Day By Day

Wednesday, January 20, 2010

Obama and the American Character

Mort Zuckerman has decided that Obama's presidency has been a disaster for the Democratic Party and for the nation. The reason? Obama, "misjudged the character of the country in his whole approach."

Read it here.

Well what the heck did you expect? Obama is the product of an academic/activist subculture that stands in critical opposition to the mainstream of American culture. His political consciousness was nurtured in an environment wherein people oppose or are conspicuously contemptuous of the American middle class, where the values and behavior of ordinary Americans are routinely disparaged, and where people proudly identifiy themselves not primarily as Americans but as representatives of some aggrieved minority or alternatively [as Obama himself has] as "Citizens of the World".

Of course he misjudged the American character. He's only had a passing acquaintance with it.

UPDATE:

Neo was impressed by the depth of Mort's disillusionment. She writes:
I’ve read a number of pieces by former Obama supporters, but I’ve never read one that shows such a complete disillusionment with the man. Zuckerman doesn’t understand why Obama has acted this way (in this he’s hardly alone). He sees Obama’s failures as incompetence; he doesn’t get that he was a con artist, lying about his ideological agenda as well as his ethics. But Zuckerman certainly comprehends that an Obama failure has occurred, and that it’s not limited to just a few issues.
Read the whole thing here.