Apologies for my absence--a wasted week punctuated by minor surgery, the aftereffects of which I’m still feeling. So I’m playing catch-up.
This NYT article and this earlier TNR piece paint a picture of Barack Obama’s ethereal existence at the University of Chicago Law School--engaged on a "personal" level with the students, but not really intellectually with his colleagues.
“I don’t think anything that went on in these chambers affected him,” said Richard Epstein, a libertarian colleague who says he longed for Mr. Obama to venture beyond his ideological and topical comfort zones. “His entire life, as best I can tell, is one in which he’s always been a thoughtful listener and questioner, but he’s never stepped up to the plate and taken full swings.”
He was apparently somewhat closer, of course, to Cass Sunstein and Geoffrey Stone, two of the prominent liberals on the Law School faculty.
But his political career always came first, despite the best efforts of the folks there to hire him on the basis of the very thinnest of resumes.
If Obama's existence at Chicago was 'ethereal', what was Bush's at Yale? I would admit Obama reminds one of ether as it is known in chemistry, a colorless sweet liquid that has anesthetic properties. But Bush reminds one of ether as it was known in 19th century physics, a luminiferous medium, existing in a vaccuum, that the waves from everywhere else supposedly travelled through, but we now know is false. He is someone we look back upon and wonder how and why such a being was ever posited at all.
Come on Stertinius, you've got to be better than this. You can't possibly be in good faith.
The issue at bar is Obama, not Bush.
Obama was hired to provide instruction in the LAW. Bush, by contrast, was never hired to instruct anybody. When he attended Yale, he did so as a STUDENT.
A teacher's ROLE is quite different from the role of a student. Or is that commonsensical observation to much for you to acknowledge, in your desperation to defend the empty suit nominee.
But Obama continued his empty suit ways elsewhere, such as the Illinois Legislature for instance, where he frequently voted "present," instead of "yea" or "nay." That's the guy you're supporting. A guy who promises "change," but hasn't delivered such "change" anywhere, anytime.
EXECUTIVES can't dodge issues, they can't take a powder while important questions are being decided. And if ordinary executives can't dodge issues, ---------------------------------------------- what then of him who we're voting THE CHIEF EXECUTIVE of the United States, leader of the free world, champion in arms of the free West.
The issue at bar is the lack of executive experience of the false messiah. Either present evidence that the false messiah is real deal, or simply concede the obvious, that you're voting for an empty suit. The issue before us is that Obama hasn't any record of addressing real issues, {other than race}. And that's why when he isn't delivering a set piece speech, he increasingly comes off as a guy who hasn't a clue.
You Dems had the chance to go with Hillary, and instead you went with identity politics and celebrity worship. And now your candidate is going to get hammered in the Fall, and you just frittered away two Supreme Court nominations.
Dan, I pray you are right about the outcome. I am not confident. I fear the public ignorance, media collusion, and celebrity worship have us so close to a tipping point.
Is there something wrong with the link to the TNR article? I'm unable to access it. The NYT article was interesting--Obama as a spectral presence haunting the U Chicago Law School halls of law and economics! Does this spectre haunt the US too?!
Tom, think about it this way. So far, McCain is just throwing some jabs the false messiah's way. He's not rolling in yet to deliver his payload on target.
It's but the beginning of the reckoning for the Democrats. And the media, in a frenzy to defend Obama, are increasingly panic striken that Obama can't make any headway, and whatever bounce the media provides him is lost within a political nanosecond.
Obama's in trouble.
And Tom, he couldn't hold his little bounce from his European big adventure for 48 hrs. Not even for 48 hours!
Compare Carter's and Clinton's numbers at this point to those Dems who went on to lose. The two Dems that won had significant daylight between them and their Republican opponent.
Obama's in trouble.
It is probably too late to stop the Obama is in trouble narrative since it has a life of its own on the internet. Some people will say that the Obama is in trouble story is an attempt to sway McCain's VP pick...that doesn't sound impossible. But Obama will use the fact that he was in "trouble' to talk about a bounce. He will also point out that when the american people were not paying attention he was in trouble...but now(after the convention/whenever the media says the american people are paying attention) he had "surged"...So Obama is in trouble when it is just pols talking but he is surging when the american people pay attention. So really the media doesn't have to be biased, it just had to selectively hold people to the positions that they themselves freely take.