How an empty black suit regards a man of accomplishment

Paul Nachman writes:

Here’s just one notable paragraph from a Politico article about disorganization within Obama’s campaign:

This has produced a campaign being animated by one thing above all. It is not exclusively about hope and change anymore, words that seem like distant echoes even to Obama’s original loyalists—and to the president himself. It is not the solidarity of a hard-fought cause, often absent in this mostly joyless campaign. It is Obama’s own burning competitiveness, with his remorseless focus on beating Mitt Romney—an opponent he genuinely views with contempt and fears will be unfit to run the country.

Of course “running the country” isn’t a president’s job, but that’s the way people talk nowadays. So never mind that. What’s really striking is the Olympian attitude, that Obama “fears” Romney is “unfit”—an opinion about a strikingly competent man from someone who’s never done anything of substance in his life. (Winning a presidential campaign isn’t substance, it’s theatrics, and the guy clearly has no interest in actually doing the job that he was elected to, not that he’d be capable if he were interested.)

This fits very well with that “Whiskey” quotation you’ve highlighted recently:

Black culture’s fatal flaw: toxic levels of self-esteem mixed with manifest incompetence and lack of any driving fear of failure or doubt.

Thing is, Obama didn’t grow up in black culture. So he either was a very apt student of it, starting about when he went away to college, or it’s so strongly genetic that even someone who has a lily-white parent can manifest it.

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Paul K. writes:

I have a question about Whiskey’s quote,

“Black culture’s fatal flaw: toxic levels of self-esteem mixed with manifest incompetence and lack of any driving fear of failure or doubt.”

Doesn’t “toxic levels of self-esteem” cover “lack of any driving fear of failure or doubt”? To me that last element seems redundant. “Black culture’s fatal flaw: toxic levels of self-esteem mixed with manifest incompetence” works just as well for me, unless I’m missing some nuance.

LA replies:

You’re right, I had had the same thought in passing, but hadn’t articulated it to myself.

Also, I think that “combined” would work better than “mixed.” So the statement would be better written as:

“Black culture’s fatal flaw: toxic levels of self-esteem combined with manifest incompetence.”

A reader writes:

Of course Obama hates Romney. Because in his and Elizabeth Warren’s infinite wisdom, “he didn’t build that.”

Posted by Lawrence Auster at August 20, 2012 07:53 PM | Send