The idea was to write this column about anything other than the campaign and election. But there is no escape from those two realities because we are drowning in it. It’ll be over soon and collectively we will briefly turn to other interests.
The other interests are there, especially with Thanksgiving and Christmas on the horizon. For the sports-minded, there is pro football, basketball, a hope for a hockey season, the ongoing college football, basketball, women’s competition, and so on and so on... There’s plenty of other entertainment, including concerts, fall and wintertime activities. To say there is nothing to do is to live in isolation from the world around us.
A reader of the Sunday issue of The New York Times, copies of which for this area are printed by the Columbia Daily Tribune, we got what we expected, a long editorial extolling the virtues of President Barack Obama and calling for his re-election. If he is re-elected it won’t be because of Missourians, the majority of whom oppose him if the polls are correct. The credits the Times gives Obama are enough to push you to cancel your subscription, don’t jog with realities, and are visits to dreamland coated with liberalism. We won’t cancel the paper because it has many other news qualities that have value.
We did find a commentary by Frank Bruni to be interesting. He doesn’t particularly like Mitt Romney, but he wrote that Obama has squandered advantages and “despite the economy, the president should be ahead” in the race, but isn’t. At this time it’s too close to call — again if the polls are right.
“Obama isn’t quite the candidate, or politician, he’s cracked up to be. The One is a fraction of his reputed self,” Bruni wrote. That’s accurate but unrecognizable by his followers.
The president isn’t as great as he thinks he is, not as superior to everybody else as he thinks he is, and that air he expells about his record and what he is going to do the next four years is bunk. We have a president who is long on promises and short on performance. But he’s fooled many Americans with his promises.
Bruni is for Obama and thinks he will win, but there is no question he is disapointed in the One. His commentary is as frank as it is hopeful for Obama. “His tone is marketedly changed from 2008, a tactical decision that may not be the right one. And his moments of genuine oratorial transcendence are interspersed, as they’ve always been, with spells of detachment, defensiveness, disgruntlement. Denver wasn’t the first or only time that he seemed put out by the madness of the political merry-go-round, even though it’s a whirl he himself elected.”
While praising Obama in his closing, Bruni wrote: “But this campaign has illuminated nothing so brightly as the limits of his magic, along with his shortcomings that he would carry with him into a second term (should he get one) and would be wise to address.”
The problem is that Obama doesn’t admit to his shortcomings. He truly believes he has done everything right and can’t understand why people don’t recognize that. It’s his personality that is the problem. He reminds us of young people who when growing up were told how smart they were and never realized that they had shortcomings. They believed what they were told and shame on those who told them how great they are. Now some members of the Big Media are recognizing the president’s shortcomings, are disappointed, but haven’t lost all hope.
Many Americans have lost hope in the One!
