Obama Fatigue

by Victor Davis Hanson
Pajamas Media

Every President starts to wear on the public. But the omnipresent Obama has become wearisome in record time. Why?

1) Money. There is none. Every time the President talks of another billion for this, and trillion for that, the people sigh: “We don’t have it; he’s going to borrow it.” Unemployment is near 10%, so borrowing nearly $2 trillion each year makes more sense to Keynesian economists than to voters who don’t find hope by maxing out their credit cards when they lose their jobs.

Obama is weirdly oblivious to number crunching — as is true of many who have never been self-employed or had to scramble without a public salary. Yet even Hillary is now whining that her foreign policy is frozen by the fact of mounting American debt. Obama is the stereotypical great-aunt that sweeps into the Christmas dinner casually boasting about what she is going to do for this niece and that nephew, while most roll their eyes with the understanding that her credit cards are long ago maxed out — and more likely she will be hitting up relatives for loans. Americans don’t like magnanimity with other people’s money.

2) Style. Great orators get better in their rhetoric, not worse. It turns out that the people risked a blank slate in Obama in part because in his teleprompted hope-and-change orations, he sounded fresh and mellifluous. Voters assumed he would wear well. But in nonstop interviews, press conferences, and conversations, the impromptu President seems no more comfortable than was an ad hoc George Bush. And just as liberals were turned off by Bush’s cowboyisms, so too conservatives are tired of Obama’s professorial, condescending sermons.

After a year, the people are tired of all the “let me be perfectly clear” psycho-drama; the “make no mistake about” pseudo-tough man pose; the straw man “I reject the false choice that some would…”, and the narcissistic “I have ordered…..my team…to”. The boilerplate is now recognizable even to the Washington Press corps. But as important, it dovetails with more disturbing propensities: there are the periodic signs of inanity like “Cinco de Quatro” and “Corpse Men”; the constant fudging on the truth of multibillion dollar new programs really “saving” money; and the surreal bowing to dictators and emperors, with the relish of turning our misdemeanors into felonies and our enemies’ felonies into benefactions.

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