The Obama Delusion; Samuelson Says Barack Has Few Independent Ideas

Wow. A journalist alive willing to say the Obama-messiah has no clothes. I quoted the Economist (British magazine) last year as saying Barack may be "all hat and no cattle" and that's when the Huffington Post stopped running my blogs. I thought the phrase was funny and come on, even the crazed pro-Obama pundits will on occasion admit he needs to come up with some substance. But the American press has never had a sense of humor about their messiah Obama - the one who will deliver them from the evil powerful woman.

People all over the country email me telling me they thought they were going crazy watching the media's complete lack of critical analysis of Barack, until they saw my blogs and realized at least there were two of us. Now there's one more:

Robert Samuelson, contributing editor to Newsweek and the Washington Post, nails the emptiness behind Obama's promise. Samuelson says Obama's message is that his life story, his rise as a Black American can be a metaphor for believing that "Great impasses can be broken with sufficient good will..." But here's the problem:

But on inspection, the metaphor is a mirage. Repudiating racism is not a magic cure-all for the nation's ills. It requires independent ideas, and Obama has few. If you examine his agenda, it is completely ordinary, highly partisan, not candid and mostly unresponsive to many pressing national problems.

By Obama's own moral standards, Obama fails. Americans "are tired of hearing promises made and 10-point plans proposed in the heat of a campaign only to have nothing change," he recently said. Shortly thereafter, he outlined an economic plan of at least 12 points...

Samuelson goes on:

A favorite Obama line is that he will tell "the American people not just what they want to hear, but what we need to know." Well, he hasn't so far.

Consider the retiring baby boomers. A truth-telling Obama might say: "Spending for retirees -- mainly Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid -- is already nearly half the federal budget. Unless we curb these rising costs, we will crush our children with higher taxes. Reflecting longer life expectancies, we should gradually raise the eligibility ages for these programs and trim benefits for wealthier retirees. Both Democrats and Republicans are to blame for inaction. Waiting longer will only worsen the problem."

Instead, Obama pledges not to raise the retirement age and to "protect Social Security benefits for current and future beneficiaries." This isn't "change"; it's sanctification of the status quo.

Then Samuelson gets to the heart of Obama's hypocrisy. Continuing to claim he's above the fray when he's knee deep in the muck just like everyone else:

Political candidates routinely indulge in exaggeration, pandering, inconsistency and self-serving obscurity. Clinton and McCain do. The reason for holding Obama to a higher standard is that it's his standard and also his campaign's central theme. He has run on the vague promise of "change," but on issue after issue -- immigration, the economy, global warming -- he has offered boilerplate policies that evade the underlying causes of the stalemates.

And finally Samuelson takes on the press for its part in fomenting this delusion:

The contrast between his broad rhetoric and his narrow agenda is stark, and yet the press corps -- preoccupied with the political "horse race" -- has treated his invocation of "change" as a serious idea rather than a shallow campaign slogan. He seems to have hypnotized much of the media and the public with his eloquence and the symbolism of his life story. The result is a mass delusion that Obama is forthrightly engaging the nation's major problems when, so far, he isn't.

Actually, there is another journalist who doesn't speak Obama-messiah talk. I've often quoted Economist Paul Krugman's pieces that challenge Barack's promises and cautions us to analyze his real ability to solve our country's pressing problems. Krugman has also pointed out the obvious, that Barack's simplistic call for bi-partisanship isn't likely to move us past our country's intractable problems.

Interesting that voters who value experience still vote for Clinton - in Wisconsin at the rate of 95% to 5%, whereas those who want change vote for Obama 77% to 20%. What I keep asking people is, if you vote for someone you acknowledge has no experience, whose he going to hire to advise him? Remember the last time we elected the charming guy with no experience we got eight years of Dick Cheney and the neocons he brought in to make the decisions.

Comments

[None Hilary supporter]

Bush had experience and look where it got us today. You obviously are a none Obama supporter, my only wish is that all commentators could be honest. What you have written are your opinions, the list below are fact.You should report the facts or give up writing articles.This is a list of his accomplishments, stop being biased and be honest.

233 regarding healthcare reform,

125 on poverty and public assistance,

112 crime fighting bills,

97 economic bills,

60 human rights and anti-discrimination bills,

21 ethics reform bills,

15 gun control,

6 veterans affairs and many others.

His first year in the U.S. Senate, he authored 152 bills and co-sponsored another 427.

These inculded

**the Coburn-Obama Government Transparency Act of 2006 (became law),

**The Lugar-Obama Nuclear Non-proliferation and Conventional Weapons Threat Reduction Act, (became law),

**The Comprehensive Immigration Reform Act, passed the Senate,

**The 2007 Government Ethics Bill, (became law),

**The Protection Against Excessive Executive Compensation Bill, (In committee),

and many more.

In all since entering the U.S. Senate, Senator Obama has written 890 bills and co-sponsored another 1096.

An impressive record, for someone who supposedly has no record according to the spin meisters and mindless twits.

[M.R. Field]

Making lists does not provide details that are important. Why is Obama, who claims to work with people, authoring bills instead of signing on to other legislators' bills? Does he think he does it better? Do the other authors not want Obama's items included? Does Obama, the lawyer, just love writing bills?

What do those numbers mean? Are the bills assigned to committee or left languishing? How many years do they cover? Who requested Obama advocate for the legislation, e.g., a single low-income constituent, the CEO of a large corporation, a large non-profit organization, the mayor of Chicago, who?

Of the crime fighting bills, what did they do? Did they attempt to make penalties for crack and powder cocaine equal? Did they increase penalties for and ease of proving white-collar crime and pension fraud? What has Obama promised to cede in legislation in order to get bills passed? That is always a key question.

Everybody has experience, and none of the candidates have the experience of actually sitting in the Oval Office. Americans are trying to assess how the experience of each candidate will play out if she or he is elected president. Does authoring a bunch of bills translate to the ability of being able to cajole and otherwise persuade legislators to pass a president's agenda?