Defining Moments
It's as if President Obama climbed into a tank, put on his helmet, talked about how his foray into Cambodia was seared in his memory, looked at his watch, misspelled "potato" and pardoned Richard Nixon all in the same day. It's fun to imagine the hand-wringing that must be going on within the White House as staffers try to figure out how to undo the damage their boss has done with his anti-entrepenurial riff. Defining moments in politics are strange beasts. Sometimes they're only recognized in hindsight, while sometimes they throw the train off the tracks before a sentence has been completed. Sometimes their effect can be contained and minimized, while sometimes their effect on the political narrative mestastasizes. This one is very bad for the White House.
These defining moments take hold most devastatingly when they confirm what a large portion of the electorate already believes. Taken alone, it seems unfair that a single moment, an unguarded remark or a slip of the tongue can carry such weight. They're often dismissed as "gotcha" moments, but when voters are able to nod and say, "I knew it," these moments stick and do terrible damage. We have witnessed such a moment.
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Aug '10
Re: Defining Moments
And Big Hollywood !Drudge beckons.
Aug '11
Re: Defining Moments
Amy Schley
...You can be the smartest person alive and work a hundred hours a week, but if you aren't producing a product or rendering a service for which people are willing to pay, you will remain unsuccessful. · 7 hours ago
That wouldn't be very smart.
Jun '10
Re: Defining Moments
I'll agree that Obama's gaffe was another unforced error, but I'm not ready yet to call it a defining moment. Lots of people have mentioned his incoherent speech when off the teleprompter, but few people have asked why. My experience listening to students over ten years tells me that Mr. Obama was merely thinking out loud. So, yes, the sentiment was genuine.
My classroom experience tells me something else. The ability to articulate a position comes from having thought about it in depth. By way of example I could define conservatism in one pithy sentence: A belief in personal liberty based on limited government leavened by personal responsibility.
Now, can someone define liberalism? Ask a group of liberals and what you get is a lot of people thinking out loud. They have no coherent philosophy. What you get is a mish-mash of ideas like social justice and environmentalism. Every idea is simply an ad hoc solution for whatever crisis seems important at the moment.
Thus do you have Mr. Obama explained. He's incoherent because he hasn't thought anything through. And when he thinks out loud, he gets in trouble.
Edited on July 20, 2012 at 2:50amAug '11
Re: Defining Moments
But Pat....cut him some slack...after all..."he's got a lot on his plate."
Dec '10
Re: Defining Moments
KC Mulville
He's off his meds ... I mean, teleprompter.
I'm sorry, but the idea of Axelrod and his crew furrowing their brow because the Smartest Human Ever can't survive without a teleprompter ... and Jay Carney saying that his Jobs Council hasn't met with Obama because Obama has a full plate ...
Are we on Candid Camera? · Jul 19 at 9:25am
Hopefully not, unless you're not an Egyptian actor.
I bow to no one in my disregard for Obama's intellect, but the reason he's on the teleprompter is that he CAN'T tell us what he really thinks. It's not that he's inarticulate without it, it's that he's honest without it. Don't forget "spread the wealth around".
Marxism is only tasty when in a stew of euphemisms.
Dec '10
Re: Defining Moments
Kevin Walker
Furthermore, the part of the quote where he says the following is disturbing (I'm paraphrasing): Hey, you think you're successful because you're so smart and you work so hard? Well, there are a lot of smart and hardworking people out there. He seems to be saying that success depends mostly on luck. Such a view makes it easier to shake down the "lucky". · Jul 19 at 9:46am
As a mathematician, I always wondered about people who advocated affirmative action. Why would you set people up for failure?
What I slowly discovered is that my field is pretty unique when it came to objective evaluation. In the world of Ivy League law schools, for instance, it's not about what you know. You don't go through a gauntlet. Harvard has a 97% graduation rate. Yale doesn't have grades at all.
It's about contacts. In fact, if you read some accounts of Obama's life, his success is less about affirmative action and more about contacts and the fact that his family and friends knew the right people.
He thinks the whole world is like that.
Dec '10
Re: Defining Moments
Wylee Coyote
I don't think anyone's disputing that, any more than anyone disputed Liz Warren's point that infrastructure and fire service helps business. · Jul 19 at 11:58am
It's pedantic. The whole accumulation of human knowledge helps business. If mathematicians had an RIAA, you people would all be living in caves.
Dec '10
Re: Defining Moments
~Paules: I'll agree that Obama's gaffe was another unforced error, but I'm not ready yet to call it a defining moment. · Jul 19 at 5:49pm
Edited on Jul 19 at 5:50pm
I am. Because of the way he's reacting to it. He's making ads to "clarify" himself.
Sorry for posting all this so late. I just saw this today.
Jun '10
Re: Defining Moments
Albert Arthur
That's Elizabeth Warren's reaction. · Jul 19 at 9:09am
Or, "I said it better!"