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Under fire, Obama at last finds his true voice
Barack Obama’s strangely clueless efforts to “explain” his remarks that economic bitterness is the reason white people believe in God, national sovereignty and the right of self-defense—an explanation in which he repeats and reaffirms the very statements that have gotten him in trouble while he concedes only that he phrased them wrong—are covered today in the New York Times and the Washington Post. He told an interviewer yesterday, “Obviously, if I worded things in a way that made people offended, I deeply regret that.” This standard non-apology apology—“I’m sorry if you feel offended,” instead of “I’m sorry for what I myself did”—is as offensive as the initial offense and a sure mark of a shallow person. Yesterday Hillary Clinton campaigned across Pennsylvania attacking him for the statement in each speech. Meanwhile, Scott of Powerline points out what I discussed yesterday, the similarity of Obama’s views of middle America to those of Thomas Frank in What’s Wrong with Kansas? Scott writes that even in his attempts to explain himself,
Obama recapitulates a political sociology that retains an incredible disdain for the concerns of average voters. It is entirely of a piece with Thomas Frank’s What’s the Matter With Kansas? Steven Malanga’s brief review suggests how much Obama’s campaign themes have in common with Frank’s book, as does Richard Nadler’s longer account of it.Again, that sense of amazement that Obama, who artfully and even brilliantly concealed his real beliefs for so long, now seems incapable of distancing himself from them at all or even grasping why they bother people. Not only is his image as a racial conciliator shattered, so is his image as a deft, even minimally deft, politician. His new slogan seems to be: “Listen, you people. What you see is what you get. I’m an arrogant, elitist, disdainful, anti-white, anti-Christian, anti-American, Marxist true believer. Vote for me for president!
Bill in Maryland writes:
Obama has survived the “typical white person” remark, his association with violent sixties radicals, Wright’s deranged ranting and Michelle’s anti-Americanism and paranoia. There is no reason to believe that his recent remarks will have any effect on his candidacy. The question is—why has he remained immune where anyone else would be in deep trouble or out of the race altogether? The answer is that Obama is not understood realistically by his supporters. He is valued for what he symbolizes. Through his Hope, Change and Unity rhetoric and his promise of a post-racial America, he has managed to transform himself into an icon. He no longer needs to conceal what he thinks because the reality of the man no longer matters.LA replies:
If Bill is right, that’s bad, in fact it’s very bad, because it means that if Obama is elected, there will not be the healthy reaction against him that I’ve been projecting, except perhaps among a minority of conservatives. Which means he would have his way. Which means catastrophe. Posted by Lawrence Auster at April 13, 2008 02:26 PM | Send Email entry |