Did someone say nuance?
Posted on 09/03/2008 8:45:07 AM PDT by Incorrigible
By JOHN FARMER
Wednesday August 20, 2008
In the course of Adlai Stevenson's 1952 presidential bid, a woman called out to him as he was campaigning, "Senator, you have the vote of every thinking person!'' To which the witty and eloquent Stevenson replied, "That's not enough, Madam. We need a majority.''
Barack Obama would be well-advised to heed Stevenson's caution about what happens to candidates who delight the literati but are seen as distant, even alien, by shot-and-a-beer types not given to perusing the New Yorker over a glass of white wine. The record shows they get clobbered.
Some Democrats are beginning to grumble that maybe Obama is too cerebral for his own good — unwilling or constitutionally unable to respond to John McCain's tough talk with some tough talk of his own and too introspective and nuanced in confronting difficult issues.
This presidential election was supposed to be a layup for Democrats, what with the economy on its knees and McCain wearing the scarlet B (for George W. Bush) on his back. But the polls say it's close, McCain has momentum and a foreign policy crisis in the Russian-Georgian clash that may play to his strength. In other words, Obama could blow this layup.
Americans seem to like tough guys for president, or at least guys who talk tough and provide terse answers that reduce complex issues to a clear-cut choice. That's what McCain offers. No equivocation for him. Obama ruminates, turning an issue over in his mind like a Rubik's Cube in search of a solution.
He's got intellectual depth that McCain may lack, but he lacks McCain's quick-trigger commitment on almost any issue.
Never was this contrast between the two men more evident than in the one-hour conversation each had recently with the Rev. Rick Warren. (Incidentally, Warren put television's gotcha-happy anchors to shame with his conversational approach that had the candidates at ease and encouraged each to reveal something of himself and his thinking. Maybe it's time to bench the TV anchors in the debates this fall.)
Obama was nothing if not nuanced during his hour with Warren. Asked why he wanted to be president, he launched into a soliloquy on lessons he'd learned at his mother's lap.
"I was talking to somebody a while back,'' he began, "and I said the one time that she'd really get angry with me is if she ever thought that I was being mean to somebody or unfair to somebody.'' On another occasion, Obama said, she pointed out that in America "everybody's got a shot.'' He wants to be president, Obama concluded, because "I feel that American dream is slipping away.''
McCain kept it short. He wants to be president, he said, "to inspire a generation of Americans to serve a greater cause than their self-interest.'' Period.
The general impression among the people who watch these things for a living is that McCain came out the winner. His crisp answers clearly won the audience. Democrats tend to discount his better reception, noting that the audience was dominated by Christian evangelicals friendly to Republicans. But that's cold comfort. The evangelicals are precisely the segment of the GOP base that, up to now, has been most skeptical of the old McCain, the maverick McCain.
If he has, in fact, made believers of the evangelicals, it's a substantial boost for the McCain candidacy.
But there's another downside for Obama in the Warren meeting — the first inkling that he may not enjoy the advantage over McCain in this fall's debates that has been widely assumed in the press and inside his own camp.
McCain's feistiness suggests passion, and his crisp answers convey conviction. Obama, the intellectual like Stevenson, can see so many aspects of an issue that he seems passionless and less decisive. It's not a winning style. (Think Michael Dukakis.) If you'll recall, Hillary Clinton bested him in most of the debates during the Democratic primary fight.
Another aspect of the Obama style that frustrates some Democrats is his unwillingness to attack McCain even as McCain (or his handlers) hit Obama with everything in the ring but the corner stool. If Obama takes any more blows, he'll need a cut man in his corner.
It's hard to understand how Obama, a graduate of the Chicago school of politics as a contact sport, could seem so passionless, even passive at times. The reason, of course, is that his is a politics of ideas, not invective. Like Stevenson. But Stevenson, despite one of the most innovative, elevated and issue-dominated campaigns in the last half of the 20th century, lost by a rout in 1952.
He was running against an American military hero, too.
(John Farmer is national political correspondent for The Star-Ledger of Newark, N.J. He can be contacted at jfarmer(at)starledger.com.)
Not for commercial use. For educational and discussion purposes only.
Farmer is a long running columnist at the Newark, NJ Star Ledger and his columns are typically nonsense so I don't bother posting them. However this one was so over the top, I figured I'd post it for fun!
The "elite" are apparently hitting the panic button!
Neoliberal cognitive dissonance on display.
I figured he would lose them with the “uh” between every other word.
If OBM is so cerebral, why can’t we see his school grades, his SAT scores, some law review article that he wrote, etc. to support that claim?
Obama needs a John Deere tractor. That would make him look like a farmer. (Remember John Kerry, anyone?)
Oh, sorry. Wrong Farmer.
Some Democrats are beginning to grumble that maybe Obama is too cerebral for his own good”
LOL Please, this guy can’t speak in complete sentences unless he has a teleprompter or ear piece in place. He was a stumbling, bumbling idiot at Saddleback and all the Obamanation could muster was that McCain had an unfair advantage.
His cerebral nature is surely the reason he doesn’t want to engage McCain in townhall type debates where everything isn’t scripted. I think it would be great sport, perhaps we’d find out how many additional uncles of bambi helped to liberate Auschwitz.
For every intellectual that is voting for Obama, there will be 10 rationally/cognitively challenge people doing so as well.
Yeah, dats it, that there Barry Osama is jist two dang smart and all fer us here blew koller Amerikans, so’s we’uns will jist vote fer the old rinnkly wite guy so’s we dasn’t has to lissen to Barry speechify and skratch are heads all the times....
>> Obama ruminates
That’s the problem.
Obama hasn’t developed through normal social intercourse.
All he does is sit around and ruminate.
All that rumination has made him blind to reality.
Does the left have a copyright on the word “nuance”. Perhaps their editors give them a bonus if they use it in a story.
Some pseudo-intellectuals do not see the distinction between arrogance and true intelligence. While I think Barack is intelligent enough, I suspect that he probably doesn’t see that distinction.
Read later so I can LOL!!!
Wow - talk about elitism at its most arrogant.
Did someone say nuance?
I've always heard, "If you can't dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with BS." I believe that is the extent of Obama's "intellectual depth."
The only people voting for the big 0 are people like Ayers and
Diddy. Communist sympathizers and very rich nut jobs that love to tout their worth, while using up oxygen.
The big 0 would do better by preaching his concepts on the street.
Oh, BTW, I think Diddy is recuiting blacks and crack heads to move to Alaska.
Haven’t heard anything about hos. I’m sure he’s on it though.
This is a constant liberal refrain, “The average Joe’s are too stupid to understand our superiority.”
Its all they’ve got. I’ve been hearing it for the last 30 years.
I find it absolutely incredible that someone who has reached his position and has accumulated all those paper honors is so incredibly HORRIBLE at public speaking off the teleprompter. Holy carp, how could he make it through a job interview?
Every time they say that they make it worse for themselves.
The msm got the Stevenson election wrong back then and haven’t improved in their reporting since.
We perfectly comprehend what you and your Marxist pals are selling, you condescending douchewads. We're not interested.
The man is as far from an intellectual as you could be. He is dumber than a damn door knob. No ideas, no brilliant thoughts. He is good at saying duh, though.
(between the ears)
2nd definition, “nuanced” is liberal speak for trying to justify a position they know is morally wrong but politically expedient.
What “nuanced” is not, is any more intelligent about moral positions that what God gave us, or what we know in our hearts to be right.
He's not cerebral, he's elitist. The two can often go together, but they are not one and the same.
So does this mean that Joe Biden is “Pinky”?
We used to see endless articles expounding on Al Gore’s giant intellect, just to put this in perspective.
Gore is a mental case who doesn’t know his hat from a hot rock, but he mouths all the popular platitudes (and his ghost-writers write so well!). He was head for awhile of the Left’s Mutual Admiration Society, and was the focus of endless rounds of congatulation from the paid press flacks.
Now its Obama’s turn. He’s cerebral. Hasn’t done a darned thing other than talk endlessly about himself, but he does it so well. Can you imagine having this self-absorbed prig in your face every day for the next 4 years? Sure, he’s never made a command decision in his life, sure, he’s no John McCain, in fact he’s no Sarah Palin for that matter. But he has a boundless intellect, boundless potential, boundless vision, and it would be a crime to deprive ourselves of his stewardship.
And if he’s elected, it will be a crime to question him, too. Ask people who try it now, and he’s not even elected yet.
Cerebral?
Ce-REBRAL!!?? Obama!!???
Is this from The Onion??
Conservatives are just too stupid to understand the “nuanced” responses to Rick Warren’s questions.
Hell, they weren’t “nuanced”, they were deliberately long on words and short on details.
That’s a pretty fair article.
“It’s hard to understand how Obama, a graduate of the Chicago school of politics as a contact sport, could seem so passionless, even passive at times.”
On this I disagree. Obama has never had a contested election until the Democrat Presidential Primary. NEVER. He was the product of the new generation of Chicago politics, a hereditary oligarchy where Obama was brought in as an adopted brother-in-arms of the Ayers sub-clan of the Daley oligarchy. Obama’s Chicago tribulations came before he entered the political field, it came while he was doing community organizing.
No one knows if Obama has EVER been able to go toe to toe with anyone in a debate. He was a idealistic uniter inside an intellectual vacuum, not a divider, by his own temperament and career choices. He specifically searched and chose an intellectual wasteland to minister over, avoiding all of the forging of character of daily battles of wits, and his intellect shows it.
Anyway, he doesn’t seem capable of standing himself out as a defined defender of any set of principles, outside of the principles of redistribution to maintain his power as the redistributor.
“(McCain provides) terse answers that reduce complex issues to a clear-cut choice.”
They call it making a decision. Do we drop the atom bomb, or don’t we not drop it and take the consquences? A president’s main job is reducing complex issues to a clear-cut choice. Truman was a near great president because he could balance killing 200,000 enemy civilians against losing 3 million of our own troops and act accordingly. Carter was a disaster because he would just sit there and wring his hands when faced with having to make a clear cut choice.
Obama’s lack of incisiveness that the writer sees as “too cerebral” actually reveals him to be a lightweight, not up to the job of being president.
Intellectual depth? BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAA!
The easily-duped libs say "cerebral." I say "pretentious."
Sounds like Obama is almost as smart as Hillary.
Um, urg, uhhhhhhh. We be to dum to know what good fur us. sav me osama!
I’ve never seen anything about what Obama’s said or written that didn’t sound like regurgitated Marxism if not outright class-warfare/redistributionist advocacy. The guy is the perfect charmer. What Obama believes in most is himself. He’s almost as narcississtic as Bill Clinton but with more self-restraint. While these kinds of people have innate intelligence, it is used simply to get ahead...rational arguments are not Obama’s forte as his “hope and change” mantra without the substance demonstrates.
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