Excitable Andy is getting slightly excitable about the sense that Barack Obama’s “ample self-regard is lapsing into hubris”:
That simulated faux-presidential seal was both tacky, silly and presumptive – a small version of “Mission Accomplished” Obama could well do without. The decision to give his acceptance speech in a stadium, rather than the traditional convention hall is also an unnecessary over-reach. The night will be freighted enough with history; it needs no new drama to set it apart. And the drama of the first black man accepting the nomination – with Obama’s rhetorical brilliance – will be more than enough for impact. Lastly, I was gob-smacked by the Obamas’ decision to include their children in a soft-focus TV interview.
TalkLeft’s Big Tent Democrat has already noted Sully’s notion of what is “pretty trivial” and what is not seems to be completely inverted. Accordingly, I will note that Sully’s sudden concern is only due to his willful blindness.ÂÂ
Indeed, as recently as June 29th, Sully was giving Obama’s hubris a pass — even when he also had Obama’s rejection of public campaign financing, FISA flip-flop and 50-state campaign hype on his radar screen. In so doing, Sully referred to a piece by Karl Rove that also raised the self-centeredness involved in Obama’s decision to duck town-hall debates, and the way Obama has treated Hillary Clinton since sewing up the delegate count (Sully’s CDS likely blinds him to that). Mickey Kaus catalogs a number of recent Obama comments that make him sound like a commanding know-it-all, and merely alludes to Obama’s infamous comments about people in rural America being bitter and clinging to their guns and God. You could throw in Obama comments ranging from his lecturing us about our SUVs and thermostats to his dismissal of Clinton as “likeable enough.” On a grander scale, there is the hubris inherent in the idea that Obama will bend Iran, its allies and ours to his will through direct talks with the Islamic theocracy.
It is a hubris fed by the sort of fawning sycophant who would argue that Obama’s primary qualification to be president is his face. The one thing Sully gets right is that fame is a toxin; he should have saved that for one of his television gigs. Sully should also try smacking his own gob once in a while — he might wake up to the world outside his own narcissism.
(h/t Memeorandum.)
If Andy could smack his own gob, he’d never leave the house!
Thank you, thank you. Tip the veal; try your waitress.
“German Chancellor calls Obama campaigns bid to stage a speech by their candidate at the Brandenberg gate, “Outrageously inappropriate.”
– Wonder if this might be some of the hubris ecitable Andy was thinking of.
Giving credit where it’s due, I still say that faux seal was a pretty damn good marketing move.
ample
Bosom.
Oh, and learn Spanish, fools. You’re embarassing me.
The Democrats couldn’t get balloons to go ontime at the last convention, which was in an enclosed venue. So, what could possibly go wrong holding the event at Ivesco Field?
1. Al Gore will be in attendance. Denver will experience its first August snowfall since PreCambrian times.
2. The balloons may not be made of latex, as some people are allergic to latex
3. The balloons may not be made of any rubberized material at all, as they may cause distress to the area’s fauna
4. Mylar is right out, as its carbon footprint is horrendous
5. Any sort of bird release is harmful to the psyche of the birds. It’s also reminiscent of the Pigeon Shoots favored by the bitter, clingy Pennsylvanians.
6. Any grand display of public unity – such as parades or drills – will thought of as fascistic by those who haven’t sworn a blood oath of loyalty to Barack.
7. The Recreate ’68 Crowd will have a field day in the parking lot of the venue, plus the access roads to the Stadium are vulnerable to a couple of hippies lying down, chaining themselves to the roadway – thus recreating the scene in the SuperDome during Katrina as reported by the media – 70,000 Barack supporters unable to leave … yeah … should be peaceful.
.
Any politician needs to have super-human hubris to compete at the Presidential level. I think Obama’s problem is that the press, which ususually serves to put politicians in check when they misstep, has actually magnified his narcissism by fawning over him. Obama could take off one of his fine Italian loafers and beat a Newsweek, LAT or NYT reporter about the head and neck with it and still get glowing coverage from those rags, and the MSNBC guys would probably offer to beat themselves so that Obama could conserve his energy. Living in that sort of world does not breed caution or restraint.
“rhetorical brilliance”
LOL, Andi is swayed by the big buljess in his tight slacks.
SO GET OFF MY BACK!
plus the access roads to the Stadium are vulnerable to a couple of hippies lying down, chaining themselves to the roadway – thus recreating the scene in the SuperDome during Katrina as reported by the media – 70,000 Barack supporters unable to leave …
ROFLMAO!!
When the Tofu runs out will they begin cannibalizing each other’s hemp clothing?
“70,000 Barack supporters unable to leave … yeah … should be peaceful.”
But not to worry.
Barack ban multiply the Brie and crackers.
– Iranian Army: All R missiles R not work, but we gots photoshop.
No one that didn’t have ample self-regard would think hey my community-organizey Illinois state senator ass is presidential material I don’t think. He really is that deluded. Everything just kind of flows from that. It’s not hubris. He’s not a tragic hero. He’s an angry dweeby little marxist that was black in the right place at the right time and the media noticed and he’s clutching tight the Golden Ticket he found on the floor of the ’04 Democratic Convention. No one ever says Veruca Salt suffered from hubris. Just a bad egg is all. Don’t care how, I want it now.
Starring David Axelrod as Wonka.
[…] Andrew Sullivan experiencing buyer’s remorse? […]
Andi just put up a post in hich he asserts that friends, who are unnamed, have told him that the German press is reporting that Bush leaned on Chancellor Merkle to prevent Obama from farting at the Brandenburg Gate.
If so, good for Bush.
I think this is what bothers me the most about Obama. He is too liberal and all that, but there is something absolutely unnerving in the man’s self regard.
I think he really believes that if he can just talk to the mad mullahs, they will swoon at his feet and chant his name..just like everyone else. Strange. Creepy. Like some bad movie.
I thought this was the same brand of presumtuous.
“I do not presume that from the day I am sworn in, every single service man or woman suddenly says, ‘This guy knows what he is doing,‘“
–“…but there is something absolutely unnerving in the man’s self regard.”
– Could that something be things like a glib comment in SF about how:
“They get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”
– How the man then has the adroit hubris to stand in front of a Penn. audience without batting an eye and declare he is a uniter is totally beyond me.
I wish Andy’s beagle had a blog. That would be a gay old time.
– BTW, I guess the “or anti-trade sentiment” is alright if you talking to a union audience in Michagan.
Comment by BumperStickerist on 7/10 @ 4:39 pm #
Didn’t they have some big balloon fubar at their last convention?
Bumper I re-read your comment – sorry missed your reference to this initially
–“Go balloons! Go balloons! Go balloons! I don’t see anything happening… Jesus! We need more balloons. I want all balloons to go, goddammit… There’s not enough coming down! All balloons, what the hell! There’s nothing falling! What the f@#k are you guys doing up there?” â€â€Democratic Convention producer Don Mischer, overheard on CNN having an apoplectic seizure when the balloons failed to drop from the ceiling of the FleetCenter in Boston —
No problem, TSK9. As Tom at JoM would say “Go Balloons!”
I’m trying to figure out how the event planners can go for the Big Visual given the restrictions they’ve voluntarily placed on themselves. At the moment, here are the options I’ve come up with:
1. Wax paper Japanese-style lanterns that people wear over their hands which amplifies the cell phone light.
2. Millions of trained fireflies are released in waves such that they form patterns such as halos above and behind Obama.
3. Mohammed Ali comes out and shakily lights the arrow which Obama then shoots, lighting a big “Hope & Change” sign that burns using clean, efficient hydrogen.
4. Obama supporters get an object lesson that, despite the desire for hope and change, the rules of the physical universe manage to apply to them.
5. Bush is blamed for failing to have FEMA standing outside the stadium with agricultural sprayers filled with Bactine to treat the wounded.
6. Bob Shrum trains a dove to land on Obama’s shoulder at the conclusion of the acceptance speech. Obama’s jacket has shoulder pads filled with bird seed. Unfortunately, Bob Shrum trains a hawk, which is shot by Secret Service agents as it swoops in for a landing.
7. Bugs infest Ivesco stadium creating “distractions” for Obama. The DNC solution requires helicopters to apply industrial quantities of YardGard to the area, violating every known EPA and local ordinance in the process. Bush is blamed.
There is just so, so much that the DNC has screwed up in the past, that the heart thrills at the prospect of what new and interesting way they’ll screw up this time.
In the midst of all this campaign rhetoric, let’s not forget that the Democrats not only manage to step on their dick at several points during the campaign, they also take the time to put on golf shoes before doing so.
If Obama isn’t up by 12% in all the polls by the end of August, He’s toast.
–
ISTM that what we have here is a case of… call it “celebrityitis”. You know, the delusion Pam Anderson has that because she’s in the paper all the time it qualifies her to express opinions. (Note: everybody’s entitled to an opinion. Not everybody is qualified to express one.)
Obama’s glib and presents well, and as happyfeet so memorably put it, got the Golden Ticket. For the Press, which has been subsisting on celebrity-promotion for the past twenty years or so and has about abandoned anything else, he was utterly familiar — good-looking, articulate, and empty-headed. He caught their imagination, they started promoting him the same way they do the latest big-breasted bubblehead, and he in his turn stated taking him seriously because they appeared to — if you’re an egotist to start with, which you have to be to go into politics in the first place, and people start telling you you’re wonderful, you’re likely to believe it. Obama is caught up in that, big time.
I have begun to be sadly sure that he’s going to be elected, and I think a lot of you were entirely too hard on nish — prediction is not advocacy; a weather forecaster who says the hurricane will come ashore in the middle of a city is not doing so because he wants to see houses smashed and people killed. What nishi was pointing out was that Obama isn’t a candidate, he’s a celebrity, and unfortunately there is a giant fraction of the electorate that only understands the world in those terms. He looks nice; he talks nice; he’s always in the paper and on the teevee; the syndrome feeds itself. In order to nail it down, what he needs to do is pick one of the people who’re always on the cover of the tabloids as his Vice, then feed the paparazzi a line that Michelle is cheating on him with his running mate. He’d carry forty-three States and the District.
It is said that History repeats itself, the second time as farce. We’re about to see that nailed down as a proven fact, as 1976 – 1980 comes around again, except with red rubber noses, white pancake, and floppy-toed shoes, and to a remarkable extent with many of the same cast of characters. Obama has never managed a lemonade stand; he’s never won a straight-up election on votes; his only understanding of politics is as a way to horsetrade favors among his peers, in a system in which unlimited funds are injected from outside. His advisors are the damnedest bunch of retreads, once-weres, never-weres, wannabees, and also-rans since the Harding Administration. He’s gonna be so far out of his depth SCUBA gear would be useless, and the hardsuit sprung a leak. Jimmy Carter was and is a fool, but not stupid — different axis, different units of measure. Obama is both.
The only advice I have is: pray. And if you don’t have a Deity, get one.
Regards,
Ric
– I don’t know….According to the emenese genius that is Allen Cholms when it comes to all things political, he says that polls do not matter until November…..unless they support Obama and anything he says.
– Ric, I still believe this guy is going to finally find a way to step on his own crank. In fact the longer he goes on, buoyed by this lighter than air mental gas of celebrityhood, the greater the chance he’ll finally do something stupid enough to sink his ship, if he hasn’t already.
– I’m not quite ready to buy all the hype as a sure sign hes in. Remember, this is the same people that are propping him up that have the daily pulpit to ballyhoo those positions. The question is, how much is the moderate portion of the electorate buying it. Thats one thing.
– Then you have the Convention itself. I don’t care how carefully the DNC tries to manage it, there are sizable groups they still have to get by, and if they try to just shuttle them aside they could really turn them away seriously from Obama, instead of just the usual grumbling. Then theres MI and Florida. Theres no telling if they will quietly accept this ham handed punishment they’ve been handed with the 1/2 delegate edict.
– Finally there is the whole pre-election debates. No one knows how the two men will stack up face to face. We all may be totally surprised by the results, even though from a critical standpoint it doesn’t look good for McCain. Obama hasn’t shown a very strong talent for thinking on his feet, (he really looked lost and weak against Hillery on several occasions but Bills big mouth bailed him out more than once), and debates can be very much a mine field for even the best prepared candidate.
– Because there are also so many unknowns on McCains side of things, all in all I’ll leave the predictions on the outcome of this wild political season to Cleo.
I’m daring to underestimate the stupidity of the American people. I’m sad to say that I’m not entirely confident, but I’m not hopeless either. We’re not talking about Johnny Mac running against President Kerry, are we?
“German Chancellor calls Obama campaigns bid to stage a speech by their candidate at the Brandenberg gate, “Outrageously inappropriate.â€Â
Because, the way I remembers it, the Communists are supposed to be on the other side of that gate.
Pablo, BBH, I’m not hopeless either, but constructive pessimism, remember?
What I have to do is get myself so down that McCain will be a relief.
In the meantime, in all the noise about 9% approval ratings for Congress, has come the scariest thing I have seen in a long time. Can you guess what it might be?
Regards,
Ric
Is it the discord at the amalgamated order of real bearded santas?
Why does Sullivan have a national platform and can make a living from this kind of stuff while I toil away in poverty and virtual obscurity. With incredible forearms?
Life isn’t fair. Though, on the plus side, I have never sucked a dick. So I got that going for me.
…See what I did there?
I KID THE GAYS!
*
Regards,
Ric
Ric, I’m stumped, is it that 55mph speed limit thing, ‘cuz I find that disturbing.
Jeff, I was wondering that myself. I can’t even work up the interest to read the posts about him here, why does there have to be many?
Jeff,
Two words: Arianna Huffington.
We’d miss you. But a man’s gotta make a living.
Regards,
Ric
Because Andrew writes whether he has anything to say or not, and he’s a minority. That and the power glutes. Mebbe you ain’t working the right parts.
Ric, is it that the vast majority of them will be reelected?
Ric means I think that Democracy is a lot important. Russians forgot that before they ever knew it. The presidency there is exponentially more popular than that Duma thinger or whatever I’d bet.
But also though I don’t think Baracky will be elected. Some days I’m not even sure Baracky is running really. Cause they don’t just want President Baracky; they’re also demanding that Baracky’s election represent a repudiation of Bush, and on any given day, it’s one or the other that’s on the ballot. On election day, a lot more people than anyone expects are gonna wake up and say hey those are my values this Baracky wants to repudiate too.
Oh. It’s blue, the sky in my world.
How about that virtually every category has negative movement?
Oh. I don’t really know what Ric means really. They left small business out of the 04-08 percentage change chart though cause they only started measuring that in 2007. Just if anybody was wondering.
[…] He’s just now noticing? […]
#25 Bumperstickerest: I’m seeing big searchlights aimed straight up as Sen. Obama comes out to speak, with the crowd chanting “O-ba-ma, O-ba-ma” over and over.
I here that really works for outdoor rallies.
#27 Ric: I think you are right, except for one thing – the over-hype, over-sell works in the short run, not the long run. The long primary season has been damaging as it saturated the market with Obama too soon. Once the fill is up, then on to the next over-hyped celeb or event. Just like what happened to Jennifer Lopez.
Jennifer who?
Or what BBH said in #28.
She’s doing okay over on The Weather Channel.
I’m seeing big searchlights aimed straight up as Sen. Obama comes out to speak
Searchlights aren’t necessary, Mikey.
Haven’t you seen the pictures?
I understand the convention managers have been view some of Leni Riefenstahl’s work for other ideas too.
PT
You mean the glow from the lightworker will illuminate the stadium?
Could work – though they will have to filter it down for the tv cameras.
Ok Ric I think for real this better be darn insightful being as how you’ve built it up so much and all.
Why does Sullivan have a national platform and can make a living from this kind of stuff while I toil away in poverty and virtual obscurity. With incredible forearms?
Let the guy enjoy the spoils of his craft.
Look at the big picture: YOU aren’t taking HIV meds and you didn’t have to change your opinion on most everything you’d written from 2001-2003 the moment Dubya told Diane Sawyer that he’d support the Federal Marriage Amendment.
Oh, and you didn’t say that Madonna represented catholosism better than the pope.
Nor, did you say that Jeremiah Wright was representative of a normal Christian.
And, no, you didn’t embarrass your family & friends by advertising for gay sex in a DC mag (power glutes! milky loads!).
And, well, no, you haven’t said that John Kerry & Barack Obama are more conservative than Bush.
And, no, you haven’t shown yourself to be in love with Obama, to the point of carrying the water for his campaign.
And, no, you didn’t have a fundraiser to raise 6 figures to maintain your site (that cost hundreds to keep online) & then take off with the money for a short-lived retirement a few weeks thereafter.
Well, come to think of it, why DOES someone like Andrew Sullivan get taken seriously? By anyone?
Forgive the errors/typos. A preview option would be nice (ahem).
Actually RW, there is a preview option.
What you do, you re-read the thing before hitting “say it!”
[…] yesterday that Sully was pretending be concerned about Obama’s hubris, mostly because it was only yesterday. I guess that seeing what is in front of one’s nose really is a constant […]