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Talking Head Hatas - Obama Owwwns It!


Wow!  A President that actually impresses on the world stage and isn't universally hated by French, Czechs and Alabanians alike, and the all the Sunday Talking Heads can do is whine, bitch, fret and moan. 

Whether it's George Will and Arianna, or the sudden appearance of multiple "former Bush speechwriters", all of them seem to have just the same urgent need to be relevant and insightful (inciteful?), and to be relevant means to be an Obama hater. When "StuffinEnvelopes" has to interject regularly to defend the Obama Side you know something's wrong. When John Harwood of the WSJ is the voice of reason...

Suddenly the word "owwwns" has become the popular buzzword, such as "Obama owwwns GM", or "Obama owwwns Afghanistan" or "Obama owwwns this economy".  Not only does the guy not get a honeymoon, he gets the reverse of a honeymoon. I guess even 3 months patience is too much to ask for to attempt to ameleoriate the damage of the past eight years.

And of course "It's all theatrics in Europe, no substance. Couldn't get the Euros to join in 2% stimulus nor send more combat troops to Afghanistan.  What a colossal failure he is." It's like they all memorized that highly successful McCain commercial accusing Obama of being a "Celebrity", like that's a terrible thing in a President.

No analysis that I could find saying something as simple as: "A US President who isn't universally reviled as a dictator and torturer might actually be able to forge a better worldwide consensus on how to deal with difficult international issues likfe terrorism and nuclear proliferation."

Or, "A US President who actually answers reporters' and town hall participants' questions (as one Asian reporter declaimed to the Financial Times) might be a good thing for international understanding and cooperation." No that would be too facile and unserious.

A G-20 meeting where just not getting a lot of trade protectionism bandied about allowed the stock markets worldwide to rise.  Irrelevant!  After all Obama didn't get exactly what he wanted so he is ipso facto an abject failure.  That's the real message true insiders want to know.

For the first time in my lifetime we get a President who is not a political wind up doll (and I cast my first vote for President in 1972).  Wouldn't it be nice to have our political punditry, just for once, not be full of political wind up blowhards as well?

11 Comments

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I'm pretty sure they are being sarcastic, at least when it comes to his ownership of GM.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/washingtondc/la-na-ticket5-2009apr05,0,3493188.story

His administration doesn't drive American cars, so he probably only owns GM in the very very broad sense of the word (see Wiktionary)

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When they say "owwwns it", they mean that anything that happens going forward, good or bad, is all on Obama. He didn't break it, but he bought it and now has to fix it - all of it.

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Well, he's the biggest CEO there is, isn't he.

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Amen.

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No analysis that I could find saying something as simple as...

How about this one?

...with that detached and novelistic eye that allows him to be a great writer, he is also able to do a kind of political jujitsu, where he assesses the bluster and insecurities of other politicians, defuses them, and then uses them to his advantage....

....he showed a psychological finesse that has been missing from American leadership for a long time....

The Bush chuckleheads misread the world and insisted that everyone else go along with their deluded perception, and they bullied the world and got huffy if the world didn’t quickly fall in line.

President Obama, by contrast, employed smart psychology in the global club, even on small things, like asking other leaders if they wanted to start talking first at news conferences....

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Touche! Well done. Appreciated.

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LOL

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I gots to go to work. But THANK YOU for that fine link. You made my 15 minutes of coffee time worth while today.

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There were also 3 European guest op-eds in Sunday's New York Times praising Obama one way or another. (A.A. Gill from London, Christopher Peters from Berlin and Amelie Nothomb from Paris.) The stuff is out there; methinks Candide is not looking very hard for some reason.

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Harwood no longer works for the WSJ. He is currently a writer for the NYTimes

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Obama is fine wine, & the republican factions are infected with a the green virus, commonly none as jealousy. Jealousy has been known to cloud your thinking process & sometimes you come up on the losing end.

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Candide

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