Wilfull blindness at the WaPo :: Political News and commentaries

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September 7, 2010

Wilfull blindness at the WaPo

As the old saying goes, there's none so blind as those that will not see. Such is the case today with Richard Cohen at the Washington Post, in which he clearly recognizes that Barack Obama's presidency is headed down the tube, but blames it all on everything and everyone but the president's socialist, big-government, policies and far-left, Marxist-like, agenda - the real reasons behind Obama's plummeting poll numbers.

Cohen begins by recognizing the obvious, something even a liberal, Obama-loving, WaPo writer has to recognize:

One of the unintended results of the redecoration of the Oval Office was the downsizing of Barack Obama. In last week's prime-time address to the nation, the president sat behind a massive and capaciously empty desk, looking somehow smaller than he ever has -- a man physically reduced by sinking polls, a lousy economy and the prospect that his party might lose control of Congress. Behold something we never thought we'd see with Obama: The Incredible Shrinking Presidency.

Then, in a blatant display of his liberal bias and open disdain for the American people, Cohdn says he finds it "frightening" that Obama's spinmeisters ran a "smart presidential campaign" (some might call it simply stagecraft, spin, and empty rhetoric) are now allowing us "ignorant Ameicans" to misread Obama's agenda (my words not Cohen's). In other words, it's not Obama's socialist, big-government, policies and far-left, Marxist-like, agenda - it's the fault of his spin-meisters:

This is an amazing and, to me, somewhat frightening, turn of events. The folks who ran a very smart presidential campaign in 2008 have left the defining of the Obama presidency to others, in this case people on the edge of insanity. For example, a recent Pew poll reported that "nearly one in five Americans (18 percent) now say Obama is a Muslim, up from 11 percent in March 2009." In other words, the longer Obama has been in office, the more ignorant people have become about him.

This news about the growing ignorance concerning Obama's religion came not too long after yet another poll revealed that 24 percent of Americans don't think Obama was born in the United States. An earlier poll showed that 10 percent of Americans think he was born in Indonesia, where he lived as a boy, 7 percent believe he is Kenyan and still others say (correctly) that he was born in Hawaii but do not know, a notable Elvis movie notwithstanding, that Hawaii is an American state.

[...] The president needs better speechwriters. The president needs a staff to tell him not to give an Oval Office address unless he has something worthy of the Oval Office to say. The president needs someone to look into the camera so that, when the light goes on and he says, "Good evening," he looks commander in chiefish: big. In other words, the president needs to fire some key people. Either that, or the way things are going, the American people are going to fire him.

The fact that during his presidency, Obama has repeatedly demonstrated his devotion to Islam and support of Muslims worldwide - giving Americans every reason to believe Obama, for whatever reason, has a very special place in his heart for Islam and Muslims, even to the detriment of America, seems to escape Cohen. Even worse, Cohen appears to believe that Obama's problem is a lack of the right stagecraft, spin, and having better far-left puppeteers. It's as though Obama's policies, agenda, and actions to date have nothing to do with the Ameica's problem with Barack Obama - it has to be the messengers and a better message.

The problem with the way folks like Mr. Cohen think is that Americans have already heard the message, seen it in action, don't like it, and are more and more unlikely to be tricked into believing Obama's charade of centrism, again.

Posted by Richard at September 7, 2010 2:57 PM

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