Steyn: Obama the Magician

Mark Steyn has a brilliant piece on Obama's recent luck (lack of) dealing with the Rev Wright controversy online today. Read it here. In it he refers to the candidate as the "Amazing Obama" because of the campaign he is running: One of "transcendant magic", and because the magician's assistants are blowing all his tricks for him. His wife Michelle goes out and makes these speeches, and appears on national television shows, making all sorts of gaffes that expose how the Obama's really think and feel about life in America, not what Obama says he feels. And Reverend Wright lays low for a couple of weeks, but then pops up and starts shooting his mouth off on national television, even going so far as to say explicitly that Obama, "says what he has to say as a politician… He does what politicians do." In other words, he lies and panders. Awesome!

Talking about Obama's "big press conference" last week on the latest Rev Wright appearance, Steyn had this to say:

As with most “magic,” it was merely a trick of redirection. Obama appeared to have made Jeremiah Wright vanish into thin air, but it turned out he was just under the heavily draped table waiting to pop up again.

And at the end:

Whatever one thinks of Senators Clinton and McCain, they’re as familiar as any public figures can be. Obama, on the other hand, is running explicitly on a transcendent “magic.” It doesn’t help when the cute girl in spangled tights keeps whining about how awful everything is and the guy you sawed in half sticks himself together and starts rampaging around the stage. The magician has lost control of the show.

People are beginning to realize, as they get to know this candidate, that not only are his views radically liberal, but that he is willing to say whatever needs to be said in order to win, true or not. That's typical politics, and it's supposed to be what he's against. Frankly, John McCain (I'm not a huge fan), a Washington insider for 2 decades, is looking a heck of a lot more believable and forthright than Empty Suit Obama.

Liberal Blog Commenters Sound Off

On the L.A. Times blog, after a boring article about why Oprah Winfrey left Wright's church a long time ago (furthering the question of why Obama did not), there is a large section of reader comments that are, not surprisingly, mostly liberal. It's the L.A. Times, after all; who else reads that rag any more? But I don't read all that many liberal blogs to begin with, and I stumbled into this one, so I read a lot of these comments.

By and large, they want the Rev Wright issue to go away. More than that, they want everyone to voluntarily drop it. The rationales tend to be the standard "guilt-by-association isn't fair" and "just because Wright said it doesn't mean Obama believes it;" there was even one managing to slander Roman Catholics while simultaneously defending Obama:

He was betrayed by his Pastor. I thought of Roman Catholics in parishes where priests had acted in much worse ways. Most of those people remained Roman Catholics.

The logic in so many of these posts just evades me. This one, in particular, tries to equate Rev Wright with (presumably) a child-molesting priest, and suggests that parishioners of such a priest, who remained faithful to the Church despite the actions of a single priest, are the same as a congregation of folks who delighted and cheered every time Wright uttered one of his anti-American vignettes, right in front of them, during the service. These people even traveled out to Washington to support Wright during his infamous National Press Club appearance last week.

We need to get over the Wright drama. Obama did not say those words. His very DNA indicates that he could not share Wright's view. Enough is enough; let us look at the issues facing this nation and the world. Wright's issue is minor to the price of gas and the lies the politicians will tell folks to get elected. Here we have a serious candidate for president who tells us the truth and will bring our troops home and we are jeopardizing this because of some crazy stuff his pastor said.

This comment goes right to the heart of the argument, and says a lot of things. First, note that the commenter really wants us to get off of this issue. He knows it's hurting Obama. Next, "his very DNA...the lies the politicians will tell folks to get elected," comment appears to be saying that it's just not believable that Obama believes what Wright has been saying. That may be true, but I think he does believe it to some extent, otherwise -- and here's the problem everyone is wrestling with -- why else would he have sat through sermons for 20 years without speaking up about their content? Remember, this is not just Joe Lunchbucket. This guy wants to be POTUS. He should be an absolute patriot. How many of us would have not just sat still for this kind of craziness, but continued to attend services for 20 years and asked this man to marry me and baptize my kids?? It does not compute. In short, how do you know he "tells us the truth"? How do you really know that? More importantly, how can you or he convince undecided voters of that, given all this controversy?

Almost as a side note, the commenter points out that Obama "will bring our troops home," as though that's what everyone wants. Again, it's a liberal audience there, so... But there's two problems there: First, I'm not convinced he would bring the troops home so quickly. I know he very boldly proclaims that he'd be bringing them home almost immediately upon taking office, but I really don't think he'd wind up being that reckless. And second, the claim that he'd bring them home that fast scores no points at all with me or most conservatives. We want the troops home when the job is done, and the job is getting done but is not complete yet. Pulling them out prematurely would be devastating for this country's future.

I no longer believe Barack Obama is electable to the presidency, and that's saying a lot, considering how high he was flying just a month or two ago. He looked unbeatable. Now he looks like the Empty Suit he is.