A Little More Hating on Obama

As AH trenchantly argued last night, Barack Obama is the most overrated pol on the "left." He suffers from massively inflated expectations. I'm willing to allow that he might have had some potential at some point, but since then the beltway operators have tagged him as their long-term job insurance, and their middling influence is all over him. Now when he speaks he just sounds like a typical smarmy politician, not a leader. Not to mention his craven, insidery positions on Condi, Alito, the Patriot Act, and Christine Cegelis.

I only want to add the following anecdote, an unforgettable insight into his sublime vacuousness (from a review of Bernard Henri-Levy's stupid Tocqueville book):

One of the finest scenes in the book, a scene that has haunted me since I read it, is set at the Democratic National Convention in Boston, where BHL comes face-to-face with Barack Obama, who has just given the speech that made his a household name:

“Bernard-Henri Lévy,” he repeats, mocking me a little ... “With a name like that, you would have been a big hit at the convention.” ... I ask, “And what about ‘Barack Obama’? With a name like that, and with the success you had last night, you should be able to become president of the United States in five minutes.” He laughs. Thumps me on the chest, pulls away a little as if to gather momentum to land a better punch, gives me a hug, laughs again, and repeats, like a nursery rhyme, “Barack Obama, Bernard-Henri Lévy ...”

The embrace is paranoid, the familiarity grotesque. The two unheimlich homeboys, two mere names hugging like boldface refugees from Page Six, seem captured for a moment in a celebrity feedback loop. It portrays vividly the eerie absence in American public life that for Tocqueville was our specialty, the lack at the heart or the head that makes us so carefree yet so potentially scary.

Tags: news and politics, obama, tocqueville, sam stark, n+1, henri-levy, disappointment