Friday, July 25, 2008

Obama

You simply must read the New York Times Op-Ed piece today by David Brooks entitled "Playing Innocent Abroad."
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/25/opinion/25brooks.html?_r=1&ref=opinion&oref=slogin

"When I first heard this sort of radically optimistic speech in Iowa, I have to
confess my American soul was stirred. It seemed like the overture for a new yet
quintessentially American campaign.
But now it is more than half a year on,
and the post-partisanship of Iowa has given way to the post-nationalism of
Berlin, and it turns out that the vague overture is the entire symphony. The
golden rhetoric impresses less, the evasion of hard choices strikes one more. "


I, too, think I fell for some of this rhetoric. One night a few months ago, after some primary win, Amy and I were watching CNN coverage and Obama gave a speech. We both sat there mesmerized, thinking that this guy was going to win it all. He is a powerful speaker, especially in times when there are very few powerful political speakers. Then we started listening to the actual substance and were opposed to quite a few of his programs.

When he spoke in Berlin yesterday, it was all fluff. Vast ideals with no way of actually doing them.

"But substantively, optimism without reality
isn’t eloquence. It’s just Disney."

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

You're becoming predictable Matt...one need only listen to the Republican talking points aired on Fox News and regurgitated by Sean Hannity before seeing them on your blog a couple of days later.

Considering that you voted for a guy who has little brain power and no command of the English language ("It is clear our nation is reliant upon big foreign oil. More and more of our imports come from overseas."), one has to wonder why you'd even make a statement like this.

But I understand how hard it is when Barack is speaking in front of 200+ thousand Europeans waving American flags while McCain is in a grocery store explaining how the surge occurred before it actually occurred.

Get used to Barack...he'll actually be a good President for you and your family.