"I have to admit, I’m ambivalent watching all this. On the one hand, Obama did sell out the primary cause of his professional life (campaign-finance reform), all for a tiny political advantage. If he’ll sell that out, what won’t he sell out? On the other hand, global affairs ain’t beanbag. If we’re going to have a president who is going to go toe to toe with the likes of Vladimir Putin, maybe it is better that he should have a ruthlessly opportunist Fast Eddie Obama lurking inside.
All I know for sure is that this guy is no liberal goo-goo. Republicans keep calling him naïve. But naïve is the last word I’d use to describe Barack Obama. He’s the most effectively political creature we’ve seen in decades. Even Bill Clinton wasn’t smart enough to succeed in politics by pretending to renounce politics."
3 comments:
Frankly, this is the type of shit Hillary would have been drug through the mud for, but it will slide right off Obama. I don't disagree with what he's doing, but I hope some of the people who were blathering about "A New Kind of Politics" and "Change We Can Believe In" will start to see their own naivete in thinking that anything will ever change, ever.
There is something about Obama and even his wife that intrigues the people (duh). Ryan, you're right, he gets away with a lot; perhaps due to the amazing (possibly naive) hope and faith people have in him as they cry, "Take the wheel Obama!"
Gawker said today:
"We live in atomized and fragmented times. Like academia, the culture is over-specialized and only caters to microscopic – mostly web-based – niches. My Buddhist Scandinavian black metal band can beat up your vomit porn-themed ballet troupe. It’s impossible to congregate under a mass banner of anything anymore. Is this why Barack Obama is deified? Is he the closest thing we have to a popular icon? (Michael Chabon thinks so, and he’s the dean of Superman studies.) But there are no other imagos to make our hearts beat as one and give us a shared cultural experience. What’s the last stadium-venue concert you attended? (I'm seeing Mos Def with a Big Band this month and I can't even get worked up about it.) Who’s the Seinfeld of the humorless aughts, the Geldof of this age of waste?"
http://gawker.com/tag/big-ideas/?i=5018423&t=where-did-all-the-news-go
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