Is Obama Another Dukakis? Why is Obama so vapid, hesitant, and gutless?

[bijou]

Last week really ought to have been the end of the McCain campaign. With the whole country feeling (and its financial class acting) as if we lived in a sweltering, bankrupt banana republic, and with this misery added to the generally Belarusian atmosphere that surrounds any American trying to board a train, catch a plane, fill a prescription, or get a public servant or private practitioner on the phone, it was surely the moment for the supposedly reform candidate to assume a commanding position. And the Republican nominee virtually volunteered to assist that outcome by making an idiot of himself several times over, moving from bovine and Panglossian serenity about the state of the many, many crippled markets to sudden bursts of pointless hyperactivity such as the irrelevant demand to sack the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission.

And yet, and unless I am about to miss some delayed "groundswell" or mood shift, none of this has translated into any measurable advantage for the Democrat. There are three possible reasons for such a huge failure on Barack Obama's part. The first, and the most widely canvassed, is that he is too nice, too innocent, too honest, and too decent to get down in the arena and trade bloody thrusts with the right-wing enemy. (This is rapidly becoming the story line that will achieve mythic status, along with allegations of racial and religious rumor-mongering, if he actually loses in November.) The second is that crisis and difficulty, at home and abroad, sometimes make electors slightly more likely to trust the existing establishment, or some version of it, than any challenger or newcomer, however slight. The third is that Obama does not, and perhaps even cannot, represent "change" for the very simple reason that the Democrats are a status quo party.

To analyze this is to be obliged to balance some of the qualities of Obama's own personality with some of the characteristics of his party. Here's a swift test. Be honest. What sentence can you quote from his convention speech in Denver? I thought so. All right, what about his big rally speech in Berlin? Just as I guessed. OK, help me out: Surely you can manage to cite a line or two from his imperishable address on race (compared by some liberal academics to Gettysburg itself) in Philadelphia? No, not the line about his white grandmother. Some other line. Oh, dear. Now do you see what I mean?

...

http://www.slate.com/id/2200587/?from=rss

[Wretched Excess]

The BarackStar! is running not to lose now, which is a fairly reliable way of bringing it about.

[Chris_]

The BarackStar! is running not to lose now, which is a fairly reliable way of bringing it about.

Just ask Carter, Mondale, Dukakis, Geo. H.W. Bush, Bob Dole, AlSnore and F'n Kommie (did you know he was in Vietnam?)...

[DixieBelle]

Yet, having suddenly got the leadership position, he hadn't the faintest idea what to do with it or what to do about it.

Look at the record, and at Obama's replies to essential and pressing questions. The surge in Iraq? I'll answer that only if you insist. The credit crunch? Please may I be photographed with Bill Clinton's economic team? Georgia? After you, please, Sen. McCain. A vice-presidential nominee? What about a guy who, despite his various qualities, is picked because he has almost no enemies among Democratic interest groups?

I ran into a rather clever Republican operative at the airport last week, who pointed out to me that this ought by rights to be a Democratic Party year across the board, from the White House to the Congress to the gubernatorial races. But there was a crucial energy leak, and it came from the very top. More people doubted Obama's qualifications for the presidency in September than had told the pollsters they had doubted these credentials in July. "So what he ought to do," smiled this man, "is spend his time closing that gap and less time attacking McCain." Obama's party hacks, increasingly white and even green about the gills, are telling him to do the opposite. I suppose this could even mean that Sarah Palin, down the road, will end up holding the door open for Hillary Clinton. Such joy!

Excellent summation. Dead on too.

[Tess Anderson]

He's not going to stop attacking McCain and Palin, Chicago thugs have different techniques than the European Left Hitchens is part of. Barack Hussein Obama put himself in the gutter, that's where he'll stay.
 

What sentence can you quote from his convention speech in Denver? I thought so. All right, what about his big rally speech in Berlin? Just as I guessed. OK, help me out: Surely you can manage to cite a line or two from his imperishable address on race (compared by some liberal academics to Gettysburg itself) in Philadelphia?

um...not sure...um...he probably said:


...willing to sit down to a debate over that issue with Senator McCain, anytime, any place...
...that's not change we can believe in....
...the notion that....

[Ptarmigan]

Barackstar has lost his Mojo.

[Jim]

The BarackStar! is running not to lose now, which is a fairly reliable way of bringing it about.

Just ask Carter, Mondale, Dukakis, Geo. H.W. Bush, Bob Dole, AlSnore and F'n Kommie (did you know he was in Vietnam?)...

He can't seal any deal.  Never had to ever in his life and, oddly enough, even Axelrod can't make it happen either.

Not sure if he's more of a Dukakis or McGovern.