The Incredible Shrinking (and Whining) Obama
While recording this coming week’s podcast for Ricochet, Rob Long, Peter Robinson, James Lileks, Jonah Goldberg and I—predominantly white males, as The New York Times would dutifully report—spent a good deal of time practicing armchair psychology on our President. (Though, since he was the only one in L.A. at the time, I’m convinced Long was in a lawn chair.) Anyway, I observed that Mr. Obama seemed to be getting smaller. I didn’t mean that metaphorically or symbolically; I meant he was actually shrinking. Unless some gag-oriented White House staffer had a larger Oval Office desk brought in for his recent address, the President seemed to me to be losing size.
There are two possible explanations for this phenomenon. One is that he actually is getting smaller under the weight of the office, and the other is that he merely appears to be getting smaller compared to those around him. Perhaps my senses are deceiving me, and he isn’t actually wasting away, and, if that’s so, there must be some explanation for the misperception. That explanation, I think, is that he has shrunk in direct proportion to those he’s made larger by whining about them.
It’s pretty pathetic when the President of the United States talks about being treated like a dog or acts as if he’s the hapless victim of enemies like Rush Limbaugh or Glenn Beck. He’s the President of the whole darned country! He can launch a nuclear attack if he feels like it! He can even preempt American Idol for a speech! If Limbaugh or Beck goes even one second over his allotted broadcast time, a computer will shut him down.
Whining is what shrunk Jimmy Carter. Even when he wasn’t having sex with that woman, Bill Clinton managed, at least, to let his wife do most of the whining about the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy. George W. Bush had plenty of reasons to whine, including the fact they were making mainstream movies about assassinating him, but he managed to avoid the temptation. And, even when he was shot, Ronald Reagan didn’t whine. He didn’t have to. He was, I repeat, The President of the United States!
Near the end of the 1957 sci-fi film The Incredible Shrinking Man, Grant Williams has to fight a spider with the aid of a needle. Eventually, as he shrinks into nothingness, he attains a kind of mystical peace and becomes one with nature. Barack Obama hasn’t quite reached that point yet, but it might be time for him to keep a few needles handy.
- Comment (27)
- · Quote
- · UnfollowFollow (3)
- Pages:
- 1
- 2
- Pages:
- 1
- 2
Comments :
Sep '10
Re: The Incredible Shrinking (and Whining) Obama
As our President shrinks what is your opinion about how far our adversaries/enemies will push? Just roughly how bad do you think it will get?
Pete
Jul '10
Re: The Incredible Shrinking (and Whining) Obama
It's Rove.
That Oval Office re-do? All the furniture is 15% over-sized.
And the video camera has a new wide-angle lens.
Re: The Incredible Shrinking (and Whining) Obama
Peter Simonson: As our President shrinks what is your opinion about how far our adversaries/enemies will push? Just roughly how bad do you think it will get?
Pete · Sep 9 at 6:11am
That's the serious problem with a shrunken president. International bullies notice it, too. Despite what a lot of one-worlders seem to believe, really bad people exist who want to do really bad things to us. The smaller the president, the greater the temptation.
Aug '10
Re: The Incredible Shrinking (and Whining) Obama
Drudge had a disturbing photo of him on his site a few days ago, a profile shot of a stooped, heavy-footed, graying man slouching toward the Executive Mansion. Something has certainly happened to him.
I maintain that the worldwide 'progressive'/statist blimp has sprung a leak. Let's hope it's not a nascent Hindenburg.
The Euro-socialist model is unraveling into bankruptcy; China has announced publicly that its citizens shouldn't expect cradle-to-grave benefits anymore; Japan is facing a brick wall of demographic reality; and everything Obama has done so far is a time bomb of fiscal chaos and/or moral hazard. Nothing our Prince-of-Darkness-in-Chief does is winning him approval.
Jul '10
Re: The Incredible Shrinking (and Whining) Obama
Peter Simonson: As our President shrinks what is your opinion about how far our adversaries/enemies will push? Just roughly how bad do you think it will get?
Pete · Sep 9 at 6:11am
Well, let's see:
Iran is paying the Taliban a bounty of $1,000 per American head.
China's top UN diplomat went on a drunken tirade, revealing that he "...really (doesn't) like Americans.
Imam Rauf is now saying that we absolutely must build the GZM mosque or face the national security consequences of enraging the entire Muslim world.
Hugo Chavez is arming to the teeth.
Russia is selling advanced anti-aircraft weapons systems to Iran.
China is perfecting a missile specifically designed to kill US aircraft carriers, thus altering the entire strategic balance in the Pacific.
Mexican military units routinely violate our border and menace our Border Patrol agents.
Mahmoud Abbas cashes our checks and then laughs in our face.
Skinny little Somalian pirates in rubber dinghies terrorize our sea-borne commerce at will.
The world knows a weakling when they see one.
Jun '10
Re: The Incredible Shrinking (and Whining) Obama
Totally understandable. His chief economics advisor has decided to return to the faculty lounge leaving the president holding the bag. "Real sorry about those figures indicating a Summer of Recovery, Barack. Guess we'll have to noodle those numbers some more to see what happened." Tough lesson: In politics you have no real friends, only fellow competitors at the top of the food chain.
May '10
Re: The Incredible Shrinking (and Whining) Obama
Truman believed that Eisenhower would fail because he thought Ike, being a former 5-star, wouldn't understand the limits of the Presidency. But Eisenhower, whose dance card included FDR, Churchilll, Stalin, DeGaulle and Montgomery, understood all too well.
Obama, on the other hand has led a politically charmed life. I suspect that he's a bit like the schoolyard bully and has never had anyone who really pushed him back. But like the brilliant skit that Jon Stewart pulled off a few weeks ago, he's awoken to find that his race card is maxed out. And now the debt is maxed out, too.
Jul '10
Re: The Incredible Shrinking (and Whining) Obama
For a guy who was supposed to be charismatic, Obama is utterly oblivious when it comes to projecting an image.
While Putin rumbles around in black leather on a huge motorcycle, goes whale-hunting in the choppy North Pacific, is photographed buff and shirtless chopping wood ....
Obama rides a girly bike in mom jeans, is repeatedly photographed licking ice-cream cones like a second-grader, strolls out of the White House in hippie sandals, bows to any foreign leader in sight and lounges in the Oval Office with his feet up on the desk.
Jun '10
Re: The Incredible Shrinking (and Whining) Obama
Oops! Talk about shrinkage: Obama down to a minus 24 in today's Rasmussen poll.
Jul '10
Re: The Incredible Shrinking (and Whining) Obama
It's time to unleash Michelle.
She's the scary one.
May '10
Re: The Incredible Shrinking (and Whining) Obama
But, Kenneth, doesn't hiding behind or using his wife make him (look) even smaller?
May '10
Re: The Incredible Shrinking (and Whining) Obama
It's not "shrinking", just deflating. After being blown up to unnatural proportions he's returning to his normal size. This what he has always been.
Re: The Incredible Shrinking (and Whining) Obama
G.A.: You just might have solved the mystery.
May '10
Re: The Incredible Shrinking (and Whining) Obama
There's a big difference between those shots where Obama is shouting from a podium in front of a cheering crowd and the shots of him tired behind his desk at the Oval Office without the crowd participation. When he's behind the desk, I always notice how scrawny he is.
I suggest the next Presidential address include a live bald eagle chewing on the remains of a Persian fallow deer.
Jun '10
Re: The Incredible Shrinking (and Whining) Obama
Obama is as inspiring as an auto mechanic who can't figure out how to open your hood.
May '10
Re: The Incredible Shrinking (and Whining) Obama
Give the poor guy a break. He's 49 and for the first time in his life has a job where he is directly responsible for producing results & finds that everything he does either fails abysmally or is rejected by the racist, bigoted, islamophobic, nativist, clinging populace he was elected to rule. Not only that but also for the first time he is strongly criticized and has no experience on how to handle it.
Jul '10
Re: The Incredible Shrinking (and Whining) Obama
There's a line from Macbeth that pops into my head nearly every time I see him (in the three seconds before I change the channel or leave the room): "Now does he feel his title hang loose about him, like a giant's robe upon a dwarfish thief."
The line that comes before it is a bit scary, though. "Now minutely revolts upbraid his faith-breach; Those he commands move only in command, nothing in love." Iran and North Korea have picked up on his ineffectualness, as did General McChrystal. But how bad are things going to get over the next two years as the men and women serving below him become fully, painfully aware of it themselves? In the military, maybe even in the administration itself...
Jun '10
Re: The Incredible Shrinking (and Whining) Obama
Jonathan's quote from the Bard is superb (shows Jonathan to be well-read, and Shakespeare to be as brilliant and relevant as ever). My observation is not so profound.
Particularly in the last six months, as his numbers have imploded, Obama reminds of the dog (this has nothing to do with his recent dog reference) that chases the school bus and, against all odds, catches it, then says, "Now what the crap do I do with it?"
Obama was perfect for catching the bus (black, articulate, supposedly transcendent and post-partisan). The problem is that having caught the bus, he's shown an inability to drive it, he hates potholes, traffic, and can't understand why those little SOBs in the back won't shut up and leave him in peace.
He was a great campaigner, but every aspect of governing diminishes him.
Edited on Sep 9, 2010 at 9:53amMay '10
Re: The Incredible Shrinking (and Whining) Obama
Rohmer actually knows her stuff- TVG earned the problem, because he ignored what she told him and insisted on his bad policy based on 1961 ideology. Now she runs off leaving him holding the bad bag that he himself demanded.
Richly deserved.
Re: The Incredible Shrinking (and Whining) Obama
When the president shrinks, it creates a leadership vacuum in the culture. A brainy congressman from Georgia filled the gap during Clinton's Great Shrinking in the early 1990's; before that, an eccentric Texas billionaire named Ross Perot leapt into the gap created by George H. W. Bush's mild disengagement on domestic matters -- it's a huge error for a president to become irrelevant -- which is what "shrinking" means. It's not the same as unpopular -- George W. Bush was unpopular, but he never seemed smaller.
But I agree with Steve MacDonald. Give the guy a break. I was pretty lousy at my first job, too.