It's understandable that a lib would take so long to turn on the messiah, having invested so much in his presidency. But I wonder whether these people ever realize how late they are to the party and how utterly devoid of profundity their belated epiphanies are.
Dowd starts off her latest column describing Obama's opening appearance at a fundraiser at the Apollo in Harlem: "For eight seconds, we saw the president we had craved for three years: cool, joyous, funny, connected."
Unless you are a liberal utopian, such as my friend Mark Levin describes in his latest masterpiece, "Ameritopia," you wouldn't place so much faith in one deliberately mysterious man to usher in a new, unspecified era, and you especially wouldn't hold on to the painfully unrealistic hope that after three years, this man will finally present himself to be someone he has never been.
Savor a few of the tardy revelations Dowd has now come to see with pungent clarity:
"The man who became famous with a speech declaring that we were one America, not opposing teams of red and blue states, presides over an America more riven by blue and red than ever."
"The man who came to Washington on a wave of euphoria has had the presidency with all the joy of a root canal."
Dowd quotes Obama's lament to CNN's Fareed Zakaria that he is only seen as "cool and aloof" because he stays at home with his daughters instead of going "to a lot of Washington parties." Dowd will have none of this, saying that Reagan didn't socialize with the press, either, "but he knew that to transcend, you can't condescend."
Dowd seems surprised that in Jodi Kantor's new book, "The Obamas," Kantor paints a portrait of "the first couple" as people who feel aggrieved and misunderstood and who, in Dowd's words, "do believe in American exceptionalism -- their own, and they feel overassaulted and underappreciated."
Twisting the knife further, Dowd says that the Obamas, in their minds, haven't disappointed Americans. "We disappointed them."
Dowd quotes Michelle Obama, who apparently spoke too soon when she said she was proud of America for the first time when her husband was elected. The first lady said: "The question isn't whether Barack Obama is ready to be president. The question is whether we're ready. And that continues to be the question we have to ask ourselves." The Obamas, according to Dowd, are still convinced that presidential adviser Valerie Jarrett is correct that Obama is "just too talented to do what ordinary people do."
Dowd also seemed incredulous to learn that when Democrats took a shellacking in the 2010 midterm elections, Obama "did not seem to comprehend the anxiety that had spawned the Tea Party, or feel any regret," and that he told one Democratic congressman defeated in that anti-Obama wave that his loss was "for the greater good of the country."
No offense, Maureen, but we could have spared you three years of pining, even four if you care to go back to the campaign. From the beginning, for those not blinded by messianic delusions, Obama revealed himself as singularly divisive, narcissistic, cool and aloof, and dictatorial and as one who believes he is a gift to America rather than the other way around.
When Obama gave a bizarre shoutout to Dr. Joe Medicine Crow as a preamble to what was supposed to be a somber memorial to the victims of the Fort Hood shooter, British journalist Toby Harnden observed that he exhibited "curiously bloodless" behavior and a "strange disconnectedness." After his agenda was repudiated in the election for Ted Kennedy's Senate seat, Obama said he wanted the American people to take another look at his plan. When Democrats lost the 2010 congressional elections, he didn't show the slightest recognition that he had anything to do with it. The American people, he said, just wanted the parties to work together.
We've known that those in Obama's extreme leftist base are discontented with him because, amazingly, they don't believe he's been liberal enough. But now we have a prominent media liberal in Maureen Dowd acknowledging that he is an empty shell. With that in mind, how about the vaunted independents?
Think about it, folks. Next time you hear someone telling you how unelectable this or that potential Republican candidate is, consider how un-reelectable Obama is. His messianic image is gone; he has a disastrous record; and even liberals are discovering that he is insufferably arrogant and contemptuous of the American people.
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