I’ve been dubious about the Obama candidacy from the beginning, maybe because I have an innate distrust of anyone who attracts uncritical adulation based on appearance.
That’s right: appearance.
There is no way that crowds would swoon if Obama were a capable but dumpy middle-aged woman – think Green Party’s 2006 Mass. gubernatorial candidate Grace Ross or even the charismatic orator and legislator Barbara Jordan.
There is also no way that erstwhile liberals like Chris Matthews, Keith Olbermann and Tim Russert would be his/her militant champions, either. The nauseating spectacle of the ganging up of privileged boys against a smart, self-made woman is almost enough to make one change party affiliations.
Obama’s performance in this week’s debate was a job poorly done, especially since he’s been presenting himself as the only candidate who can work cooperatively with the fractious “enemies” of his populist causes.
For heaven’s sake, the man can’t even respond to a minor drubbing from the Clintons without having a screaming fit on national television.
The slings and arrows that have been launched against Obama are child’s play compared to the political goings-on in any American office on any given day. If the rest of us can take it, we should expect no less from a candidate for the Presidency.
To prove that he has the stuff to deal not only with the Republicans in the general election but the world of hardball leaders like Vladimir Putin, Obama needs to deal – on his own – with the fallout from his pandering, elegiac comments about Reagan and his ties to slumlord Antoin ‘Tony’ Rezko, and he needs to do so without the help of an obsequious, misogynistic media.
My advice to Obama is to toughen up and stop whining. The world is a nasty, rotten place and a Presidential candidate needs to prove he or she can deal with it on its own terms rather than focus on mesmerizing a weary public with eloquent promises that he will “Stand for Change” – whatever that means.