There is something deeply unsettling about Obama’s conduct of his presidency, having nothing to do with birthplace, race or religion.
Dorothy Rabinowitz, writing in The Wall Street Journal, says what has been on so many of our minds, The Alien in the White House:
For it was clear from the first that this president—single-minded, ever-visible, confident in his program for a reformed America saved from darkness by his arrival—was wanting in certain qualities citizens have until now taken for granted in their presidents. Namely, a tone and presence that said: This is the Americans’ leader, a man of them, for them, the nation’s voice and champion….
Those qualities to be expected in a president were never about rhetoric; Mr. Obama had proved himself a dab hand at that on the campaign trail. They were a matter of identification with the nation and to all that binds its people together in pride and allegiance. These are feelings held deep in American hearts, unvoiced mostly, but unmistakably there and not only on the Fourth of July.
A great part of America now understands that this president’s sense of identification lies elsewhere, and is in profound ways unlike theirs….
Rabinowitz points out that it is not just Obama; his administration has become a repository of people with ideological axes to grind, from Eric Holder to Janet Napolitano to Michael Posner on down:
The beliefs and attitudes that this president has internalized are to be found everywhere—in the salons of the left the world over—and, above all, in the academic establishment, stuffed with tenured radicals and their political progeny. The places where it is held as revealed truth that the United States is now, and has been throughout its history, the chief engine of injustice and oppression in the world.
They are attitudes to be found everywhere, but never before in a president of the United States….
I sensed this problem coming back in October 2008:
Barack Obama loves this country, in his own words, because nowhere else could his story be possible. John McCain loves this country just because. And that’s why I’ll vote for John McCain.
Unfortunately, there are no do-overs. So we just have to win in November and two Novembers after that.
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Related Posts:
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Groupthink, Obama, The Media, and “I Told You So”
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Comments
Solid gold article professor. It hit very hard mentally. Too bad it will be downplayed and disparaged by some – not all – because the writer is Jewish. That is the current state of affairs in this country. Knowing everything I know about Obama, I still would vote for neither him OR John McCain. McCain is just a slower ride down the same path. Until we get presidential candidates who actually care about the future of this country, we will continue down the same path.
Definitely an important piece by Rabinowitz. The birthers make me cringe, but I can sympathize. Obama clearly demonstrated that he is alien to mainstream American values long before his days as POTUS. That's what animated the birthers.
Off topic a bit, but are you planning a rebuttal to Sully's "Israel's a Mistake" post? Check Memeorandum. Mondoweiss replied with some delegitmationist historical revisionism. I might try to get something up later.
P.S. Rabinowitz is a national treasure.
"Barack Obama loves this country, in his own words, because nowhere else could his story be possible"
"What a country," Bill Ayers said of America "it makes me want to puke."
Just a hunch, but as disquieting as it may be, might one expect that Barack Obama and Bill Ayers would have had a falling out long before Bill Ayers ghosted "Dreams of My Father"?
This article is basically a long winded way of saying "why can't Obama be the type of guy who you can just sit down and have a beer with?"