Campbell Brown Rounds on Obama

Emmy winner Campbell Brown, former CNN host and former co-anchor at of NBC's Weekend Today, rapped President Obama for being condescending toward women.

WHEN I listen to President Obama speak to and about women, he sometimes sounds too paternalistic for my taste. In numerous appearances over the years — most recently at the Barnard graduation — he has made reference to how women are smarter than men. It’s all so tired, the kind of fake praise showered upon those one views as easy to impress. As I listen, I am always bracing for the old go-to cliché: “Behind every great man is a great woman.”

. . .

The women I know who are struggling in this economy couldn’t be further from the fictional character of Julia, presented in Mr. Obama’s Web ad, “The Life of Julia,” a silly and embarrassing caricature based on the assumption that women look to government at every meaningful phase of their lives for help.

. . .

In an effort to win them back, Mr. Obama is trying too hard. He’s employing a tone that can come across as grating and even condescending. He really ought to drop it. Most women don’t want to be patted on the head or treated as wards of the state. They simply want to be given a chance to succeed based on their talent and skills. To borrow a phrase from our president’s favorite president, Abraham Lincoln, they want “an open field and a fair chance.”

(Emphasis added.) This is a hard hit, even though Ms. Brown discloses that her husband is one of Mitt Romney's advisers. But she is a pro and has a solid reputation in Washington. She is, according to Politico, "making a wave."

She goes on to describe specific examples of skilled and educated friends and family who are having difficulty finding work. One of her friends lost her livelihood and had to move back in with her parents. Another is selling her belongings on eBay to make ends meet. Ms Brown says it is family, not government, that has helped them in this time of crisis.

This is not to say that government doesn’t play a role in their lives. It does and it should. But it isn’t a dominant one, and certainly not an overwhelming factor in their daily existence.

Obama doesn't care about individuals and the pain they're going through, and people are starting to figure that out. He cares only about his reelection. Even non-conservatives are realizing he's simply a devious, creepy, dishonest man--like any run-of-the-mill narcissist with their characteristic empathy deficit. That's the reason for his weird "Julia" composite character. "Julia" represents a gullible type that Obama thinks might be helpful to his campaign. For him, people are types or groups to be manipulated; they're not individuals.

More and more high profile personalities are speaking out. It's starting to look like an Abilene paradox is breaking down, and we're at the beginning of a full-blown preference cascade, described by Glenn Reynolds here:

This works until something breaks the spell, and the discontented realize that their feelings are widely shared, at which point the collapse of the regime may seem very sudden to outside observers - or even to the citizens themselves. Claims after the fact that many people who seemed like loyal apparatchiks really loathed the regime are often self-serving, of course. But they're also often true . . . .

(Emphasis added.) If it starts to look like Obama is likely to lose, the left will turn on him fast. He lied to them, and they're not happy. It'll be the president's problem or the messaging or the packaging, not the philosophy. They will turn on him to preserve their worldview.

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posted by rdbrewer at 12:29 PM

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