It’s a Bird, It’s a Plane, It’s Obama! - "What a difference winning makes" By FRANK RICH

[jefferson_dem]

It’s a Bird, It’s a Plane, It’s Obama!
By FRANK RICH

NOT since Clark Kent changed in a phone booth has there been an instant image makeover to match Barack Obama’s in the aftermath of his health care victory. “He went from Jimmy Carter to F.D.R. in just a fortnight,” said one of the “Game Change” authors, Mark Halperin, on MSNBC. “Look at the steam in the man’s stride!” exclaimed Chris Matthews. “Is it just me, or does Barack Obama seem different since health care passed?” wrote Peter Beinart in The Daily Beast, which, like The Financial Times, ran an illustration portraying the gangly president as a newly bulked-up Superman.

What a difference winning makes — especially in America. Whatever did (or didn’t) get into Obama’s Wheaties, this much is certain: No one is talking about the clout of Scott Brown or Rahm Emanuel any more.

But has the man really changed — or is it just us? Fifteen months after arriving at the White House, Obama remains by far the most popular national politician in the country, even with a sub-50 percent approval rating. And yet he’s also the most enigmatic. While he is in our face more than any other figure in the world, we still aren’t entirely sure what to make of him.

Depending on where you stand — or the given day — he is either an overintellectual, professorial wuss or a ruthless Chicago machine pol rivaling the original Boss Daley. He is either a socialist redistributing wealth to the undeserving poor or a tool of Wall Street’s Goldman Sachs elite. He is a terrorist-coddling, A.C.L.U.-tilting lawyer or a closet Cheneyite upholding the worst excesses of the Bush administration’s end run on the Constitution. He is a lightweight celebrity who’s clueless without a teleprompter or a Machiavellian mastermind who has ingeniously forged his Hawaiian birth certificate, covered up his ties to Islamic radicals and bamboozled the entire mainstream press. He is the reincarnation of J.F.K., L.B.J., F.D.R., Reagan, Hitler, Stalin, Adlai Stevenson or Nelson Mandela. (Funny how few people compared George W. Bush to anyone but Hitler and his parents.)

No wonder that eight major new Obama books are arriving in the coming months, as Howard Kurtz reported in The Washington Post last week. And that’s just counting those by real authors, like Bob Woodward and Jonathan Alter, not the countless anti-Obama diatribes. There’s a bottomless market for these volumes not just because their protagonist remains popular but also because we keep hoping that the Obama puzzle might be cracked once and for all, like the Da Vinci Code.

<SNIP>

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/04/opinion/04rich.html?ref=opinion&pagewanted=print

[Captain Hilts]

1. The authors of the "eight major new Obama books" are men. Just an observation. nt

[damonm]

4. And so is Obama - your point?

[DevonRex]

13. I don't get it either. All men are bad? That Obama is a sexist because the upcoming

books are all written by men? That Orly Taitz must be right because she's a woman?

:shrug:

[Captain Hilts]

21. It's a Man's, Man's World. nt

[VespertineIconoclast]

2. Good read. I liked the analogy of President Obama...

being like a Rorschach test -- What you see is what you want to see. So true.

[Hekate]

5. Interestingly, Obama has been a Rorschach test since he first appeared on the national scene...

DUers participated wildly in all kinds of psychological projections during the primary campaigns.

Hekate

[Jennicut]

3. I think the problem is that many people want to compare him to other people.

Maybe he is just Barack Obama.
Maybe he is a just a left-center to center Dem who is not really all that idealogical who decides on an issue by issue basis what he thinks is the best thing at the moment. I don't know, maybe for some people that is just to simple.

[Sky Masterson]

7. Well said!

I think you may have just cracked the Da Vinci Code. :)

[Jennicut]

8. Thanks.

I think Rich nailed it in that Obama's positions have not changed much from the campaign. I never saw an ultra-left liberal nor a conservative Dem like Ben Nelson. I saw someone slightly to the left of Bill Clinton. Very slightly.
Maybe that is why I am one of the few that don't freak out on a daily basis. There are some things I disagree with Obama on but none of it surprises me.

[Writer]

16. I SOOOOOO agree with this!

Barack Obama is "the next" Barack Obama, and nothing more.

[johnaries]

20. You nailed it. He is who he is. We shouldn't keep expecting him

to be someone else.

[impik]

6. Left wing racism. Finally someone finds the guts to say it

[CBR]

9. Ain't that the truth!! nt

[NJmaverick]

11. Yeah that was one of the more interesting and salient points

[DevonRex]

14. About time, isn't it?

Some of us here have known it for a long time.

[Uzybone]

15. Its been clear for a long time

but white "liberals" cant be racist in any form can they?


"because “they expect a black guy to be intemperate, impetuous, impatient” rather than “measured, deliberate, patient.”" Hallelujah to the person who wrote that to Rich.

[NJmaverick]

10. K&R for a very good read

[Peacetrain]

12. I am on board!!

[Clio the Leo]

17. It's like that verse of scripture "To whom much is given, much is expected."

I've been somewhat understanding of criticism from the left because I think his critics are upset with him BECAUSE they want him to do better (and the way we all came together after the BFD was passed is proof of this.) It's not like criticism from the right where folks truly want to see him fail because they know that that's the only way for them to succeed.

But he said it from the beginning. His newness and uniqueness served as a blank canvas for everyone to project the image of their own political messiah. To the environmentalist, he was never going to propose off shore drilling. He was different! To the pacifist, he was never going to fire an arm in an offensive maneuver. He was Different! Despite what he SAID, we all have our own projection of him and how we wanted him to be. I wanted him to be the black guy (and I'm not ashamed to admit that) who would be willing to, with humility, TALK to people he disagreed with, primarily leaders of foreign countries, but also those across the political aisle. Someone who respected everyone, regardless of .... whatever. Now, he fulfilled my first wish just by showing up. And he's obviously delivering on my second wish. I'm not sure if I just got lucky or my wishes were formed based on my voracious appetite early on for all information about the man. I listened to his two books (audiobooks) more times than I can count. (What can I say? His voice is soothing after a long days work. Makes for a nice ride home.)

So there was that aspect of it but one thing no one questions is how intelligent he is and how seemingly everything he touches turns to gold. You watch him play P.O.T.U.S. (instead of HORSE) against Clark Kellogg and his shots SWISH into the basket just as you'd expect them to. Had they done otherwise, you'd have actually been shocked that this man, despite being someone who never played basketball higher than the high school level, actually doesn't have skillz.

That's The Obama for you. That's our Superman.

The WH Press Core produced a video for their dinner last year....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kVFdAJRVm94

Now the video was funny enough at the time ... but that was last spring ... and he wasn't "failing to deliver" yet. Now that we've survived last fall, it's even funnier because it shows the level of expectation we all came into this with. "So just snap your fingers and fix the USA!" the song ends ... and that's apparently what some were expecting. But that wasn't humanly possible.

And even Superman had his limits.

But two weeks ago, he passed a bill that some of our greatest leaders were unable to do AND passed sweeping reform to education lending AND agreed to a treaty with our former mortal enemy. It wasn't quite a snap of the finger ... and the USA isn't fixed ... but even doing ALL of that ... with everyone recognizing what a BFD it was ... there was still the feeling that he was simply doing what we all thought he could.

You know, satire is only funny when it's based in truth.

[Egnever]

22. Wow

Awesome post Clio

[Number23]

18. hell yeah

"What’s clear is that Obama largely remains a fixed point even while the rest of us keep wildly revising our judgments, whether looking at him through the prism of partisan politics, race, media melodrama or any other we choose. It’s our recession-tossed country, not his presidency, that is rocked by violent mood swings."

kicked and rec'd

[tilsammans]

19. k & r !!!

:kick: