CLUELESS

I sat in a hospital waiting room (my sister-in-law is very ill) watching Obama's speech today rationalizing the historic rebuke of his policies by the American public. Maybe because of the setting I was in, I thought the President was somewhat depressed but still managed to show the complete cluelessness and haughty indifference to reality that is a hallmark of the ideological fanatic. Here is Victor Davis Hanson's take:

President Obama came close, but he still just cannot admit that his radical policies and their effects on the economy are the cause of his devastating political rebuke. For most of his press conference, an oddly depressed Obama voted present, as he all but said that the problems are mostly ours, not his — or at least not his agenda but perhaps an occasional inadequate communication.

In clingers fashion, he once more is talking down to us, explaining that we confused his necessary solutions with a bogeyman increase in big government, and so typically, in fright and ignorance, lashed out at his party. He is claiming the outrage grew from the same frustration that elected him, rather than arising precisely because of him and his agenda. In short, we are angry because his EU-socialist agenda is progressing too slowly and hasn’t delivered as promised — as it will in time. Perhaps then we will thank him for his proper big-government, big-spending solution.

He seems bewildered (for the first time?) that his popularity as a campaign rhetorician did not last when he became responsible for actual governance.

Read it all. Of course, why shouldn't Obama be bewildered? The world and the press have been showering him with undeserved honors since his magical appearance on the world scene a scant few years ago. He never did anything to deserve their accolades and so is stunned at the enormity of the rebuke. So he shifts and slides and oils his way into all the usual rationalizations for what happened. But all he wants is what's due to him. S

So, he wants to work together for the sake of the American people, does he? A little late, Barry, don't you think, when you've already labeled those who oppose you the "enemy"? When you've already demonized the next Speaker of the House?

But Obama is a little like Eliza's father in My Fair Lady; one of the "undeserving poor"; or, in Obama's case, one of the undeserving elites...with a gift of rhetoric and a self-serving disposition that sees nothing wrong with his behavior or values (or, rather, the lack of them); a victim of others and open to an "arrangement" if he can figure out how to profit from it.