trail we all leave in our wake, have been sequestered from review. He has lived a make-believe life whose true facts remain hidden.
We laugh at the ventriloquist’s dummy, but what do you do when the dummy is President of the United States of America?
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Accountable
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President Obama's enigmatic intellectualism
chonsigirl;1317949 wrote: Johnson-yup, we knew him, and his family well too. I was early teens, and I still knew about them.
He's a big hero in this area. His wife Ladybird is even more beloved. She started the program in which they spray the medians and edges of the major highways in Texas with native wildflowers. Saves fuel because there's no mowing all spring, and the colors are gorgeous!
He's a big hero in this area. His wife Ladybird is even more beloved. She started the program in which they spray the medians and edges of the major highways in Texas with native wildflowers. Saves fuel because there's no mowing all spring, and the colors are gorgeous!
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along-for-the-ride
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President Obama's enigmatic intellectualism
"I truly believe we knew Ronald Reagan. I think he was genuine from the word go"
Are you sure about that? Remember he was an actor for many years.
The short article below is interesting:
http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?news ... 0215&rfi=6
No, we don't really know the man who is our President. Not at this time anyway.
Are you sure about that? Remember he was an actor for many years.
The short article below is interesting:
http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?news ... 0215&rfi=6
No, we don't really know the man who is our President. Not at this time anyway.
Life is a Highway. Let's share the Commute.
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Clodhopper
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President Obama's enigmatic intellectualism
Who is Alan Caruba? An interesting hatchet job. Short on significant fact, long on speculation and innuendo. Summed up it seems to suggest that because Obama has written two books (Caruba calls them "autobiographies". Are they really?) and has friends who aren't Republicans, he is a communist liberal. Which as we all know is worse than being a paedophile murderer as well as a contradiction in terms. Caruba is pressing buttons he knows will make Americans twitch. What is the substance of his accusation against Obama? That he has closed Guantanamo?
You know that they were TORTURING people at Guantanamo under the Bush administration? Why doesn't Caruba mention this?
You know that they were TORTURING people at Guantanamo under the Bush administration? Why doesn't Caruba mention this?
The crowd: "Yes! We are all individuals!"
Lone voice: "I'm not."
Lone voice: "I'm not."
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Accountable
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President Obama's enigmatic intellectualism
He hasn't closed Guantanamo.
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Clodhopper
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President Obama's enigmatic intellectualism
Thanks for the correction. So Caruba is getting all hot under the collar because Obama attempted to close Guantanamo? Is that really the worst thing Caruba has on Obama? Wow. He really is making a mountain out of a mole hill.
The crowd: "Yes! We are all individuals!"
Lone voice: "I'm not."
Lone voice: "I'm not."
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Royd Fissure
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President Obama's enigmatic intellectualism
"Enigmatic intellectualism" or cool-headed under pressure?
The article is crap, as has been said, just another hatchet job.
The article is crap, as has been said, just another hatchet job.
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Accountable
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President Obama's enigmatic intellectualism
Royd Fissure;1318648 wrote: "Enigmatic intellectualism" or cool-headed under pressure?
The article is crap, as has been said, just another hatchet job.
Clod was referring to a different article, not the op. Where did you see hatchet marks in the op's article?
The article is crap, as has been said, just another hatchet job.
Clod was referring to a different article, not the op. Where did you see hatchet marks in the op's article?
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Royd Fissure
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President Obama's enigmatic intellectualism
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.
The opening paragraph, setting the theme of the article itself. The charge is that Obama devises and executes policy without emotion. After the previous administration's forays into foreign policy Obama has indeed a set of challenges, the mess is there for him to fix. Since he is merely playing catch-up with someone else's foreign policy which he inherited, it's probably best that he does so in an dispassionate, unemotional manner. The plumber who comes in to fix the toilet doesn't get emotional about what you've done to it, he or she just fixes it
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.
And what does the writer expect? China is a totalitarian state, completely consumed by the Communist Party. Yes it does have a shocking human rights record but it's not beyond pointing out the failings of other countries in that area and that includes the United States. Given the economic power and importance of China in the world today, it's small wonder that Obama – like other world leaders – can choose to ignore what is happening in China in terms of human rights. As for Russia's repression, what does the writer propose Obama should do about it – chat to Putin? If the Russians don't like it then they boot out the president and PM. The Israelis and their enemies treated with equal moral standing – the writer criticises Obama for not rushing to the mindless defence of Israel? Or could it be that the writer favours the Palestinians or Syrians and thinks Obama should be backing them against Israel? And on these comments he concludes that Obama has no principles?
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.)
Get angry? What for? The president of the US gets angry with BP? What does the writer want, Obama bitch-slapping Hayward on tv? How about fixing the mess and then making BP pay for it and pay for compensation to everyone and everything damaged by its negligence? That sort of action is best carried out with a cool head.
What these people were seeking was not an eruption of anger, not a tantrum and not a full-scale denunciation of an oil company. What they wanted instead was a sign that this catastrophe meant something to Obama, that it was not merely another problem that had crossed his desk -- and this time just wouldn't budge. He showed not the slightest sign in the idiom that really counts in a media age -- body language -- that he gave a damn. He could see your pain, he could talk about your pain, but he gave no indication that he felt it.
Yeah, he should have put on a bullshit act. Fixing the problem is preferable to faux emotion. Here's a politician who has gone to the site and looked at the problem and talked with people trying to fix the problem. He hasn't paraded around in the Rose Garden telling folks that he felt their pain while doing nothing useful.
One can understand. Obama's father deserted the family and afterward visited his son only once. He twice was separated from his mother, who lived in Indonesia without him. He was partially raised by his grandparents -- an elderly white couple. If the president is what the shrinks call "well-defended," who can blame him? It's ironic that Oprah Winfrey was maybe Obama's most significant early backer when the man himself is so un-Oprah. He cannot emote.
Remember the psychoanalysis of George W. Bush? This bloke isn't even close. The suggestion here is that Obama is a sort of sociopath who can't feel emotion. And the evidence is.....?
The consequences are unfortunate. Obama's opaqueness has enabled his enemies -- they are not mere critics -- to define him as they choose. He becomes a socialist, which he is not, or a Muslim, which he also is not. Even his allies are confused. The left thought he was a leftie. He's not. The right, too, thought he was a leftie. He is, above all, a pragmatist. This makes it a lot easier to say what he is not than what he is.
The writer has come to a conclusion that Obama is a pragmatist. Well yes, a pragmatist sums up the previous descriptions of him.
Fortune has not smiled on Obama's presidency. His one uncontested attribute -- a shimmering intellect -- has become suspect. A world of smart guys has turned against us. Everyone at Goldman Sachs is smart, but they seem to have the amorality mocked by the songwriter Tom Lehrer in his sendup of the celebrated American rocket scientist Wernher von Braun, a former Nazi (" 'Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down? That's not my department,' says Wernher von Braun").
Obama walked into a political disaster zone not of his making. He is in his first term. He is focused on fixing the disaster.
The oil industry is full of smart people, and so is the mortgage industry. Smart people seem to have brought us nothing but trouble. Smarts without values is dangerous -- threatening, scary, virtually un-American. This is why a succession of archconservative eccentrics have succeeded. Their values are obvious, often shockingly so. We know what they want, just not how they are ever going to get it. Experience has become a handicap and inexperience a virtue. Smart is out. Dumb is in.
Humans are capable of greed. Intelligent humans are capable of greed. Intelligent, greedy humans get into a system and work it so they get the most they can for themselves. Intelligent, greedy humans get into government and get the most they can for themselves. Yes and...?
Foreign policy is the realm where a president comes closest to ruling by diktat. By command decision, the war in Afghanistan has been escalated, yet it seems to lack an urgent moral component. It has an apparent end date even though girls may not yet be able to attend school and the Taliban may rule again. In some respects, I agree -- the earlier out of Afghanistan, the better -- but if we are to stay even for a while, it has to be for reasons that have to do with principle. Somewhat the same thing applies to China. It's okay to trade with China. It's okay to hate it, too.
The “war” (occupation) in Afghanistan lacks an urgent moral component? I've got to think for a moment and wonder if a moral component is needed for any sort of war. Wars are about economics more than some form of morality. The situation in Afghanistan is a problem for Obama and he is addressing it as such. If anyone knows why we're there fighting please let me know, I'd be interested to hear. If there is a moral imperative to it then I'd be pleased to be informed. And is the advice from the writer to bad-mouth China while still trading with her? Does he know who runs China?
Pragmatism is fine -- as long as it is complicated by regret. But that indispensable wince is precisely what Obama doesn't show. It is not essential that he get angry or cry. It is essential, though, that he show us who he is. As of now, we haven't a clue.
You haven't been watching Mr Cohen, he is a problem-solver, that's who he is.
Hatchet job.
The opening paragraph, setting the theme of the article itself. The charge is that Obama devises and executes policy without emotion. After the previous administration's forays into foreign policy Obama has indeed a set of challenges, the mess is there for him to fix. Since he is merely playing catch-up with someone else's foreign policy which he inherited, it's probably best that he does so in an dispassionate, unemotional manner. The plumber who comes in to fix the toilet doesn't get emotional about what you've done to it, he or she just fixes it
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.
And what does the writer expect? China is a totalitarian state, completely consumed by the Communist Party. Yes it does have a shocking human rights record but it's not beyond pointing out the failings of other countries in that area and that includes the United States. Given the economic power and importance of China in the world today, it's small wonder that Obama – like other world leaders – can choose to ignore what is happening in China in terms of human rights. As for Russia's repression, what does the writer propose Obama should do about it – chat to Putin? If the Russians don't like it then they boot out the president and PM. The Israelis and their enemies treated with equal moral standing – the writer criticises Obama for not rushing to the mindless defence of Israel? Or could it be that the writer favours the Palestinians or Syrians and thinks Obama should be backing them against Israel? And on these comments he concludes that Obama has no principles?
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.)
Get angry? What for? The president of the US gets angry with BP? What does the writer want, Obama bitch-slapping Hayward on tv? How about fixing the mess and then making BP pay for it and pay for compensation to everyone and everything damaged by its negligence? That sort of action is best carried out with a cool head.
What these people were seeking was not an eruption of anger, not a tantrum and not a full-scale denunciation of an oil company. What they wanted instead was a sign that this catastrophe meant something to Obama, that it was not merely another problem that had crossed his desk -- and this time just wouldn't budge. He showed not the slightest sign in the idiom that really counts in a media age -- body language -- that he gave a damn. He could see your pain, he could talk about your pain, but he gave no indication that he felt it.
Yeah, he should have put on a bullshit act. Fixing the problem is preferable to faux emotion. Here's a politician who has gone to the site and looked at the problem and talked with people trying to fix the problem. He hasn't paraded around in the Rose Garden telling folks that he felt their pain while doing nothing useful.
One can understand. Obama's father deserted the family and afterward visited his son only once. He twice was separated from his mother, who lived in Indonesia without him. He was partially raised by his grandparents -- an elderly white couple. If the president is what the shrinks call "well-defended," who can blame him? It's ironic that Oprah Winfrey was maybe Obama's most significant early backer when the man himself is so un-Oprah. He cannot emote.
Remember the psychoanalysis of George W. Bush? This bloke isn't even close. The suggestion here is that Obama is a sort of sociopath who can't feel emotion. And the evidence is.....?
The consequences are unfortunate. Obama's opaqueness has enabled his enemies -- they are not mere critics -- to define him as they choose. He becomes a socialist, which he is not, or a Muslim, which he also is not. Even his allies are confused. The left thought he was a leftie. He's not. The right, too, thought he was a leftie. He is, above all, a pragmatist. This makes it a lot easier to say what he is not than what he is.
The writer has come to a conclusion that Obama is a pragmatist. Well yes, a pragmatist sums up the previous descriptions of him.
Fortune has not smiled on Obama's presidency. His one uncontested attribute -- a shimmering intellect -- has become suspect. A world of smart guys has turned against us. Everyone at Goldman Sachs is smart, but they seem to have the amorality mocked by the songwriter Tom Lehrer in his sendup of the celebrated American rocket scientist Wernher von Braun, a former Nazi (" 'Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down? That's not my department,' says Wernher von Braun").
Obama walked into a political disaster zone not of his making. He is in his first term. He is focused on fixing the disaster.
The oil industry is full of smart people, and so is the mortgage industry. Smart people seem to have brought us nothing but trouble. Smarts without values is dangerous -- threatening, scary, virtually un-American. This is why a succession of archconservative eccentrics have succeeded. Their values are obvious, often shockingly so. We know what they want, just not how they are ever going to get it. Experience has become a handicap and inexperience a virtue. Smart is out. Dumb is in.
Humans are capable of greed. Intelligent humans are capable of greed. Intelligent, greedy humans get into a system and work it so they get the most they can for themselves. Intelligent, greedy humans get into government and get the most they can for themselves. Yes and...?
Foreign policy is the realm where a president comes closest to ruling by diktat. By command decision, the war in Afghanistan has been escalated, yet it seems to lack an urgent moral component. It has an apparent end date even though girls may not yet be able to attend school and the Taliban may rule again. In some respects, I agree -- the earlier out of Afghanistan, the better -- but if we are to stay even for a while, it has to be for reasons that have to do with principle. Somewhat the same thing applies to China. It's okay to trade with China. It's okay to hate it, too.
The “war” (occupation) in Afghanistan lacks an urgent moral component? I've got to think for a moment and wonder if a moral component is needed for any sort of war. Wars are about economics more than some form of morality. The situation in Afghanistan is a problem for Obama and he is addressing it as such. If anyone knows why we're there fighting please let me know, I'd be interested to hear. If there is a moral imperative to it then I'd be pleased to be informed. And is the advice from the writer to bad-mouth China while still trading with her? Does he know who runs China?
Pragmatism is fine -- as long as it is complicated by regret. But that indispensable wince is precisely what Obama doesn't show. It is not essential that he get angry or cry. It is essential, though, that he show us who he is. As of now, we haven't a clue.
You haven't been watching Mr Cohen, he is a problem-solver, that's who he is.
Hatchet job.
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Accountable
- Posts: 24818
- Joined: Mon May 30, 2005 8:33 am
President Obama's enigmatic intellectualism
Pretty dull hatchet, as hatchets go, but Richard Cohen definitely leans right.
The original question:
This columnist says that even after almost 2 years, we still don't know Barack Obama. Do you agree?
You called him a problem-solver and equated him to a plumber. You seem to think he's doing an okay job considering the hole he started in, correct? So, being a problem solver, I guess he's just hitting his stride in your eyes?
The original question:
This columnist says that even after almost 2 years, we still don't know Barack Obama. Do you agree?
You called him a problem-solver and equated him to a plumber. You seem to think he's doing an okay job considering the hole he started in, correct? So, being a problem solver, I guess he's just hitting his stride in your eyes?
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Clodhopper
- Posts: 5115
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President Obama's enigmatic intellectualism
Sorry. I seem to live in a permanent side track.
No, I don't think we know Obama. I don't think we know anyone much outside a fairly small circle.
I tend to be more concernned with practicalities when picking a leader: Do they seem reasonably bright? Have they the sort of personality needed? Are they sufficiently competent? Do I have a reasonable hope they will act in our best interests? Obama would tick a lot of boxes, as far as I can tell from here.
No, I don't think we know Obama. I don't think we know anyone much outside a fairly small circle.
I tend to be more concernned with practicalities when picking a leader: Do they seem reasonably bright? Have they the sort of personality needed? Are they sufficiently competent? Do I have a reasonable hope they will act in our best interests? Obama would tick a lot of boxes, as far as I can tell from here.
The crowd: "Yes! We are all individuals!"
Lone voice: "I'm not."
Lone voice: "I'm not."
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Accountable
- Posts: 24818
- Joined: Mon May 30, 2005 8:33 am
President Obama's enigmatic intellectualism
Clodhopper;1319037 wrote: Sorry. I seem to live in a permanent side track.
No, I don't think we know Obama. I don't think we know anyone much outside a fairly small circle.
I tend to be more concernned with practicalities when picking a leader: Do they seem reasonably bright? Have they the sort of personality needed? Are they sufficiently competent? Do I have a reasonable hope they will act in our best interests? Obama would tick a lot of boxes, as far as I can tell from here.
How important is ideology when it comes to politicians?
No, I don't think we know Obama. I don't think we know anyone much outside a fairly small circle.
I tend to be more concernned with practicalities when picking a leader: Do they seem reasonably bright? Have they the sort of personality needed? Are they sufficiently competent? Do I have a reasonable hope they will act in our best interests? Obama would tick a lot of boxes, as far as I can tell from here.
How important is ideology when it comes to politicians?
President Obama's enigmatic intellectualism
Accountable;1317896 wrote: This columnist says that even after almost 2 years, we still don't know Barack Obama. Do you agree?
washingtonpost.com
I began to answer your last question and started reading back further and further only to find myself here.
I don't think we really come to know a president until their second term.
But I don't need Obama picking sides in Russia,China or the middle east, like this guy apparently wants. He ran on bringing our kids home. That's what I will judge him on.
washingtonpost.com
I began to answer your last question and started reading back further and further only to find myself here.
I don't think we really come to know a president until their second term.
But I don't need Obama picking sides in Russia,China or the middle east, like this guy apparently wants. He ran on bringing our kids home. That's what I will judge him on.
I expressly forbid the use of any of my posts anywhere outside of FG (with the exception of the incredibly witty 'get a room already' )posted recently.
Folks who'd like to copy my intellectual work should expect to pay me for it.:-6
Folks who'd like to copy my intellectual work should expect to pay me for it.:-6
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Royd Fissure
- Posts: 152
- Joined: Wed Apr 28, 2010 7:04 am
President Obama's enigmatic intellectualism
Accountable;1319026 wrote: Pretty dull hatchet, as hatchets go, but Richard Cohen definitely leans right.
The original question:
This columnist says that even after almost 2 years, we still don't know Barack Obama. Do you agree?
You called him a problem-solver and equated him to a plumber. You seem to think he's doing an okay job considering the hole he started in, correct? So, being a problem solver, I guess he's just hitting his stride in your eyes?
I didn't equate him to a plumber, it was just an illustration of dispassionate problem-solving. I think the last administration that had plumbers was Nixon's.
Coming from outside the US I see Obama differently. But looking from here at how he's going I'd say pretty well. What passes for the Left in the US is generally disappointed with him for maintaining many of the policies of the Bush Administration, particularly in Afghanistan. The Left thinks the US - and if that happens then it means all NATO and other allied forces - can simply just walk out of Afghanistan and all will be well. I don't think so. In the first term he is going to problem-solver.
The original question:
This columnist says that even after almost 2 years, we still don't know Barack Obama. Do you agree?
You called him a problem-solver and equated him to a plumber. You seem to think he's doing an okay job considering the hole he started in, correct? So, being a problem solver, I guess he's just hitting his stride in your eyes?
I didn't equate him to a plumber, it was just an illustration of dispassionate problem-solving. I think the last administration that had plumbers was Nixon's.
Coming from outside the US I see Obama differently. But looking from here at how he's going I'd say pretty well. What passes for the Left in the US is generally disappointed with him for maintaining many of the policies of the Bush Administration, particularly in Afghanistan. The Left thinks the US - and if that happens then it means all NATO and other allied forces - can simply just walk out of Afghanistan and all will be well. I don't think so. In the first term he is going to problem-solver.
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Accountable
- Posts: 24818
- Joined: Mon May 30, 2005 8:33 am
President Obama's enigmatic intellectualism
I think he has his agenda, and it is frustrating him to death that all these other things keep popping up and interrupting his rhythm. I believe he sees Afghanistan & Iraq as unimportant in the scheme of things. He would prefer to focus on his domestic agenda of fundamentally dismantling America.
I believe he saw the BP oil leak as an opportunity to push his energy agenda and expected BP to handle things alone. When that didn't work he was caught flat-footed. Now he's angry that the crisis is taking all the oxygen out of his room, and he's probably angry that he has to act angry to shut the pesky media up. He's not the first president that hates not having control over the media.
I study people. Obama's been angry, just not demonstrative. I'll be that his daughters have never seen their parents argue. Mom rails and Dad sits silent with "that look" that tells them it's not a good time to ask for ice cream.
So yes, he's angry. He's angry at the media for going off script. He's angry at BP and even more at the oil well itself for distracting attention from him and his plan. He's angry at the American people for not eagerly, or at least passively, accepting his vision of what America ought to be.
I believe he saw the BP oil leak as an opportunity to push his energy agenda and expected BP to handle things alone. When that didn't work he was caught flat-footed. Now he's angry that the crisis is taking all the oxygen out of his room, and he's probably angry that he has to act angry to shut the pesky media up. He's not the first president that hates not having control over the media.
I study people. Obama's been angry, just not demonstrative. I'll be that his daughters have never seen their parents argue. Mom rails and Dad sits silent with "that look" that tells them it's not a good time to ask for ice cream.
So yes, he's angry. He's angry at the media for going off script. He's angry at BP and even more at the oil well itself for distracting attention from him and his plan. He's angry at the American people for not eagerly, or at least passively, accepting his vision of what America ought to be.