There has been a lot of analysis of Obama’s most recent ‘press conference’ over the last 24 hours. Obama came off as a bully (or worse) and everyone is wondering why he is lashing out and relying on strong-arm tactics.
Rush Limbaugh attributes Obama’s lashing out to a ‘failed narcissist’ syndrome:
This is like a guy that every mistake he’s made has been covered. Here’s a guy for whom every “C” in school was turned into a “B” or an “A.” The road was paved. There were no lows. Everything was rosy. The future was bright. All he had to do was get up every day. He told Harry Reid, “Harry, I have a gift,” meaning his ability to speak. So it’s understandable that he’s in love with himself and understandable he’s a full-fledged narcissist, but now he’s a failed narcissist and a failed narcissist in the public eye — and that is intolerable. This carefully crafted image is to be protected at all costs.
The always excellent Power Line guys note that Obama is not demonstrating leadership qualities (I have a problem with the whole leader concept. In America we elect representatives) and is becoming frustrated:
President Obama has been in office for two and a half years now. If there are steps he can take “right now” that will help create jobs, why didn’t he take them a long time ago?
In addition to the steps that my administration can take on our own, there are also things that Congress could do right now that will help create good jobs.
The Democrats controlled Congress from January 2007 until January 2011, and they still control the Senate. If there are lots of things Congress can do “right now” to help create jobs–and Obama enumerated several–why didn’t the Democrats do them long ago?
Altogether, Obama repeated the phrase “right now” 16 times in the context of expressing urgency about things either his administration or Congress should be doing. Where has that urgency been for the last two and a half years?
While both analyses are accurate to a point, I think the real issue is that Obama is still acting like a community organizer. Except, now he is a community organizer who is in way over his head.
To illustrate this point, take the blurb from Power Line where Obama said “there are also things that Congress could do right now that will help create good jobs.” Substitute “the Mayor” for “Congress” and “summer” for “good” and the quote reads:
“there are also things that the Mayor could do right now that will help create summer jobs.”
Obama had two signature ‘accomplishments’ during his time as a community organizer in Chicago. The above sentence summarizes one of them. Via NRO (circa 2008):
A staple priority of organizers like Obama was the summer-jobs program. In the 1980s the jobs were administered by the Mayor’s Office of Employment and Training, or MET, but the nearest MET office to Altgeld was a long way away — beyond 95th Street — and located in what some felt was enemy territory. “Our children, in order to get those summer-job programs, had to go over to the East Side — Vrdolyak’s territory,” Yvonne Lloyd told me, referring to Edward “Fast Eddie” Vrdolyak, the Chicago alderman who was the champion of white ethnics and a sworn enemy of Harold Washington, the black mayor whose presence had inspired blacks across the city, including Obama.
“So, if you’re living in Altgeld, you don’t have the bus fare to go way over there, and they were out of their element, and they ended up not getting the jobs.” Why not demand a job center in their neighborhood? In Dreams from My Father, Obama describes visiting MET headquarters and looking at a brochure listing the locations of all branch offices. There was nothing south of 95th Street. “This is it,” he said. “We just found ourselves an issue.”
Obama then choreographed a drive to demand a new MET office. (The point, remember, was not for him to make the demands but for the leaders to do it for themselves.) They set up a meeting with MET officials, and then Obama drilled the leaders on what they should say. He took them around Roseland looking for a possible site for the new office. They found a shut-down department store at Michigan Avenue and 110th Street, and located the building’s owners. “He did all the legwork for us and brought it back to us,” Lloyd told me, “and we went downtown to the offices of the store and negotiated.” In a climactic meeting at Our Lady of the Gardens — Obama had, once again, carefully rehearsed the leaders on what they should say — MET officials agreed to open the new office. Obama had an accomplishment to point to.
Yep, Obama rounded up a bunch of people in Chicago and coached them to demand the Mayor set up an after summer jobs program in the neighborhood he was working in. Today, Obama is trying to chastise Congress into setting up a jobs program.
You know the old saying, “you can take the organizer out of the community…” or something like that.
Remember Rudy Giuliani’s speech during the 2008 RNC?
Rings truer every day.
