Pre-Habilitating POTUS
Much has been written about Obama’s rise to power. To a certain extent, the history of how an inexperienced unknown came to inhabit the Oval Office on a promise of “hope” and “change” can be told in a number of ways. To some, Obama’s inauguration was the day that they confirmed that, yes, they could. But to many more it turned out to be a day of broken promises.
One would expect that, as the one-year anniversary of Obama’s inaugural draws near, Obama’s apologists would offer apologias. However, rather than make excuses for Obama’s rocky start, they’re pre-empting having to defend Obama at all. A year of failures? What in the world are you talking about?
Take New York magazine, where John Heileman makes us aware of the following:
Obama has brought to bear great aplomb and fortitude, and his achievements have been considerable. Together with his team and Fed chairman Ben Bernanke, he has helped prevent the economy from tumbling into the abyss. He has changed the tone of America’s relationships abroad and begun the restoration of the country’s global standing.
Does Heileman have a pocket flux capacitor? Because the paragraph above neither describes the past nor the present. The economy is in the abyss. And if our country’s global standing has been restored, it’s probably been restored to where it was in 1979. Ask any of Iran’s neighbors. They know. Or better yet, ask any American soldier in Afghanistan. They used to know why they were there. Not anymore. While you’re at it, ask Poland about the new tone of our relationships abroad. Aplomb and fortitude? I presume this isn’t about the courage Obama displayed on the day the Iranian election riots started.
Heileman’s piece may revise history; but leave it to Slate’s leading fantasist Jacob Weisberg to attempt to re-weave the fabric of reality. Weisberg asked himself “How do you solve a problem like Barack?” and concluded he had to relocate Obama to Bizarro World.
Obama’s first-year failures are many, and they will probably make his second year harder than it would be otherwise; but a big factor in all of them is that he was designed, packaged, and marketed by a supine press – much like the one to which Heileman and Weisberg belong – to better sell a less than adequate candidate to a gullible electorate.
That all this political marketeerism was never rooted in reality has been evident since before Obama was elected president. But the current Obama pre-habilitation campaign is different. It’s a meta-Orwellian effort to spin positively a bunch of disappointments that never happened because everything Obama does exudes excellence. Which doesn’t explain why the spin is needed in the first place.
It’s all so damn ridiculous that it’s probably shortened the lifespan of “journalism” schools nationwide by at least several decades. And that’s probably a good thing. The world can’t wait.
