Obama, The One Term President, By Roger Simon (The Liberal One)

I was at a rightwingish drinking thing last night and trotted out my pet claim, which I make more because it's provocative than I'm really sold on it: That Obama will not seek reelection in 2012. He will declare he's done what he needed to do and now it is time for new leaders to build on his vision.

He'll declare victory and cut and run. Because 1, we will probably be in a depression, 2, his poll numbers will be at 35%, and, perhaps most importantly, 3, he has never had to face adversity or criticism or setback in his entire charmed, guided-by-hidden-hands life and has found he's had enough of that to last a lifetime.

Like I said: More of a provocative conversation-starter than something I necessarily would bet money on. (But I would bet money on it, actually, with good odds.)

Well, other people are tossing out the same provocation.

Q: Will Barack Obama be a one-term president?

A: Yes, he might last that long.

Honest to goodness, the man just does not get it. He might be forced to pull a Palin and resign before his first term is over. He could go off and write his memoirs and build his presidential library. (Both would be half-size, of course.)

I am not saying Obama is not smart; he is as smart as a whip. I am just saying he does not understand what savvy first-term presidents need to understand:

You have to stay on message, follow the polls, listen to your advisers (who are writing the message and taking the polls) and realize that when it comes to doing what is right versus doing what is expedient, you do what is expedient so that you can get reelected and do what is right in the second term. If at all possible. And it will help your legacy. And not endanger the election of others in your party. And not hurt the brand. Or upset people too much.

This is definitely not a read the whole thing; frankly, I made you read that much just because I'm annoyed that I read it so I'll inflict it on you.

Roger Simon's bleat -- all these idiots say the same thing -- is that Obama is just too principled and too brilliant for his own good; he is such a wholly white-light being that he hath not the tongue for falsity.

And all that crap.

Is that really the problem, Roger? Is the man who swore up and down on his typical white person grandmother's life he would not raise a "single dime" in taxes on anyone making less than $250,000 really without capacity to lie to the public?

Of course he can lie. He lies ten times a day, and that's even on a typical day when he spends six hours at the golf course.

It's that he's too liberal and too proud and too arrogant to lie about something like this, something crucial to the liberal sense of self-worth: The need to preen and lecture to the commoners.

Without that, what is a liberal? Nothing, really. Just someone who complains a lot and never has any interesting solutions.

He has lied forever about his stance on gay marriage. Everyone knows he supports it -- that's why the left constantly denigrates the right's position on gay marriage, despite the fact that as a formal matter we have the exact same position as Obama. But the left knows it's a lie; so do we on the right. If the left believed him, they'd savage him in the same terms of "hate" and "homophobe" they reserve for us; but of course they do not.

For they know full well it's a lie. Obama barely pretends otherwise.

And yet -- his blessed tongue hath not the practice at pretense? He hath not acquired the art of artfulness?

No, Obama knows how to lie. And he's rather good at it, having had an ample need for convenient lies throughout his image makeover from radical community organizer and member of the socialist radical New Party into "moderate centrist above ideology or the tired old schisms of left and right."

But some lies he enjoys telling -- he enjoys telling the middle-class they will not see their taxes go up a "single dime" because it is part of the leftist more to lie shamelessly to the middle class, which are bourgeois, and therefore, impediments to the Great Changes Which Must Be Made.

He gets credit from the left for such lies, I mean. They admire him for his skill at deceiving those who must be deceived.

But some lies bother him -- lies that would cause him to suffer in the opinion of those who really matter, the radical left vanguard. He is nothing without their love and adoration and unending effusive praise; he courts them like lovers.

He cannot and will not suffer in their estimation, for suffering in their estimation would be suffering in his own estimation. If the Left thinks poorly of him, then he thinks poorly of himself-- what is he if not the savoir of the Left?

So stuff it with the too-principled-to-lie you useless, talentless, dishonest nobody internet hack.

Or, as I said on Twitter last night: (Content Warning for profanity).

posted by Ace at 12:40 PM

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