Our "Candidate-in-Full"...

[Curmudgeon]

Your linkage: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...802484_pf.html

Sooner or later it is going to occur to Barack Obama that he is the president of the United States. As of yet, though, he does not act that way, appearing promiscuously on television and granting interviews like the presidential candidate he no longer is. The election has been held, but the campaign goes on and on. The candidate has yet to become commander in chief.

Take last week's Group of 20 meeting in Pittsburgh. There, the candidate-in-full commandeered the television networks and the leaders of Britain and France to give the Iranians a dramatic warning. Yet another of their secret nuclear facilities had been revealed and Obama, as anyone could see, was determined to do something about it -- just don't ask what.

The entire episode had a faux Cuban missile crisis quality to it. Something menacing had been discovered -- not Soviet missiles a mere 100 miles or so off Florida but an Iranian nuclear installation about 100 miles from Tehran. As befitting the occasion, various publications supplied us with nearly minute-by-minute descriptions of the crisis atmosphere earlier in the week at the U.N. session -- the rushing from room to room, presidential aides conferring, undoubtedly aware that they were in the middle of a book they had yet to write. Where, in fact, was the crisis?

In fact, there was none. The supposedly secret installation had been known to Western intelligence agencies -- Britain, France, the United States and undoubtedly Israel -- for several years. Its existence had been deduced by intelligence analysts from Iranian purchases abroad, and it was pinpointed sometime afterward. What had changed was that news of it had gone public. This happened not because Obama announced it but because the Iranians beat him to it after discovering that their cover was blown. They then turned themselves in to the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna and, as usual, said the site was intended for the peaceful use of nuclear energy.

For a crisis such as this, the immense prestige of the American presidency ought to be held in reserve. Let the secretary of state issue grave warnings. When Obama said in Pittsburgh that Iran is "going to have to come clean and they are going to have to make a choice," it had the sound of an ultimatum. But what if the Iranians don't? What then? A president has to be careful with such language. He better mean what he says.

The trouble with Obama is that he gets into the moment and means what he says for that moment only. He meant what he said when he called Afghanistan a "war of necessity" -- and now is not necessarily so sure. He meant what he said about the public option in his health-care plan -- and then again maybe not. He would not prosecute CIA agents for getting rough with detainees -- and then again maybe he would.

Most tellingly, he gave Congress an August deadline for passage of health-care legislation -- "Now, if there are no deadlines, nothing gets done in this town . . . " -- and then let it pass. It seemed not to occur to Obama that a deadline comes with a consequence -- meet it or else.

Obama lost credibility with his deadline-that-never-was, and now he threatens to lose some more with his posturing toward Iran. He has gotten into a demeaning dialogue with Ahmadinejad, an accomplished liar.

[The President] is our version of a Supreme Leader, not given to making idle threats, setting idle deadlines, reversing course on momentous issues, creating a TV crisis where none existed or, unbelievably, pitching Chicago for the 2016 Olympics. Obama's the president. Time he understood that.

From the Wash Post, no less.

[5711-Marine]

They are all turning on him now.

Howard Fineman in Newsweek
http://www.newsweek.com/id/216210

The president's problem isn't that he is too visible; it's the lack of content in what he says when he keeps showing up on the tube. Obama can seem a mite too impressed with his own aura, as if his presence on the stage is the Answer. There is, at times, a self-referential (even self-reverential) tone in his big speeches. They are heavily salted with the words "I" and "my." (He used the former 11 times in the first few paragraphs of his address to the U.N. last week.) Obama is a historic figure, but that is the beginning, not the end, of the story.

There is only so much political mileage that can still be had by his reminding the world that he is not George W. Bush. It was the winning theme of the 2008 campaign, but that race ended nearly a year ago. The ex-president is now more ex than ever, yet the current president, who vowed to look forward, is still reaching back to Bush as bogeyman.

He did it again in that U.N. speech. The delegates wanted to know what the president was going to do about Israel and the Palestinian territories. He answered by telling them what his predecessor had failed to do. This was effective for his first month or two. Now it is starting to sound more like an excuse than an explanation.

Kathleen Parker
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...T2009092903084

In keeping with his campaign promise to talk to America's enemies without precondition, Barack Obama plans to turn his charms on Burma's military junta. Slowly, we're beginning to understand what hope and change were all about. Translation: Sure hope this change works.

It may be too soon to pass judgment on Obama's new foreign policy strategy, but early returns on his gamble that talking is the best cure are less than reassuring. Each time Obama extends a hand to one of the world's anti-American despots, he is rewarded with an insult (Venezuela's Hugo Chavez) or, perhaps, a missile display (North Korea and Iran)

One may view these episodes as diminishing America's status or as a tolerable annoyance -- sort of the way Dobermans view toy poodles. At some point, the big dog reminds the little yapper of his place. Unfortunately, the American commander in chief is a cat in a dog-eat-dog world.

[Curmudgeon]

"Present..."

[camper]

Doesn't matter what anyone in the press says: As soon as an obama follower (not democrat or liberal, but follower) sees something negative about him they instantly tune out and dismiss it.

I seriously cannot tell you how many people--intelligent, well-educated people--that I've talked to who have said that they do this because they believe 'he can'.

Its disturbing in a way that is actually quite depressing.

camper

[andrewjs18]

Doesn't matter what anyone in the press says: As soon as an obama follower (not democrat or liberal, but follower) sees something negative about him they instantly tune out and dismiss it.

I seriously cannot tell you how many people--intelligent, well-educated people--that I've talked to who have said that they do this because they believe 'he can'.

Its disturbing in a way that is actually quite depressing.

camper

I think a liberal friend of mine is finally realizing that what Obama said in his campaign isn't what he really set out to do.

[Morel42]

Did the world run out of real news to report in the last 10 years or something?

Does Obama wear too many silk ties!? NEXT ON CNN!!!

I mean, I really don't give a rats ass if we have The Truman Show with Obama (24 hours of him eating sleeping if yo didn't see the movie).

I honestly don't.. I don't care what he wears, what his wife does, what kind of shoes he wears, if he properly expresses outrage at something someone did someplace to someone. He can have topless Playboy pool parties in the West Wing while throwing Girls Gone Wild video shoots staring the Pelosi and Ann Coulter on his day off..

I only care about things that you know.. Affect what the hell kind of country I'm going to live in

But back on topic..

So now that it seems that Obama (or IMHO) his staff and the DNC have lost the last even the smallest amount of skill at politics, can someone start working over at the GOP and start finding someone that won't make me want to vomit to vote for next election?

If it's someone like Palin.. I'm staying home.. Or maybe writing in Donald Duck..

Wait a sec.

OMG.. WAIT.... YES..

The GOP has nobody at all that is even close to having serious chance of wining. Hard Right Wing isn't going to work, Moral hard religious isn't going to get votes.. Guess who's left?

Ron Paul...

Seriously, Every peice of shit thrown from the right makes them look bad, but RP remains clean.. Every typical Big Government debt pile of crap from the left make RP look even better..

Do you think he might actually be the only person the GOP can turn too? Wait.. I must kill the glimmer of hope that wants to form.. I must squash it like a bug...

And yes.. I did burn out one of my corneas with the Pelosi and Coulter statement.. Excuse me now, I need to scrub myself with an SOS pad so I can feel clean again..

[Warpt762x39]

Doesn't matter what anyone in the press says: As soon as an obama follower (not democrat or liberal, but follower) sees something negative about him they instantly tune out and dismiss it.

I seriously cannot tell you how many people--intelligent, well-educated people--that I've talked to who have said that they do this because they believe 'he can'.

Its disturbing in a way that is actually quite depressing.

camper

Let's hope that there are enough negative things reported about him (lord knows there are enough that we don't have overlap from the different outlets) that all his supporters sit at home with no TV, no internet and no newspaper with their fingers in their ears until he's no longer in office.

I think a liberal friend of mine is finally realizing that what Obama said in his campaign isn't what he really set out to do.

Boy do I have plenty of friends like that. At the moment they wised up they had the look on their face akin to being whacked in the head with a cast iron frying pan. They are starting to realize he was A.) full of shit and B.)no different than any of the other idiots we had to choose from.

[Strapped]

He can have topless Playboy pool parties in the West Wing while throwing Girls Gone Wild video shoots staring the Pelosi and Ann Coulter on his day off..

I just threw up a little......

[Warpt762x39]

I just threw up a little......

I threw up a lot.

[camper]

Does Obama wear too many silk ties!? NEXT ON CNN!!!

I mean, I really don't give a rats ass if we have The Truman Show with Obama (24 hours of him eating sleeping if yo didn't see the movie).

I honestly don't.. I don't care what he wears, what his wife does, what kind of shoes he wears,...... I only care about things that you know.. Affect what the hell kind of country I'm going to live in

Seriously, Every peice of shit thrown from the right makes them look bad, but RP remains clean.. Every typical Big Government debt pile of crap from the left make RP look even better..

Thats the thing...make the presidency about 'how good he looks' and 'how well dressed' and 'how its nice to have a young, handsome black man' running the show and then you put up some old white dude with JC penny-looking suits and people are conditioned to say "He's too old, white and pasty...we need a young, vibrant well dressed man (preferably black) to represent us" and to hell with issues or their consequences.

That's why I care about the exposure...because it's all part of the dessenitising process. All Barrack, all the time with all of the positive and NONE of the negative is going to lead the lemmings right off the cliff.

And yes.. I did burn out one of my corneas with the Pelosi and Coulter statement.. Excuse me now, I need to scrub myself with an SOS pad so I can feel clean again.. [/QUOTE]

Coulter....sometimes she looks good, sometimes she doesn't. Still, I bet she's a cheetah in the sack.

camper