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- iHaveNet.com: Politics
by Clarence Page
News media depict presidencies as long-running soap operas. The story doesn't end, but it goes through changes.
In this, President Barack Obama's autumn of discontent, a new and potentially disastrous media narrative is emerging about him: He's the kind of liberal who loves humanity but hates people.
Such was the subtext of a stinging full-page essay that has political junkies all abuzz. Headlined "The Loner President," the essay by
"This president endures with little joy the small talk and back-slapping of retail politics, rarely spends more than a few minutes on a rope line, refuses to coddle even his biggest donors," Wilson observes. "His relationship with Democrats on
Of course, it is fair to ask: Is that a bad thing? After all, it is fair to say, Obama was elected by voters who sounded a lot like today's Republican primary voters do. They wanted an outsider to Washington, a new face who was not part of the back-slapping, glad-handing, noddin'-and-winkin' and donor-coddling Washington insider establishment.
But, oh, what a difference a bad economy and a stubborn congressional opposition can make. Many Obama supporters who were looking for a return of John F. Kennedy's charisma now wish they had another Lyndon B. Johnson, a tough-minded, back-slapping arm-twister. Hey, he got things done.
Most damaging to Obama's narrative is Wilson's depiction of the "No-Drama Obama" we all know as a 9-to-5 president. That's unlike, say, Bill Clinton, whose former senior advisor Rahm Emanuel, now mayor of Chicago, is quoted as remembering Clinton lobbying lawmakers at 3 a.m. to secure passage of his crime bill. "After hours, Obama prefers his briefing book and Internet browser," Wilson writes, "a solitary preparation he undertakes each night after
Sure, Obama barnstormed the country, pitching his American Jobs Act, casting himself once again as a man alone against the
And some of Obama's allies in the Congressional Black Caucus and the left-progressive activist communities continue to grumble that he's treating them like a stand-by date - a reliable companion for Saturday night, only to be forgotten for the rest of the week.
Left-progressive activists, including his former
However, before Obama's rivals on the political right become too gleeful over his political misfortunes, they should take his tale as a cautionary note about presidential campaigns in both parties: The qualities that look most attractive in a presidential candidate can prove to be disastrous in a president.
We loved Bill Clinton's jolly, freewheeling charm and lust for life -- before those qualities looked in the
And we similarly were wooed by candidate George W. Bush's folksy, straightforward and resolute certainty. But after debacles like Hurricane Katrina and Iraq's non-existent weapons of mass destruction, his reassuring certainty looked like old-fashioned, irrational stubbornness.
We think we're voting for candidates, but we're really voting for narratives, the grand epic presidential story that we hope will come true. President Barack Obama offers us yet another case of a winner whose narrative is turned unfavorably on its head by his presidency. He has a year to turn his story around or, at least, to hope his opponent spins a narrative that sounds even worse.
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