A "Nice Guy" or a Statesman?
I guess Obama is a Really Nice Guy (of the kind that finishes last) or a Great Statesman (a very rare but admirable kind of politician).
The question is who is he exactly?
What does he urge Democrats to do when they have lost a key election and are about two weeks away from losing their super-majority? He has staked a LOT on passing his healthcare ( Read more... )
I think that Mr. Obama is not just inexperienced; he is also hampered by a distinct inner emptiness-not an emptiness that comes from stupidity or a lack of ability but an emptiness that has been actually nurtured and developed as an adaptation to the political world.
The nature of this emptiness becomes clear in the contrast between him and Ronald Reagan. Reagan reached the White House through a great deal of what is called "individuating"-that is he took principled positions throughout his long career that jeopardized his popularity, and in so doing he came to know who he was as a man and what he truly believed.
He became Ronald Reagan through dissent, not conformity. And when he was finally elected president, it was because America at last wanted the vision that he had evolved over a lifetime of challenging conventional wisdom. By the time Reagan became president, he had fought his way to a remarkable certainty about who he was, what he believed, and where he wanted to lead the nation.
Mr. Obama's ascendancy to the presidency could not have been more different. There seems to have been very little individuation, no real argument with conventional wisdom, and no willingness to jeopardize popularity for principle. To the contrary, he has come forward in American politics by emptying himself of strong convictions, by rejecting principled stands as "ideological," and by promising to deliver us from the "tired" culture-war debates of the past. He aspires to be "post-ideological," "post-racial" and "post-partisan," which is to say that he defines himself by a series of "nots"-thus implying that being nothing is better than being something. He tries to make a politics out of emptiness itself.
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I could not even gleam is hint of an answer to the question: "Why not grab the chance to pass healthcare bill NOW?"
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А теперь у нас обамка. Как в советской рекламе - ни рыба, ни мясо, а паста "Океан".
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