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Politics : Liberalism: Do You Agree We've Had Enough of It? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: MJ who wrote (29386)	5/30/2008 6:18:38 PM
From: Ann Corrigan	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 224729

The Fraying Wundercandidate--Whom the gods would destroy, they first make Barack Obama. Interestingly, linking the original quote to "hubris" may just be an artifact of our modern culture. By Moe Lane Posted in May, 2008 I will hide nothing from you: I am a geek. Yes, many of you are shocked, given that I hide it so well - but no, I have the obligatory shelves of science fiction and fantasy novels, steampunk comic books, and roleplaying game supplements. I construct alternate history maps for fun. I dress up in medieval clothing on weekends and go watch people in armor hit each other with wooden sticks. My other major online hobby is writing amateur gaming material for a system that involves angels vs. demons, usually with gratuitous automatic weapons fire involved*. In short, I am what this man good-naturedly lampooned (and self-lampooned). I'm mentioning all of this because otherwise you might not get why I found this particular Washington Times piece so funny: I perceived a more serious problem mounting for the candidate. There was a fundamental weirdness in these episodes that reminded me of a condition President Jimmy Carter found himself in not long into his presidency. He was suffering some sort of diabolical infestation. Supernatural pranksters had made their way from heaven or hell to trip him up. What was happening to Jimmy when he claimed to be attacked by a huge amphibious bunny rabbit or during numerous jogging mishaps was not normal. Now the paranormal has settled upon the Obama campaign. [snip of several paragraphs' worth of Obama oopsies] Now people who know Mr. Obama have been telling me for months that he is a very likable fellow and very clever. The problem he has, they say, is that things come easily to him. So easily that often times he simply wings it, expecting his facile mind to get him through. That makes sense. The tendency to wing it is encouraged all the more by Mr. Obama's insufferable arrogance. Yet I fear his problems are more complicated. He is in the mess Mr. Carter has been in ever since the 39th president's ill-starred administration. Mr. Obama's campaign is haunted by supernatural mischief-makers. The fates are against him. Ghosts and goblins want to have fun at his expense. They're not the only ones, of course. Read on. John Fund of the Wall Street Journal writes in the same vein, albeit with less allegations of overt supernatural intervention: For months, Barack Obama has had the image of an incandescent, golden-tongued Wundercandidate. That image may be fraying now. As smart and credentialed as he is, Sen. Obama is often an indifferent speaker without a teleprompter. He has large gaps in his knowledge base, and is just as likely to dig in and embrace a policy misstatement as abandon it. ABC reporter Jake Tapper calls him "a one-man gaffe machine." [snip of what Fund calls "the Auschwitz flub"] That hardly disqualifies Mr. Obama from being president. But you can bet that if Hillary Clinton had done the same thing it would have been the focus of much more attention, especially after her Bosnia sniper-fire fib. That's because gaffes are often blown up or downplayed based on whether or not they further a story line the media has attached to a politician. While funny (and the RNC is keeping track of Obama's other mistakes this week, by the way), all of this is also relevant because it reveals a somewhat significant (and potentially disastrous) problem faced by the Obama campaign: excessive cockiness. Note that I didn't limit that to Senator Obama himself. His staff is just as susceptible to the condition. To be fair, they've had a good run so far. Their manipulation of the Democratic primary was impressive, from a power-gamer's perspective: the combination of Red State caucus manipulation, clever encouragement of progressive liberal white guilt, and full-court co-opting of the African-American voting bloc has put them in a position where they are the current front-runner, even though the only first-rank Blue State that Obama has actually won so far has been his home state of Illinois. Entire article at redstate.com