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Rove Dissects Obama

Karl Rove, the former adviser to US President George W. Bush, partisan hack, and ‘king-maker,’ dissects Barack Obama in his latest column for the Wall Street Journal. ‘And what of the reborn Adlai Stevenson? Mr. Obama is befuddled and angry about the national reaction to what are clearly accepted, even commonplace truths in San Francisco and Hyde Park. How could anyone take offense at the observation that people in small-town and rural American are “bitter” and therefore “cling” to their guns and their faith, as well as their xenophobia?’

Why would anyone raise questions about a public figure who, for only 20 years, attended a church and developed a close personal relationship with its preacher who says AIDS was created by our government as a genocidal tool to be used against people of color, who declared America’s chickens came home to roost on 9/11, and wants God to damn America? Mr. Obama has a weakness among blue-collar working class voters for a reason.

His inspiring rhetoric is a potent tool for energizing college students and previously uninvolved African-American voters. But his appeals are based on two aspirational pledges he is increasingly less credible in making.

Mr. Obama’s call for postpartisanship looks unconvincing, when he is unable to point to a single important instance in his Senate career when he demonstrated bipartisanship. And his repeated calls to remember Dr. Martin Luther King’s “fierce urgency of now” in tackling big issues falls flat as voters discover that he has not provided leadership on any major legislative battle.

Mr. Obama has not been a leader on big causes in Congress. He has been manifestly unwilling to expend his political capital on urgent issues. He has been only an observer, watching the action from a distance, thinking wry and sardonic and cynical thoughts to himself about his colleagues, mildly amused at their to-ing and fro-ing. He has held his energy and talent in reserve for the more important task of advancing his own political career, which means running for president.

But something happened along the way. Voters saw in the Philadelphia debate the responses of a vitamin-deficient Stevenson act-a-like. And in the closing days of the Pennsylvania primary, they saw him alternate between whining about his treatment by Mrs. Clinton and the press, and attacking Sen. John McCain by exaggerating and twisting his words. No one likes a whiner, and his old-style attacks undermine his appeals for postpartisanship.

Rove finishes by saying that if Obama wants to win in November - let alone the nomination - he’ll have to reinvent himself. ‘[I]t is time for him to reset, freshen his message and say something new. His conduct in the last several weeks raises questions about whether, for all his talents, he is ready to be president.’

Andrew Sullivan (possibly Obama’s most passionate cheerleader) isn’t happy with the column, writing:

The great clarifier of this primary season has been the in-gathering of most of the most toxic, cynical forces in American politics - Democrat and Republican - to extinguish the Obama campaign. In the end, Rove and Clinton are in the same party (Washington, Inc.) and play by the same rules (whatever they can say they are at any given moment). But they’re losing. And this head-game is pretty much their last gambit.

The problem with this kind of reasoning is, of course, that Obama hasn’t himself to be an agent of change… at all. The only change he’s bringing is constant whining, other than that, nothing new under the sky. When it comes to dirty politics, the man from Illinois is an expert. He has campaigned very negatively in Pennsylvania, and has tried to personally destroy Hillary Clinton ever since he announced he’d run for president. As if that’s not enough, he’s also an expert at twisting the Republican nominee’s, John McCain, words.

They who believe that Obama isn’t a member of “Washington Inc.” are deluding themselves.

And their readers.

Ed Morrissey:

In a way, Obama is the Jon Stewart candidate. He sits on the edge of politics, making “wry and sardonic” comments about what other people do without doing anything himself. No wonder younger voters love him; he gets to be ironic while taking no responsibility for anything. And when people press him for action, he’d prefer to eat his waffle in peace until he can find a way to act as a commentator rather than as a real agent for change.

And what excuse has he given for that? Obama doesn’t want to become part of the Beltway culture. That sounds good, but did he run for the Senate so he could not participate in the legislative process? He could have stayed in Illinois to do that.

Unfortunately for Obama and the Democrats who have carried him so close to the finish line, that “fierce urgency of now” is nothing more than a soundbite for a legislator who doesn’t legislate, an agent of change who hasn’t changed anything, and the beacon of hope who hasn’t felt an urgency to take any action in the “now” for the past three years. He’s been eating his waffle and hanging out with people who don’t like America or Americans much. That qualifies him to work the next Daily Show spin-off, not run the nation.

Topics: everything

  Posted by Michael van der Galien at 5:12 pm on Thursday, April 24, 2008

3 Responses to “Rove Dissects Obama”

1. Carl P Says:
   April 24th, 2008 at 5:19 pm

   Jules, it’s not WAPO. It’s WSJ.

2. Fatty Bolger Says:
   April 25th, 2008 at 9:48 am

   The interesting thing about Obama is that the more he reveals himself, the less likeable he becomes. Maybe he knows this, and it explains why he is so standoffish with the reporters who love him.

   Hey, that might make a good title for a book. “Candidates Who Hate Reporters, and the Reporters Who Love Them.”

3. steve Says:
   April 25th, 2008 at 6:47 pm

   ha! Fatty, that sounds like the intro of the old “Fury” television series: “Fury, the story of a horse and the boy who loved him”.

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