http://tinyurl.com/4tpxvc
- - -
Speaking personally, I'm not looking for a messiah in the White House. My
favorite Presidential heritage site is the Coolidge homestead in Plymouth
Notch, Vermont: I have seen the mausoleums of mighty kings, but none
compares to the row of headstones on a snowbound hillside cemetery, seven
generations of Coolidges lined up in a row, all buried under simple, bald
granite markers with only an all but imperceptible small American eagle to
distinguish the 30th president from his forebears and descendants. The
American ideal: the citizen-president.
Or so I always assumed. But let's be bipartisan here. If I were a Democrat,
I'd salute Harry S Truman, the Missouri haberdasher who - whoa,
"haberdasher!" There's a word you don't hear too much nowadays, and, if you
did, it'd probably be because the Treasury Secretary and the Chairman of the
House Financial Services Committee are on cable TV standing on the steps of
the Capitol announcing a 700 gazillion-dollar bipartisan haberdashery
bailout package because the global haberdashery sector is too big to fail
and if we don't act now there'll be a massive planetary ripple effect that
could take down ladies' lingerie, if you'll pardon the expression.
Where was I? Oh, yeah. Citizen-presidents: Who needs 'em? The day after the
debate I bumped into two Obama supporters in St Johnsbury, Vermont who said
isn't it great that he's on course to win. Well, they were cute chicks, and
I know an obvious pick-up line when I hear one, so I stopped to chat. God
Almighty, it was like reverse Viagra: After ten minutes of Babes For Barack,
I never want to meet a female woman of the opposite sex for the rest of my
life. Their basic pitch was:
How do you solve a problem? Like, Obama!
How do you hold a moonbeam in your hand?
That's John McCain's problem. Traditionally, when an unknown politician
emerges on the national scene, it's a race to define him. Governor Palin is
a good example: within days, the coastal sophisticates were mocking her as a
chillbilly ditz with a womb that spits out inbred kids faster than the First
National Bank of Welfare Swamp issues subprime mortgages. That's politics as
usual: Define your opponent. But Obama is defined by his indefinability.
When I pointed out to my Vermont gals that he lives in a swank pad that was
part of some shady real estate deal with a convicted fraudster (Tony Rezko),
that he entrusted his daughters' entire religious education to a
neo-segregationist anti-American nut who preaches that the government
created the AIDS virus to kill black people (Jeremiah Wright), that he
attended fundraisers with a political patron who's an unrepentant terrorist
proud of plotting to blow up young ladies just like them at a dance at the
Fort Dix military base (William Ayers), when I pointed all this out, they
looked at me as if I'd brought a baseball bat to a croquet match. Mere
earthbound politicians are defined by their real estate deals and sleazy
buddies, but Obama is defined only by his vibe. As his many admirers in
France would say, he has a certain je ne sais quoi. And, if you try to pin
down quoi precisely, then they don't want to sais.
Besides, said one of the cuties, it's racist to try to link him to unsavory
white men (Ayers). And black men (Wright). And Arabs (Rezko). And, just to
be on the safe side, any dodgy Uzbeks or Papuans who might have been lurking
around the greater Chicago area for the last quarter century. The ladies
weren't exactly covering their eyes and going, "Neee-neeee-na-na, can't hear
you," but the other cutie did begin waving at me her Obama sticker - the one
with the giant blue-frosted O embedded in a manicured candy-striped upland -
like the villain in the movie trying to hypnotize you with his pocketwatch.
I began frantically looking around in hopes that a passing Hare Krishna or
Scientologist type could get me out of there. But, no: Gaze into the giant
zero of the Obama logo, the hole in the star-spangled donut, the vast
fathomless nullity that is the gaping keyhole to the door of utopia. To a
sad shriveled Republican cynic, there's nothing there but the wide open
spaces of Obama's blank resume. But a believer will see therein the healing
of the planet and the receding of the oceans. The black hole of Obama will
suck you in through the awesome power of its totally cool suckiness.
Most Americans, of course, are not cute co-eds or Hollywood celebrities or
guilt-ridden white liberals. But they react to Obamania like Spencer Tracy
and Katherine Hepburn faced with Sidney Poitier in Guess Who's Coming To The
Inaugural? We don't know much about this chap but he seems very well-spoken
and nicely turned out - "articulate and bright and clean," as Joe Biden
said. Obama himself has eased up on the "I am the one you've been waiting
for" shtick because he's running out the clock. He was monumentally boring
in last week's debate because, at this stage, boring wins. The man who used
to say he doesn't look like all the other presidents now looks like all the
other presidents: the calm, plausible, reassuring man in the sober suit.
This is no time to frighten the horses.
But the thing is: the horses are frightened. The Dow's nose-diving, stocks
are looking at their worst year since 1937. Last Tuesday, we were offered
the curious spectacle of two candidates both of whom essentially take the
same line on this stuff - Wall Street greed, special interests, lobbyists,
the usual populist boilerplate. And yet for a pair of guys who both believe
in big-government solutions everything they said seemed small and tinny.
Epic events swirled all around, but the two men fighting to lead the global
superpower could only joust with cardboard swords: Why, Obama was such a
bold leader on this issue that only two years ago he "sent a letter" to
somebody or other. Why, long before Obama sent his letter, McCain "issued a
statement." Rarely has the gulf between interesting times and the paperwork
of "big government" yawned so widely.
The Republican candidate's tragedy in this election is that he's chosen to
fight on Obama turf, to share so many of his assumptions. At a McCain rally
in Wisconsin, a fellow in the crowd announced he was mad as hell and got a
standing ovation. What was he mad about? Obama, Pelosi, and "the socialists
taking over our country." McCain listened politely and then pledged to get
back to Washington to reach across the aisle to work on some gargantuan
bipartisan cure-all. Not the answer that chap wanted to hear, I'll wager.
If the more frightening polls are correct, America is about to elect the
most left-wing government in history: an Obama Oval Office, a Pelosi House
of Representatives, a filibuster-proof Senate and a year or two down the
road maybe three new Supreme Court justices. It would be a transformational
Administration that would start building (in Michelle Obama's words) "the
world as it should be." That big empty hole in the heart of the Obama logo
will not stay blank for long.
- - -
Another Steyn classic. Captures some of my thoughts, far more humorously.
- Bob
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