Obama and the Sunday Talkies [Benjamin Zycher]
I see that President Obama is going to be featured on four or five (!) of the Sunday talk shows this weekend. It is simply unbelievable to me that none of the political experts in the White House has told or convinced the president that more yakking on his part on health care or anything else would be counterproductive, and that this is the time for him to sit back and be presidential, while the crass politicians in Congress fight things out.
But . . . no. Birds gotta fly, fish gotta swim, ACORN's gotta engage in fraud, and Obama's gotta talk. It's really that simple; and it is amazing, given how little this guy actually knows about economics, about foreign affairs, about, well, just about anything. This reminds me of a footnote, minor but revealing, from the 2004 Democratic National Convention, at which Obama was the keynote speaker. His rhetoric, as usual, was as empty as a dry well, even as it drew the crowd to its feet time and again. Obama was reported, after the speech and the thunderous reception that it received, to have said to someone, "You know, I can play in this league."
And so there we have it: Obama really believes at his core that empty rhetoric is the same as substance and judgement. I have to believe that it was then that he began to view himself as presidential timber. A small bit of vanity for a man; a giant looming danger for America and the cause of liberty.
— Benjamin Zycher is a senior fellow at the Pacific Research Institute.
