This is not the QotD, it’s the prelude:
President Obama is a beguiling but confounding figure. As he has said of himself: “I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views.” (”The Audacity of Hope.”) It is indeed audacious that he should proclaim this consciously disingenuous attribute. And, as one reads his inaugural address, it is hard not to conclude that it was shrewdly crafted to perpetuate such confusion.
Run-of-the-mill politicians try to hide their duplicity. Only the most gifted of that profession brag that they intend to confound and confuse the public. Such an effort is beyond ingenious – it is brazenly ingenuous. — Tony Blankley, The Washington Times, Obama’s Blank Screen, 1/27/2009
THIS is the QotD:
When folks on the left or center-left express disillusionment and dismay that President Obama hasn’t governed as some sort of pragmatic non-ideologue who unites the country, takes the middle road, and keeps the pork and yuck out of government, it seems to me that the fault lies not with Obama. It lies with the people who bizarrely believed Obama would do otherwise in the first place.
There was never any objective, factual basis for believing that President Obama would be any other way than what we are seeing. Apparently, a large chunk of Obama’s voting base consisted of people who invented some sort of counterfactual, reality-immune fantasy in their head and then voted for that fantasy when ticking ‘Obama’ on their ballots. I’m sure there are plenty of valid criticisms to be made of President Obama, but the fact that the real President Obama doesn’t correspond to naive, irrational voters’ fantasies doesn’t strike me as one of them. — Rhymes with Cars and Girls, The Disillusioned Center-Left’s Case Against Obama: He’s Just Not Living Up To All That Stuff We Made Up About Him In Our Heads
In the run-up to the election, no one was interested in objective, fact-based analysis of candidate Obama – least of all the media, whose job it (normally) is to provide such analysis. Instead, they too projected what they wanted upon his blank screen, and thrills ran up their legs when he spoke, regardless of whatever duplicitous, disingenuous words emerged from his mouth.
In the words of a man Obama once swore he could not disown (but later did), Obama’s CHICKENS, are coming home to ROOST!
Not that it’ll make much of a difference.
Hat tip to Vanderleun for the second quote, who adds in another piece:
I’d like to get off of Obama as a constant subject. I really would. It’s just that the man is a walking, non-talking, wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling, gaffe and lie machine. I’ve been watching presidents since Eisenhower and I’ve never seen one one-tenth as twisted as this one.
And we’ve got three more years of this to look forward to.
