Obama is the Wizard of Uhs

Last night I was watching the Wizard of Oz on TV. One of my favorite scenes involves the Wizard, because I've always felt that it is so amusing that he is not in fact a wizard, and to disguise this fact he sends the gang on several fools errands to hide his inability to help out the situation, or that he makes people wear green tinted glasses to make it seem as if he has created a different reality, or he uses smoke and mirrors and loud booming voices to hide his powerless nature.. The books go further into these tricks and are very enjoyable- if you haven't bought and read the books before I highly recommend you do so.

So I was especially thrilled this morning when I read this editorial by Victor Davis Hanson called Our “Pay No Attention to that Man Behind the Curtain” Moment. In it VDH points out that President Obama is in fact not a magical wizard able to catch rainbows, through his election we have not entered into any sort of postracial society, and when we elected Obama the globe did not stop warming. Nope- instead, as time has gone on, the wool that pulled over our eyes by a compliant media has fallen off, and we have discovered simply a scared, outmatched, not-yet-ready politician who falls back on tired, old, worn ideas and policies that have failed to produce results in the past and are failing to produce results now. VDH writes:

The result has been a sort of political implosion, the proverbial “pay no attention to that man behind the curtain” moment when the omnipotent wizard’s face projected on the screen becomes exposed as a rather frightened Frank Morgan, busy with levers and gears—or, in our morality play, a deer-in-the-headlights Barack Obama relieved to sub out his White House press room to a designated president Bill Clinton at last back on his home turf.

In a number of ways, we can see how the Obama administration has been reduced to a sort of virtual administration. The messianic spell of 2008 ended with the largest midterm rebuke since 1938. Whereas in 2009 it was considered racist for a conservative to question the president’s wisdom at a Tea Party rally, by 2010 Democratic congressional representatives were vying with each other to find creative ways of using the F-word to belittle the president. Since his inauguration, the president has lost a point in the polls about every three weeks of his presidency, without much deviation.

There is little presidential stature left. When Barack Obama addresses the Sen. minority leader as “Mike” McConnell or claims the U.S. motto is e pluribus unum rather than “In God We Trust,” this is by now a non-news story—not after “57 states” or “corpse-men” or Austrian-speaking Austrians. Proclaiming that at some point individuals have made enough money raises no eyebrows either—not after “spread the wealth,” “redistributive change,” and claiming that the purpose of capital gains tax hikes was not to increase federal revenue but to ensure “fairness.” If the president were to go on another riff about “fat cat bankers,” limb-lopping surgeons, or Vegas junkets, eyes would roll—in the manner that today’s students start text messaging when their aging 60s hold-over professors keep ranting about Halliburton. Martha’s Vineyard and Costa del Sol helped see to that.

One of the concepts that I emphasize in my class is that the President by himself is surprisingly unpowerful in our system- what makes the President powerful in our system of government is that his office is such that it allows his natural grace, dignity, and energy to shine through, and if the President is a man full of grace, dignity, and energy, the office of President is powerful indeed. But if the President is not these things, the office doesn't grant him these powers, and instead the President becomes a worn and tired old man, struggling to uphold the dignity and weight of the office, unable to rise to the challenge of this great office and honor. You could see this in Jimmy Carter, or Herber Hoover, or James Buchanan, or Martin Van Buren. VDH continues...

...An Obama speech echoing boilerplate themes such as “there are no red states, there are no blue states” today simply could not be given—the laughing in the audience would be far too much...

...For a while, “working across the aisle” delivered in mellifluous tones assured millions that their soon-to-be president had not compiled the most partisan voting record in the U.S. Senate (to the left of the nation’s only self-avowed socialist senator). Now? We yawn when Obama goes off on Republicans as “enemies” who cannot sit in the front seat of the car. Chicago-style target the enemy has gone from shocking to de rigueur to banal for this president.

This charade needs to end. We have another two years to go, and it remains to be seen who will replace Obama and exactly how it all will go down, but Obama has been revealed to be a fake and phony, and it is going to be sad when the Democrats trot him out again next election and try a combination of fooling the idiots out there and dirty tricks. But the charade is over, that much is clear.