ANOTHER BREATH OF HOT AIR
or, barry blows it
again.
It's been a busy couple of days at TWM Headquarters
-- including one pretty cool development I'll be officially announcing in a few
days -- so I haven't been able to get to a couple of posts that have been
lighting a fire in my brain, if not yet in my keyboard. Here, finally, is one
of them, a few days late but still blowing in the wind of Barry's hot air...
Late last week, not long after his campaign engaged in a press-release pissing match with the campaign of Senator Hillary "Is That a Dollar I See Before Me?" Clinton, Senator Barack "Breath of Fresh Air" Obama took to the stump and declared that, because our country lacks leadership and consensus, we should not continue to engage in small and divisive politics and tit-for-tat. This seems to me a bit like locking the barn door after your attack horses have escaped. Or, to return to my earlier metaphor, a bit like lowering the toilet seat after you've emptied your rhetorical bladder. But maybe that's just being too cynical. Maybe the good senator's people fired off that press release without his knowledge or approval -- which would, of course, be a whole nother problem -- and he just wanted to step up and make a statement of principle. Maybe he and his people had a change of heart, and they wanted to chart a new and noble course for their campaign.
Or maybe not.
Because the very next day, at an outdoor rally in Austin, Obama stood small at the podium and divisively, derisively titted for Dick Cheney's tat: Now, keep in mind, this is the same guy that said we’d be greeted as liberators, the same guy that said that we’re in the last throes. I’m sure he forecast sun today. When Dick Cheney says it’s a good thing, you know that you’ve probably got some big problems. It's hard to argue with that. And Lord knows I'm not opposed to holding Dick Cheney's smug little tongue to the fires of military and political reality. But it does seem to me a bit untoward, and at least a little ill-timed, to one day declare your opposition to political pissing matches and the next day rain a golden shower upon the vice president's head because you know it'll draw a big cheer from the crowd. That seems to me an awful lot like saying one thing and doing another. Like promising one thing and delivering another. Like selling out a political principle to score a political point.
In other words, it sounds an awful lot like politics as usual, not the oh-so-solemn and precious different kind of politics he and his supporters are always promising us.
But then I would expect little more from a man who's spent the last month and a half crisscrossing the country, raising money and taking rhetorical pot-shots at his opponents, after launching his campaign with a lamentation that politics has become so bitter and partisan, so gummed up by money and influence, that we can’t tackle the big problems that demand solutions. Perhaps he was right. Perhaps it doesn't take long at all before even the more fresh and idealistic of campaigns gets all gummed up with the quest for money and influence. After all, his candidacy has been official for less than a month, and he's already sucking up donations and spitting out derisions like an old pro pol.
When he announced his steadfast opposition to tit-for-tat politics, Senator Obama was speaking at a function to which admission required at least a $100 campaign contribution. (The Associated Press reports that staffers accepted lower amounts at the door, no doubt when they remembered that big crowds are better than small crowds and that some money is better than no money.) The next day, when his opposition to Dick Cheney overcame his opposition to divisive politics, Senator Obama was speaking at a rally to which tickets were distributed for free, but at which, after several thousand people arrived, he urged all the attendees to donate money before they left. Asking the crowd for at least $5 or $10 per person, he told them, I don’t want to have to raise money in Hollywood all the time.
He was, of course, almost certainly joking. But you'll forgive me if, irony and lack of self-awareness aside, I did not find it particularly funny. And all the less so when you remember that last week's unfortunate series of rhetorical and political events began when he was in Hollywood, raising huge amounts of the kind of money that he last month claimed was gumming up the democracy. And when you consider how the irony, the lack of self-awareness, and the hippo stomp of hypocrisy grew more strident as the week wore on and he went on from one fundraiser to another to another.
It is possible, I suppose, that Senator Obama, like Elliot Ness in The Untouchables, has simply forsworn himself, broken every principle he swore to uphold and become what he beheld, but is still confident that he has done right. Perhaps this is, if such things are possible, just a temporary repudiation of principle, a simple compromise of convenience, some unsavory means to a necessary end. Perhaps he will simply hold his nose and wade into the gum and the muck and the mire and then, when elected, come out the other side and stand firm in his noble beliefs once again.
Or perhaps not.
But either way -- after a campaign like that, or even after a week like this, once he has shown that he will keep his word and stand his ground and steel his resolve only as long as he does not stand to gain by ceding them, it would be difficult to imagine ever believing him again. And even more difficult, then as now, to see that, in the bitter, divisive, tit-for-tat realm of gummed-up American politics, the only thing even remotely fresh about him is the color of the skin on both of his faces.
Late last week, not long after his campaign engaged in a press-release pissing match with the campaign of Senator Hillary "Is That a Dollar I See Before Me?" Clinton, Senator Barack "Breath of Fresh Air" Obama took to the stump and declared that, because our country lacks leadership and consensus, we should not continue to engage in small and divisive politics and tit-for-tat. This seems to me a bit like locking the barn door after your attack horses have escaped. Or, to return to my earlier metaphor, a bit like lowering the toilet seat after you've emptied your rhetorical bladder. But maybe that's just being too cynical. Maybe the good senator's people fired off that press release without his knowledge or approval -- which would, of course, be a whole nother problem -- and he just wanted to step up and make a statement of principle. Maybe he and his people had a change of heart, and they wanted to chart a new and noble course for their campaign.
Or maybe not.
Because the very next day, at an outdoor rally in Austin, Obama stood small at the podium and divisively, derisively titted for Dick Cheney's tat: Now, keep in mind, this is the same guy that said we’d be greeted as liberators, the same guy that said that we’re in the last throes. I’m sure he forecast sun today. When Dick Cheney says it’s a good thing, you know that you’ve probably got some big problems. It's hard to argue with that. And Lord knows I'm not opposed to holding Dick Cheney's smug little tongue to the fires of military and political reality. But it does seem to me a bit untoward, and at least a little ill-timed, to one day declare your opposition to political pissing matches and the next day rain a golden shower upon the vice president's head because you know it'll draw a big cheer from the crowd. That seems to me an awful lot like saying one thing and doing another. Like promising one thing and delivering another. Like selling out a political principle to score a political point.
In other words, it sounds an awful lot like politics as usual, not the oh-so-solemn and precious different kind of politics he and his supporters are always promising us.
But then I would expect little more from a man who's spent the last month and a half crisscrossing the country, raising money and taking rhetorical pot-shots at his opponents, after launching his campaign with a lamentation that politics has become so bitter and partisan, so gummed up by money and influence, that we can’t tackle the big problems that demand solutions. Perhaps he was right. Perhaps it doesn't take long at all before even the more fresh and idealistic of campaigns gets all gummed up with the quest for money and influence. After all, his candidacy has been official for less than a month, and he's already sucking up donations and spitting out derisions like an old pro pol.
When he announced his steadfast opposition to tit-for-tat politics, Senator Obama was speaking at a function to which admission required at least a $100 campaign contribution. (The Associated Press reports that staffers accepted lower amounts at the door, no doubt when they remembered that big crowds are better than small crowds and that some money is better than no money.) The next day, when his opposition to Dick Cheney overcame his opposition to divisive politics, Senator Obama was speaking at a rally to which tickets were distributed for free, but at which, after several thousand people arrived, he urged all the attendees to donate money before they left. Asking the crowd for at least $5 or $10 per person, he told them, I don’t want to have to raise money in Hollywood all the time.
He was, of course, almost certainly joking. But you'll forgive me if, irony and lack of self-awareness aside, I did not find it particularly funny. And all the less so when you remember that last week's unfortunate series of rhetorical and political events began when he was in Hollywood, raising huge amounts of the kind of money that he last month claimed was gumming up the democracy. And when you consider how the irony, the lack of self-awareness, and the hippo stomp of hypocrisy grew more strident as the week wore on and he went on from one fundraiser to another to another.
It is possible, I suppose, that Senator Obama, like Elliot Ness in The Untouchables, has simply forsworn himself, broken every principle he swore to uphold and become what he beheld, but is still confident that he has done right. Perhaps this is, if such things are possible, just a temporary repudiation of principle, a simple compromise of convenience, some unsavory means to a necessary end. Perhaps he will simply hold his nose and wade into the gum and the muck and the mire and then, when elected, come out the other side and stand firm in his noble beliefs once again.
Or perhaps not.
But either way -- after a campaign like that, or even after a week like this, once he has shown that he will keep his word and stand his ground and steel his resolve only as long as he does not stand to gain by ceding them, it would be difficult to imagine ever believing him again. And even more difficult, then as now, to see that, in the bitter, divisive, tit-for-tat realm of gummed-up American politics, the only thing even remotely fresh about him is the color of the skin on both of his faces.
Posted: Thu - March 1, 2007 at 04:01 PM
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Published On: Nov 30, 2007 03:57 PM
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Published On: Nov 30, 2007 03:57 PM