Obama Biographer: "The World Seems to Disappoint Him"

No points awarded for novelty or perspicacity, as this observation has been made from distances of up to 2500 miles (I'm sure the Kremlin has detected this). David Remnick, who wrote that fawning interview/profile in the New Yorker, got to talk to Obama for hours, so it's no great feat of psychological diagnosis to realize the President is deeply, deeply disappointed in all of you.

But I guess at least now that a progressive says it, it is no longer strictly Konservative Krazytalk Konspiraciatin'.

"The profile [of President Obama] that I published in the New Yorker was somebody that eerily, eerily seemed to be claiming himself--it was a sense of not giving up, but of deep frustration--that was the profile that I published in the New Yorker. Somebody frustrated and disappointed," said Remnick, who has proven to be deeply sympathetic to this president.

"And that's what's frustrating to me sometimes about Obama is that the world seems to disappoint him," he continued to laughter from others on the TV set. "Republicans disappoint him, Bashar al-Assad disappoints him, Putin as well. And the fighting spirit sometimes is lacking in the performative aspects of the presidency."

By the way, I found this Washington Post piece encapsulating the 17 highlights from Remnick's January piece.

I found this telling.

6. Obama meets with presidential historians: Obama has had a number of presidential historians over as guests, including Doris Kearns Goodwin and Robert Caro, whose work on Lyndon Johnson often is cited as an example of how a president can more effectively get in his agenda through Congress. Remnick writes: “At the most recent dinner he attended at the White House, Caro had the distinct impression that Obama was cool to him, annoyed, perhaps, at the notion appearing in the press that his latest Johnson volume was an implicit rebuke to him. As we were leaving, I said to Obama, ‘You know, my book wasn’t an unspoken attack on you, it’s a book about Lyndon Johnson,’ Caro recalled." Obama and his team continue to rebuff the idea that more social outings and pressure would lead Republicans to embrace his ideas. Obama pointed out that when Johnson “lost that historic majority [in Congress], and the glow of that landslide victory faded, he had the same problems with Congress that most Presidents at one point or another have.”

It's all about him. If you write a book about LBJ, it's really about Obama.

You'll remember how Obama chose to publicly honor JFK on the anniversary of his assassination, I trust.

And just to add a minor thing: While Obama insists that he doesn't have to emulate LBJ's notorious jawboning tactics -- "Obama and his team continue to rebuff the idea that more social outings and pressure would lead Republicans to embrace his ideas" -- in that very same interview he announces he's doing more jawboning.

5. Obama has started socializing more: Obama said he hadn't socialized more in the past because he has two young daughters at home. “I had two young daughters who I wanted to spend time with—and that I wasn’t in a position to work the social scene in Washington,” he said. But now that they’re older, Obama and his wife have been hosting more dinners, with the president drinking a Martini or two, and Obama sometimes pushing guests to stay past 1 a.m. "I’m a night owl! Have another drink,” the president encouraged one set of guests.

He can't even admit the most trivial alleged flaw. He's apparently attempting to remedy this alleged flaw, but can he just say, "You know, perhaps I didn't use enough tools from the social toolbox in the past, so I'm working on that now," he still has to claim "Nah, bro, I did plenty of that. (But now I'm doing more.)"

This f***in' guy.

posted by Ace at 02:04 PM

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