Any 30 second sound bite and you realize immediately that this isn’t the Obama we thought we knew. It’s the Obama of the first debate – bitter, zealous, righteous and indignant.
We all thought that was a bad hair day and forgave him. We were wrong.
I’m no Obama fan, but I always had high regard for his folksy rhetoric and his skill to sermonize from the bully pulpit. It frightened me, this power he had over his base; I didn’t like it, but I respected it. I gave him credit for what he could do with the spoken word.
All that was gone in Obama’s inauguration speech yesterday. It’s been gone for six weeks now, as he became increasingly belligerent over the fiscal cliff issues. Now we know that wasn’t just a reaction to the stress of the moment. It was the real Obama.
The president doesn’t have to be nice anymore. He’s won his second term. He has control over the Senate, and the House is backed into a corner. All he has to do now is maintain control over his black and minority and far left base, and he can call all the shots.
The problem is that his base isn’t as solid as he thinks they are. Black unemployment is horrific, twice the national average. Hispanics are anxious for full citizenship, which comes with a $2 trillion price tag. Environmentalists want carbon caps, which will cost another $2 trillion over ten years. Money we don’t have.
All Obama has left to maintain his base is fiery ghetto rhetoric, heartfelt anger and chest-thumping bullying. We could forgive him even that if he did it tactfully, maybe even with a little remorse or regret.
My family had a fierce german shepherd dog who used to bark while stepping backward. Once you stepped through the fence he was a gentle puppy dog. He was just barking like crazy because that’s his job.
Yesterday Obama barked fiercely because he likes to behave that way. He was arrogant and condescending and self-righteous because that’s who he really is. The Obama we glimpsed in the first debate is the real Obama. He has no gentleness or empathy.
Obama is the distant, supremely intelligent, elitists college professor that everybody loathes. He’s the snide, snotty, crass intellect that the department puts in charge of the one class that everybody has to pass to graduate. He knows it. We know it.
He loves that power and lords it over us. We hate him for it. He’s the one professor we always remember, the hard ass we will hate ‘till the day we die.
I’m just glad I’m not a liberal or a Democrat. I’d hate to have to defend a man like that.
It’s gonna be a long 1,441 days.
