Friday, June 20, 2008
Campaign Finance Reform, Bye-Bye
Santayana noted that we are in a race between education and catastrophe. In the current election we are in a race between the fever-dream called Obama and the reality of this man. David Brooks seems to finally get it in his recent op-ed.
…Barack could have changed the way presidential campaigning works. John McCain offered to have a series of extended town-hall meetings around the country. But favored candidates don’t go in for unscripted free-range conversations… Obama threw the new-politics mantra under the truck.
It wouldn't be a disaster if Obama were elected, but the A Face in the Crowd let down in his supporters, of seeing the real man Obama, once the race based sunglasses are removed, is going to be substantial.
…Obama didn’t just sell out the primary cause of his life. He did it with style…with a video so risibly insincere that somewhere down in the shadow world, Lee Atwater is gaping and applauding. Obama blamed the (so far marginal) Republican 527s. He claimed that private donations are really public financing. He made a cut-throat political calculation seem like Mother Teresa’s final steps to sainthood…The media and the activists won’t care…
Obama is no different from any politician, taking advantage where he can. Obama is the product of blinded liberal guilt seeking an expiation freely conferred by Obama — and of course, frustration with Bush's incompetence. Neither of those reactions speaks to who Obama really is: a cynical careerist Yuppie with a narcissist's oratorical gift. “Content of his character” is the operative phrase.
GB Shaw said we learn from history that we do not learn from history.