The demon parade

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I just put up a post arguing that hero worship really isn’t a normal part of politics in this country, and that started me thinking: what is “just part of politics” in this country anymore is the opposite of hero worship—what we might call villain demonization. I think the first place we really see that in recent American politics was in Edward Kennedy’s decision to throw out truth and civility in order to destroy the nomination of Robert Bork to the Supreme Court; that was succeeded by the attempt to do the same to Clarence Thomas, which failed when Anita Hill didn’t hold up as a credible witness. When Bill Clinton won the White House, those two things, combined with the memory of the Iran-Contra investigation, had the Right out for blood, and what Hillary Clinton would dub the “politics of personal destruction” were on in earnest. I do believe the impeachment of President Clinton was justified—perjury is a major felony; it is to the justice system what counterfeiting is to the banking system—but I don’t believe the investigation that produced the circumstances under which the President (stupidly) perjured himself was justified by that point, if indeed there had ever been sufficient justification for it. (Those aren’t weasel words—I simply don’t know the facts of the matter well enough to say one way or the other.)

From there, we got the disputed 2000 election and the outrage of a Left that had never seriously considered the possibility it might lose, and thus refused to accept that it had (a refusal which did, at least, produce the single most brilliant political bumper sticker I’ve ever seen: “Re-Defeat Bush”); this would, over time, build to a crescendo of political filth such as I don’t think the US has seen since the 1860s, with shots like “BusHitler” and “Chimpy McHitler” aimed at the President, and considerably worse insults directed at VP Cheney. We saw the Left advance from the level of abuse directed at the Clintons to language actively designed to debase and dehumanize President Bush and his administration—with the worst of it (aside from that dumped on the President and VP) unloaded on Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, for whom the good old Southern plantation racism was dragged out, used for the exact same purpose against her as it had been back in the day. She might well have said, as entertainer Lloyd Marcus recently did, “Because they are libs and I am an uppity, off the liberal plantation, run-away black, all tactics to restore me to my owners are acceptable.” If she had, however, I doubt she would have gotten any consideration from the Left, only more ridicule.

One advantage to the election of Barack Obama to the big chair at 1600 Pennsylvania is that his status as the first person of African descent (though not of slave descent; that breakthrough hasn’t happened yet) to assume the Presidency has made the use of that sort of vitriol against him politically disadvantageous (for now, at least), and has thus walked back the level of nastiness in our political discourse. Unfortunately, the Left seems firmly intent on undoing that advantage by treating any sharp opposition to the President and his policies as if it were that bad, or worse. Thus, for instance, the howl over Joe Wilson’s inappropriate (though arguably true) outburst—you’d never realize, listening to the sanctimony oozing from the lips of Nancy Pelosi and others, that the Democratic congressional caucus as a whole had treated President Bush far worse, and on more than one occasion. Thus as well the debasement of the words “racism” and “racist” into mere political swear words for liberals to hurl at conservatives. Thus, ultimately, the deliberate effort to exacerbate the inflammation in the American body politic for political gain, rather than allowing it to subside somewhat and hoping to draw advantage from that.

This is not to say that there haven’t been inappropriate and outrageous things hurled at President Obama (though the most ubiquitous, the Obama-Joker poster, was created by a liberal Palestinian supporter of Dennis Kucinich); but it is to say that in their efforts to paint seemingly every criticism directed at him with that brush, Democratic leaders are guilty of both the rankest of rank hypocrisy and an appallingly cynical and short-sighted attempt at political manipulation. Honestly, while the Right needs to continue to work to marginalize and weed out the nasty folks, most folks on the Left really don’t have a leg to stand on to complain about the nastiness. If they want to publicly repent of calling George W. Bush “Chimpy McHitler,” Dick Cheney “Darth Vader,” Condoleezza Rice “Aunt Jemima,” and Michael Steele “Simple Sambo,” then I’ll welcome them complaining about a portrayal of Barack Obama as a witch doctor. Until then, what more are they saying than “It’s only racist when you do it”? They’d never tolerate that sort of special pleading from the Right; why should they be allowed to get away with it?

Hero worship?

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I posted below what I labeled three parts of a four-part response to Doug Hagler’s comments on my post “The self-esteem presidency.” Those parts were, respectively, a post noting mistakes Sarah Palin has made, one listing positive things about Barack Obama, and one listing positive things about the overly- and unfairly-vilified Dick Cheney. Being all of the same kind, detail posts, they quite properly went together. There is, however, a broader response that I think needs to be offered. Doug kicked the conversation off not just with a challenge, but with an assertion:

See, my theory is that hero-worship is just part of politics, and my guess is that it is just as operative with Palin supporters as it is with Obama supporters.

I think the best that can be said of the first part of this statement, the general theory Doug propounded, is that to the extent that it’s true, it’s not meaningful. On the one hand, I don’t know that we can rule out all hero worship for any significant politician—heck, I can think of one or two people who could be accused of that with respect to John McCain, though not for anything he’s done in politics. (Come to think of it, though, that same qualifier could be applied to most of Barack Obama’s adoring fans.) On the other, however, and more significantly, large-scale hero worship for politicians is a very rare thing. Take John Kerry, for instance (I’m tempted to say, “Please!”): he certainly tried to create an heroic image for himself, but I don’t think even Democrats bought it on a visceral level. They staunchly supported him, but for ideological reasons—and for emotional reasons that had nothing to do with Sen. Kerry, on which more in a minute. Hero worship of Ol’ Long Face was simply not in evidence.

If you look at the major politicians out there, at recent presidents and presidential candidates, Sen. Kerry was in that respect the rule, not the exception. Granted, Sen. Kerry was at the uncharismatic end for a politician, and thus unusually unlikely to inspire adoration—but not even Bill Clinton, the most charismatic of a remarkably unappealing set of presidential contenders over the last quarter-century, never inspired anything remotely approaching true widespread hero worship, let alone anything one might think to call a cult of personality.

This past campaign was the exception. Under normal circumstances, Hillary Clinton would have run away with the Democratic nomination, because she came into the campaign generating far more passion than any non-incumbent Democratic presidential candidate of the preceding 45 years; in some cases, I think you could fairly call that hero worship, of a purely ideological sort. As it was, though, she got blown away by somebody who could also generate that ideological sort of hero worship, but who also had the charisma and political skills to create much more—and took full advantage of them, even amplifying them by using quasi-messianic language of himself in his speeches.

This, of course, created a hunger in the Republican base for a candidate of their own who could do the same—and when Sen. McCain found one to be his running mate, the base went through the roof. There were a couple things, however, which mitigated against the development of the same sort of personality cult around Gov. Palin that had developed around Sen. Obama. The first, of course, was the fact that the McCain campaign didn’t want any such thing to happen; indeed, once they realized just how big a tiger they’d gotten by the tail, their main concern the rest of the way appeared to be keeping Gov. Palin from upstaging Sen. McCain. I wouldn’t say the GOP candidate was actively trying to squash support for his running mate, but he and his staff were definitely working to prevent it from developing in ways that wouldn’t benefit him directly.

The second, on the evidence of her own writings and speeches since the campaign, appears to have been that Gov. Palin wasn’t interested in any such thing happening either. Not only did she not make any “elect me and everything will be wonderful” types of statements during the campaign, she hasn’t made any since, or indeed done anything close. She has not adopted a strategy of offering herself to the nation, and there seems to be no reason to think that will change. Nor has she tried to organize, or indeed offered any support to, the community of online communities that have developed around her; in fact, the only acknowledgements I can recall from her staff of sites like Conservatives4Palin and TeamSarah have been vaguely unflattering.

The upshot of all of this is that, while there are no doubt a lot of people out there who could be fairly accused of hero worship with regard to Gov. Palin, whose view of her is unreasonably positive, there’s none of the fawning over her that one gets over the President, even from her most prominent supporters. There are no clergy offering prayers to her, no celebrities making music videos offering prayers to her, no school districts teaching their students to sing worship songs about her, no “Palin Youth” to match the “Obama Youth”—none of that, nothing of the kind. And certainly there’s no other politician, now or in living memory, who’s ever gotten that sort of treatment. The Obama phenomenon (Obamanomenon?) is and remains sui generis—at least outside countries like North Korea that can compel it.

Now, I can understand Doug’s desire to argue otherwise, since I know the personality cult of the Obamessiah doesn’t make him any happier than it does me; I can understand why he would want to be able to argue that this is just par for the course in politics, not something of which the Left has become uniquely guilty. In the end, though, the facts just won’t sustain that argument; this is in fact something unique to the Left in American politics. I continue to believe that there’s good reason for that, that this is no accident but rather is the result of the secular Left’s search for a secular messiah to replace the one it has decisively rejected. For all the temptation to political idolatry on the Right (something I’ve certainly written about often enough), that particular temptation doesn’t exist there, as religious conservatives already have a Messiah and non-religious conservatives tend to be quite consciously anti-messianic. Here’s hoping that doesn’t change.

My own personal bailout

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Despite the fact that I’m only 35, I’m an old folkie at heart; I suppose that’s what comes of growing up with a father who started at Stanford in the first heat of the Kingston Trio’s success. I remember, for instance, a 1983 folk music reunion concert that we taped while we were living down in Texas—I remember it quite well, in fact, having rewatched it more times than I can count. One of my favorite songs from that concert, one by Tom Paxton, has been coming back to me as once again eerily appropriate:

I Am Changing My Name to Chrysler

Oh, the price of gold is rising out of sight,
And the dollar is in sorry shape tonight;
What the dollar used to get us
Now won’t get a head of lettuce—
No, the economic forecast isn’t bright.
But amidst the clouds a spot is shining grey;
I begin to glimpse a new and better way.
And I’ve demised a plan of action,
Worked it down to the last fraction,
And I’m going into action here today.

Chorus:
I am changing my name to Chrysler;
I am going down to Washington D.C.
I will tell some power broker
What they did for Iacocca
Will be perfectly acceptable to me.
I am changing my name to Chrysler;
I am headed for that great receiving line.
So when they hand a million grand out,
I’ll be standing with my hand out,
Yes sir—I’ll get mine.

When my creditors come screaming for their dough,
I’ll be proud to tell them all where they can go.
They won’t need to scream and holler—
They’ll be paid to the last dollar
Where the endless streams of money seem to flow.
I’ll be glad to tell them all what they can do;
It’s a matter of a simple form or two.
It’s not just renumeration—it’s a liberal education;
Aren’t you kind of glad that I’m in debt to you?

Chorus

Since the first amphibian crawled out of the slime,
We’ve been struggling in an unrelenting climb;
We were hardly up and walking before money started talking,
And it said that failure is an awful crime.
It’s been that way a millenium or two,
But now it seems there is a different point of view.
If you’re a corporate Titanic and your failure is gigantic,
Down in Congress there’s a safety net for you.

Chorus

Words and music: Tom Paxton
©1980 Accabonac Music (ASCAP)

Does Sarah Palin make mistakes?

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Of course she does; but judging by his comments on an earlier post of mine, colleague and friend of the blog Doug Hagler appears to think that I don’t think so. Now, I don’t do dares—that’s been a personal policy of mine for a long time—but since Doug responded so admirably to my counter-challenge, making the effort to find ten positive things to say about George W. Bush (whom he normally tends to describe in terms that suggest the devil incarnate), I’m happy to respond in kind. Herewith then, are a dozen mistakes Sarah Palin has made. (It wasn’t a hard list to put together; I’ve touched on most of these before, here or elsewhere.)

  1. Trusting Frank Murkowski. It all worked out for her in the end, but trusting Gov. Murkowski enough to accept an appointment as ethics commissioner and chair for the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission put her in a very difficult and vulnerable position. She’d already found herself pitted against one political mentor; given that Gov. Murkowski had already gone the nepotism route in appointing his daughter Lisa to fill his Senate seat, one would think she should have been more suspicious as to whether he was really on the up-and-up.
  2. Failing to include a sufficient breach-of-confidentiality provision in the Alaska Executive Branch Ethics Act. Given the circumstances under which she ran for governor, it’s understandable that Gov. Palin made an ethics law for the state’s executive branch a priority. Unfortunately, she failed to insure that it included a provision parallel to that in Alaska’s Legislative Ethics Act, which specifies that if an ethics complainant breaks confidentiality on their complaint, that complaint is automatically dismissed. This protection against politically-motivated frivolous complaints would have prevented the EBEA being turned into a political weapon against her.
  3. Failing to include provision in the EBEA allowing speaking, etc. outside of Alaska. Given that Gov. Palin has been involved in national politics (primarily through the National Governors’ Association, at first) from quite early in her time in Juneau, this was a definite lack of foresight.
  4. Failing to include in the EBEA any provision that persons filing complaints judged to be frivolous would be required to reimburse the state for the cost of the complaint. Again, such laws need to include teeth to insure that only people who have real and substantive complaints file them. Failing to provide for this resulted in a considerable cost to the state of Alaska over the course of the previous calendar year.
  5. Initially supporting the Gravina Island bridge. This one isn’t really all that surprising; for all the ridicule in the Lower 48, why shouldn’t the people of Ketchikan have a bridge to their airport? The problem isn’t the bridge’s location, but its cost, which is why after her election, Gov. Palin killed the project (a fact for which the Alaska Democratic Party gave her full credit). If she’d looked into the details more closely during the campaign, she could have come to her mature conclusion sooner and avoided support that would later be mildly embarrassing.
  6. Not insisting that Trooper Mike Wooten be fired for cause. Given that this guy was her ex-brother-in-law, it’s understandable that Gov. Palin would want to avoid the appearance of using her office for political gain; but there was far more than enough justification for his firing, given some of his actions, and the fact that he’s still an Alaska State Trooper does not reflect well on the state. At the same time, she ended up tarred with that appearance anyway. Might as well be hung for a sheep as a goat and just do what’s best, regardless of how it looks.
  7. Not simply firing Walt Monegan rather than attempting to allow him to save face. He was an at-will employee who was undermining the governor’s agenda for the state and defying direct orders. The face-saving offer of another position accomplished nothing except making it look like Gov. Palin was trying to placate him, and he didn’t need placating.
  8. Not doing something more drastic about Levi Johnston when he started hanging around her daughter Bristol. What, I don’t know, but the dude’s a classic good-looking loser; while the Palins were by no means as blasé about it as Johnston has liked at times to pretend, one wishes they had managed to keep him from taking advantage of their daughter the way he did.
  9. Allowing herself to be staffed with McCain hand-me-downs after accepting the VP nomination. John McCain may well have run an even more dysfunctional campaign than Hillary Clinton in 2008, and that’s saying something. You can see why Gov. Palin would have simply accepted the staffers the campaign gave her, but that was a mistake; some of those folks were good and had her best interests at heart, but some weren’t and didn’t, and this made her vulnerable to them later on. She should have taken control of her own staffing from the beginning.
  10. Allowing the McCain campaign to try to squeeze her into its mold with such things as the infamous $150,000 wardrobe makeover and the decision to control her press availability. That hurt her image and muffled her political voice and virtues. That leads to
  11. Not “going rogue” sooner and more decisively. She did better when she went back to her own clothes, when she started slipping the leash and talking to the press on her own hook, and when she started showing her independence. As soon as it began to become clear that the way the McCain campaign was using her wasn’t working, she should have broken loose. Perhaps most importantly, when they wrote off Michigan, she should have followed through on her instincts and gone campaigning up there on her own hook.
  12. Letting pique get the best of her in the Couric interview. That made her look bad and gave critics and comedians fodder to beat her up with; no woman as well-read as Gov. Palin actually is should have let irritation drive her to blow off a question about what she reads. If she were going to give vent to irritation, there would have been far more productive ways. Clearly, and by her own admission, Katie Couric and her attitude rubbed Gov. Palin very much the wrong way—but she was old enough and mature enough to have dealt with that rather than giving in to it.

Now, Doug may complain that I have listed no character flaws here—which is more or less true, though #12 does offer something of an indication. That she has character flaws and besetting sins, I do not doubt, since she is human as are we all; but I only observe her at a distance, and trying to get a feel for someone’s flaws at a distance requires either a) direct testimony, b) a long record from which to deduce them, or c) both. In my post “The self-esteem presidency,” for instance, I referenced both statements from Obama insiders—not direct quotes, but reported by the Obamaphile media, so I see no reason to doubt their veracity—and a number of pieces of evidence, plus a long piece by Ed Lasky, which draws on considerable evidence in its own right, to offer what I think is a reasonable conclusion about one aspect of the President’s behavior patterns. People allege other, more serious, character flaws, but I just don’t see sufficient evidence to sustain the charges. Similarly, while people have accused Gov. Palin of all sorts of character flaws, to this point, there has been little or no evidence to support their claims (and much of the so-called “evidence” offered has been untrue), and thus no real justification for any conclusions.

10 positive things about Barack Obama

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This is the second part of a four-part response to cyberfriend Doug Hagler; I’m putting up the first three all together, posting them in reverse chronological order so they’ll be in the right order going down the page. In his collection of (mostly) positive statements about George W. Bush—for which I give him credit despite the ridiculous hyperbole of describing Bush 43 as “perhaps the worst presidency in American history”; sorry, Doug, James Buchanan and Warren G. Harding say hello—he made the following statement:

I imagine praising Obama is at least as painful for Rob as the following was for me.

The truth is, it’s nothing of the sort. I like praising Barack Obama, for a couple reasons. One, I’d always rather believe the best of people, if they give me a chance; two, my optimistic side delights in the opportunity to tell my pessimistic side that things are better than I think they are; and three, as great a disappointment as he’s been to me, I can’t help liking the guy and wanting to be able to respect him and think well of him. And for that matter, four, he’s my president, too, and the more that can be said well of him, the better for the country. So, herewith and forthwith:

  1. He’s a loving, devoted husband.
  2. He’s a loving, devoted father. Those are two separate things, but they go together; and lest anyone try to dismiss them, I think they’re profoundly, profoundly important. My biggest problem with Bill Clinton was that he showed himself repeatedly to be a man who would betray his nearest and dearest and his most important vows for the sake of the needs and desires of the moment; that, in my book, called into question his right to be his country’s greatest servant. I cannot believe we will ever have that question about Barack Obama.
  3. He had the guts to tell the Left that we need to make room for religious faith in our political conversation. That was the point when I really began to have high hopes for him; it was a critically important message that still needs to be reiterated.
  4. He prevented the character assassination of Cambridge Police Sgt. Jim Crowley. He may well have had ulterior motives involved in that, but regardless, that bespoke a personal nobility that I appreciate.
  5. He authorized the use of force against the Somali pirates, which was the right and necessary thing to do. (Side note: Doug tries to only give me half credit for this, because in that post I also pointed out something with which I disagreed with. So, what’s the deal, Doug—only uncritical cheerleading counts? A trifle inconsistent, aren’t we?)
  6. He clearly wants to build support for America in the Muslim world. I disagree with a lot of his assumptions in this and the way he’s going about it, but even so, the goal is an important one. It would be too easy for American foreign policy to lapse into a simplistic “Muslim = enemy” equation—so far, we haven’t had any leaders who wanted to go that way, and here’s hoping that doesn’t change.
  7. He’s not afraid to dream big. If he were, he wouldn’t be in the White House.
  8. He would make a wonderful dinner guest. Or so, at least, is the sense I get. Don’t dismiss this—it’s a more important statement than you probably think.
  9. He has overcome a great deal. Abandoned by his father at a very young age, dragged off to Indonesia when his mother remarried a man from whom she would also end up divorced, then shipped back to Hawaii to live with his grandparents . . . I’ve said more than once that his record of real accomplishments is paper-thin, but the truth is, given his personal history and the damage divorce does to children, it’s nothing short of amazing that he is where he is.
  10. He appears to have come through the Chicago machine without becoming personally corrupt. I’ve faulted him in the past for being a go-along-to-get-along politician, a creation of the machine, and someone who wanted reformist credentials without actually confronting the machine that made him; but whatever my concerns about him as a politician, though I think he stained himself somewhat with Tony Rezko on the house deal, it seems clear that he managed to stay out of the corruption in Chicago. After all, you can bet that if Rod Blagojevich had anything on Barack Obama that qualified as dirt, he would have used it. This might sound like faint praise, but it’s really not; when all is said and done, President Obama may well be the only major politician to come out of Illinois during his time there of whom that can be said.

10 positive things about Dick Cheney

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This is the third part of my response to Doug Hagler, who also issued this challenge:

I am constitutionally unable to come up with 10 positives about Cheney—and I challenge anyone who is not a sociopath to do so.

That’s unjust, so I had to take it up.

  1. He’s a loving, devoted husband.
  2. He’s a loving, devoted father. See my comment on Barack Obama.
  3. He’s absolutely dedicated to serving his country. You might disagree with how he thought best to do that, but this is still a profoundly important and positive statement which cannot be made about all too many of our politicians.
  4. He took his oath of office seriously. He didn’t do his job for the fun of it, he did what he thought was right and necessary to protect and defend the lives of people in this country.
  5. He’s candid about his beliefs and positions; he doesn’t pretend to believe what people want to hear, he just tells them what he thinks, whether they want to hear it or not. That sort of candor is all too rare on our political scene, because it’s not the easiest way to get elected.
  6. He never tried to win a political argument by obfuscating his positions. Actually, as a politician, Cheney has a strong resemblance to a bulldozer; that’s why he ended up so unpopular. A little tact probably wouldn’t have hurt.
  7. He’s consistent in his beliefs and positions; he doesn’t compromise for political gain. Politicians who actually have principles rather than just poll-testers are important for the health of the nation.
  8. He’s willing to be unpopular to do what he believes is right. The name for that is “moral courage”; it’s an unfortunately rare quality.
  9. Indeed, he’s been willing to endure abuse, slander, and unjust calumny to do what he believes is right. That’s a rare degree of courage in American political history, or indeed in history more generally. He’s not Darth Vader, nor is he a sociopath (and waterboarding isn’t torture, nor did anybody ever call it so before that became a political weapon of expediency against a Republican administration), but he’s had to endure all that for the sake of keeping Americans from being butchered by their enemies. The irony here is that those who use debasing, dehumanizing language (such as “monster”) to describe him are guilty rhetorically of exactly the same thing of which they accuse him; the difference is one of degree, not of kind.
  10. He defends his people, rather than scapegoating to protect himself. Had he been willing to play the blame game (like, for instance, our current president), he probably could have ended office a fair bit more popular than he did; but he has refused to do that, which is admirable.

Even defeat has its silver linings

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I’m on vacation right now, because my father and brother are out; and they came out for a couple things, one of which was to go down with me to see our Seahawks play at Indianapolis. Given the relative strength of the two teams at this point this season, the outcome was predictable, and it followed the prediction: we got crushed. The score was 34-17 Colts, and the game was nowhere near that close; it could have been 42-3 if Indianapolis had had some reason to want it to be. They didn’t, because they’re a classy franchise. Similarly, their fans proved what I’ve been telling people my whole time here, that this state has good people; out of the thousands of Colts fans we saw, we only ran into two jerks, while there were a number who wandered over to have friendly conversations with us about our team, and theirs, and the league in general, and the city, and whatever else came up. (And to the one jerk who tried to heckle us and asked why we came to “his” stadium when our team “sucks”: I’ll tell you again, we came to see our team play. Why was that so hard for you to understand? Would you only want to see your team if they were good? If so, that says something pretty sad about your supposed fandom.)

Anyway, yesterday was a very long day. Aside from the result of the game, though, it was a good day to spend with family and meet some of my brother’s good friends—good people all around. Now today I get to catch up on the things I wasn’t doing yesterday when I wasn’t home.

Our hands-on God

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Don’t be deceived, my dear brothers. Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows. He chose to give us birth through the word of truth, that we might be a kind of firstfruits of all he created.

—James 1:16-18 (NIV)

The Father gave birth to us, says James; this is strange, striking language, designed to catch the ear and grab our attention. We shouldn’t press it too far, as if we might claim to share God’s DNA; one of the reasons the Bible uses male language for God is to keep Israel and the church from moving in that direction. Goddess worship tends to follow that track to its logical conclusion and assert that we ourselves are divine, gods and goddesses in our own right, and there’s just no room for that here—the Scriptures are careful not to leave any room for that at all.

And yet, it’s quite easy to fall off the way of truth in the opposite direction, into what we might call the equal and opposite heresy of distancing God from his creation. This is the heresy of modern Western rationalism, which might believe there’s a God in some abstract sense but feels free not to give a rip about him on the grounds that he really doesn’t give a rip about us, either. To this, James’ language gives the lie. How we imagine a father giving birth, I’m not sure, but this makes it very clear that God is personally, intimately involved in our creation, both our physical creation and our spiritual re-creation. He isn’t God at a distance; he’s God right here with us.

(Excerpted from “The Poem of Your Life”)

Thoughts on the President’s Olympian effort

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So, the President and his wife flew to Copenhagen (spending, I might note, a fair bit of money, and producing quite a lot of greenhouse gases) to lobby for Chicago for the 2016 Olympic Games; the IOC was so impressed, they awarded the 2016 Games to Rio (which, I think, was absolutely the right move, for all sorts of reasons). There has been much gnashing of teeth in some quarters, and a fair bit of schadenfreude in others; I can’t remember ever seeing this much commentary on an Olympic decision, which of course is all due to the participation of the Celebrity-in-Chief.

The question is, does this actually hurt him? After some reflection, count me in with those who think it does. Granted, the matter was relatively trivial in the geopolitical scheme of things, but the fact remains: President Obama injected himself into the competition, trying to use his influence to bring the Olympics to Chicago, and that influence was rejected. Decisively. That’s why the Times of London opines, “Obama’s Olympic failure will only add to doubts about his presidency.”

There has been a growing narrative taking hold about Barack Obama’s presidency in recent weeks: that he is loved by many, but feared by none; that he is full of lofty vision, but is actually achieving nothing with his grandiloquence.

Chicago’s dismal showing yesterday, after Mr Obama’s personal, impassioned last-minute pitch, is a stunning humiliation for this President. It cannot be emphasised enough how this will feed the perception that on the world stage he looks good—but carries no heft.

If they actually meant “grandiloquence”—which means “pompous or bombastic speech or expression”—rather than “eloquence,” that’s a remarkable slap. In any case, the perception to which the Times refers is clearly not just its own creation, judging by French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s recent comments at the UN; and its conclusions echo Fred Barnes’ observations in the Weekly Standard:

When an American president voluntarily takes up a fight and loses badly, it’s a big deal. Obama could have stayed out. Having the summer Olympics in Chicago doesn’t involve the national interest. But he thought the matter important enough to fly to Denmark and make the pitch for his hometown in person. He put his prestige on the line, only to be slapped down. He can’t blame George W. Bush for this one, though his minions may try.

We know the world loves Obama. What the action by the International Olympic Committee demonstrates is that being loved isn’t the same as being influential or taken seriously or respected or feared—the traits of many of Obama’s predecessors in the presidency. If he can’t deliver on a vote of the IOC, does he really have the clout to pressure the mullahs in Iran into giving up their nuclear ambitions? Maybe not.

Along with this, Barnes asks a pointed question:

Where was the charisma, the skill in persuading people to see things Obama’s way? The media has built Obama up as a communicator who’s the equal of Ronald Reagan and Franklin Roosevelt. True, he’s delivered several fine speeches, but all of them before he became president. Now he’s either lost his touch or never was the orator the press said he was.

A persuasive president is one who can move people and poll numbers his way. Obama hasn’t managed this as president. Last month, he spoke in prime time to Congress on health care, appeared on five Sunday interview shows, and showed up on the David Letterman show. The result: zilch. Support for his health care policy rose ever so slightly, then settled back to where it had been.

The biggest question I have is, why did he put his prestige on the line like that? Barnes suggests that the White House “thought the IOC was poised to ratify the president’s bid for a Chicago Olympics”; I suppose that’s possible, but if so, it argues for a remarkable degree of poor judgment on their part (which is exactly Barnes’ conclusion). If that’s the case, it also suggests a fair bit of cynicism, that the President and his staff thought he could swoop in and cherry-pick the credit for a Chicago win.

The other suggestion I’ve seen—which, to be honest, seems more likely to me—is that he was doing it as payback for support received from the Chicago machine. Chicago has done a lot to push him to the top of the political heap, after all, and turnabout is fair play; from their point of view, they helped him get there, and now it’s his job to help them out. Didn’t work, but that’s the way Chicago does business.

The amazing thing to me is, judging by the reaction shots, Chicagoans really thought the President had put it in the bag for them; which makes me wonder, could this be the first real crack in the Obama mystique here in the States? Sure, the White House is saying “it’s only the Olympics,” but people can be funny about sports sometimes; and after all, if the President doesn’t get a health care bill passed this year, there’s always next year, but Chicago only got one strike, and they’re out. It will be interesting to see if people really buy the “no big deal” line from the White House on this one, or if they end up holding it against him.