‘My rival in this race,” President Obama announced early in 2007, “is not other candidates. It’s cynicism.”
It’s now clear that what he meant by this was other people’s cynicism — not his own.
As you may recall, Obama came into office a very inexperienced politician, spouting a lot of hopeful and idealistic rhetoric. He had made a name for himself by refusing to demonize conservatives and Republicans.
For instance, during a Nevada Democratic debate, then-senator Obama told the late Tim Russert that, “My greatest strength, I think, is the ability to bring people together from different perspectives to get them to recognize what they have in common and to move people in a different direction.”
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Whether that was a lie at the time or simply unwarranted self-confidence is unknowable. What is plainly knowable is that it was untrue.
Among modern presidents going back to Eisenhower, Obama has proven uniquely incapable of working with his political opponents. Even Jimmy Carter got his signature airline-deregulation bill passed with whopping bipartisan majorities. Bill Clinton got NAFTA, welfare reform, and some balanced budgets with Republican help. George W. Bush got Democrats on board for No Child Left Behind and the Iraq War. (Obama’s vice president and his secretary of state both voted for it as senators.)
There have been some bipartisan victories on Obama’s watch, but he’s often been the partisan loser in such fights. For instance, Congress extended the Bush-era tax cuts, much to Obama’s dismay. And even on more clear-cut bipartisan victories — say, the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, or the trade deals Obama delayed unnecessarily — there’s little evidence that Obama brought any opponents around to his position. The man just isn’t very persuasive.
Now Obama’s defenders, starting with the man himself, insist this isn’t his fault. He’s actually super persuasive and bipartisan, he just suffers from the fact that the Republicans are the most unreasonable politicians ever, so he can’t be blamed for utterly failing to work with them. It’s like the guy who insists that he’s a real ladies’ man but can’t get a phone number because all of the hot women in the bar just happen to be gay.
Actually, it’s worse than that. Everywhere the president goes, he explains that he’s failed to get anything done either because the system is broken or because his opponents lack the honor and decency to work with him. Such arguments define cynicism.
But for Obama, cynicism is a vice for other people.
For instance, just this month, after five Democratic senators and several members of his own inner circle (including Vice President Joe Biden, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, and former chief of staff William Daley), not to mention the unified leadership of the Catholic Church, expressed profound dismay over Obama’s decision to force religious institutions to pay for contraceptive and “preventative” services in violation of their faith, Obama insisted that opponents of the move were “cynical.”
Also this month, the president proposed a budget that assumes everyone in this country is too stupid to understand what he’s up to. It simply pretends there’s no debt or deficit problem. It assumes that entitlement spending is nothing to worry about. It “saves” money by cutting spending no one ever planned to spend. And it proposes huge tax hikes nobody believes that even Obama wants.
Why? Because Obama expects Republicans to vote against the budget — as any responsible legislator of either party would — so he can then further demonize the “do-nothing Congress” while pretending to be serious about fixing our problems.
By the way, the only part of Congress worthy of that sobriquet is the Democrat-controlled Senate, which hasn’t proposed a budget in over 1,000 days (longer than the entire run of the Kennedy administration). Why hasn’t it? To make it easier for the Democratic president to demonize his opponents.
Instead of fulfilling his promise to deliver a “new kind of politics” and a new era of idealism, he’s made politics more cynical than ever. The case for Obama has become the case against everyone and everything inconvenient to his success. Don’t agree with Obama’s policies? Well, you can’t possibly have a good reason to do that. So you must be racist, greedy, dumb, or corrupt.
Meanwhile, Obama casts himself as the humble servant of the 99 percent, even as he forklifts cash from Wall Street into his campaign coffers and exploits the very sort of super PACs he not long ago claimed were a “threat to democracy.”
When my kids were smaller, I grew tired of hearing then tell me that everything they didn't like was "stupid". I banned the word from the house -- at least in my earshot. From then on, when my kids didn't like something or someone, that person or thing was "boring".
Perhaps President Obama's mom did the same thing, only instead of "boring", her son substituted "cynical" and "cynic". Old habits are hard to break, you know.
Obama has the thinnest skin I have ever seen in a U.S. President. Some little actor says something about Obama and within days our President is mocking this person Head On. Like it matters what they said about Obama. The Office of the President should ignore such statements. That should be below him. That is the sad thing about Obama. All that Hopey changey stuff was bull and the last laugh was on us the citizens. Obama has to go in the next election. He must be sent on his way out of Washington come Januruary 2013.
exactly right. but i'd go further. obama's willingness to go back on his own word, arrogantly and without pause, is not cynicism. it's a clinical narcissistic personality disorder. this joker thinks that because he does something, it is right, and because he says something, it is just and true. doesn't matter if he said the opposite five years ago. he defines truth, as he moves through the universe, since he is essentially the universe's raison d'etre.
this is the kind of mind a liberal loves; dictatorially self-involved, drunk with power, supremely arrogant. just examine cuba and venezuela as reference points. and this is how naive and foolish the american electorate actually is in 2012.
The one thing that Jonah leaves out is that grid lock and a do-nothing Senate work to Obama's advantage. He is able to lock in the damage he did in his first two years of Democratic Party control and then govern through bureaucratic rule making and executive order.
The Federal Register is now so complex and confusing, and intentionally so (witness Dod-Frank or the "We have to pass it to know what's in it" health care law), so that liberal bureaucrats can rule over us without any congressional accountability.
"“My greatest strength, I think, is the ability to bring people together from different perspectives to get them to recognize my brilliance, obviously superior intellect and character, and to move people in my direction. Otherwise I'll just ignore them if they're not useful to blame for something. Anything.”"
I'll keep this in mind, Mr Goldberg, the next time Rush Limbaugh or Sean Hannity call him a "Marxist Muslim" or Ricky Santorum says the President wants to "destroy America as we know it."
If you could point me to the first time Limbaugh or Hannity called him a Muslim I would appreciate it. His economic philosophy is clearly of a Marxist nature, and he has stated that he wants to "fundamentally transform" America. "Destroy America as we know it" is just a negative formulation of that stated desire.
Obviously you haven't heard them, period, maksutov66.
It's so easy to tell who has never listened to Limbaugh's show. You probably believe he's a racist devil, but that's only because of your ignorance and willingness to be a useful idiot.
Rush Limbaugh compared President Obama to Hitler on his Thursday radio show.
Limbaugh was in the middle of lambasting Obama for his speech on Afghanistan, in which the President announced he will withdraw 33,000 troops from the country by the summer of 2012.
"What better way to fire up the Democrat base than to announce you intend to lose the war in Afghanistan?" he said. "What do General Petraeus and Gates, the Defense Secretary, what do they know? ... you know, Hitler's generals tried to argue with him too."
Limbaugh has compared Obama to Hitler before. In 2009, he said, "Adolf Hitler, like Barack Obama, ruled by dictate."
I couldn't agree more with your comments about Rush Limbaugh. Those that criticize him most likely have never listened to him but instead rely on the gross distortions of his views by liberal groups like Media Matters. You may not agree with all of his opinions but the reason Rush is effective and has been around all of these years is because he is well-prepared , does not make up facts to suit his arguments , and is very logical with a dose of common sense.
Oh, but he is destroying America piece by piece, law by law. Obama believes he is justified in doing whatever it takes to make things fair. Of course, he is not personally generous with his wealth, and he certainly does not volunteer to overpay his taxes. That's for us. He is elite, you see, because as a dedicated liberal, he believes he knows better than you do about everything. Therefore to exist, you need his vision of government, which is to control every aspect of your life.
This is really and fatuous remark. First, Hannity and Limbaugh are entertainers (whether you like their Schtik or not) Obama is the PRESIDENT OF THE FREAKING USA. Difference? Absolutely.
He possesses a particular capacity to engage in rhetoric absolutely divorced from reality. He is an absolutely dishonest or dillusional person. And people that are defending him are doing so for a handful of reasons, race, their own ignorance, affinity for redistributionist, top down policy....
Take this weak sauce argument and work on your powers of reason.
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