Posted on 09/27/2011 1:56:35 PM PDT by presidio9
Maybe it is a 10-minute drive back up Lake Shore Drive from Barack Obama's red-brick home at Hyde Park Blvd. and S. Greenwood to the south end of Grant Park. That's where he spoke at a rally seen around the world on the night he was elected President, and when the people who voted for him believed he was going to change the country.
Now, on a morning nearly three years later, it is quiet on Hyde Park Blvd., a Secret Service van parked in front of the house and Secret Service signs posted around the neighborhood, and metal barriers making sidewalks disappear. This happens to be around the corner from the home of Bill Ayers, the guy that idiots on the right tried to make into some kind of terrorist, and maybe two blocks from where Louis Farrakhan lives.
You go up Hyde Park and take a right and left and come to the headquarters for the Rev. Jesse Jackson's Operation Push. Muhammad Ali lived in this neighborhood once.
Obama was going to come out of here and make a better future for us, stand in a part of Grant Park where you can see signs for "Ebony" and "Jet" on downtown buildings and give a speech on Nov. 4, 2008, that would go out to the world, a President-elect now instead of a candidate out of the South Side of Chicago.
"We thought it was a beginning," says Bill Young, a local character who has been a friend to writers and journalists and politicians for a long time in his city. "Only it turned out to be an ending, of an exciting campaign."
Young said, "Now people in this town - HIS town - are as mad at him as people everywhere else."
One of the great candidates out of one of the great political campaigns we have ever seen, a candidate good enough to take out Hillary Clinton in what was supposed to be her year, has turned into this kind of mediocre President, despite his own best intentions and expectations. He was never supposed to need the Republicans to run a scrub against him to keep his job.
Obama was dealt a bad hand. Only the politically challenged would suggest otherwise. The problem is that he has played even worse than his cards. And turned an Electoral College map that was a blue state dream for him against John McCain into a minefield, no matter whom the Republicans run against him.
If he wants to believe it was just the economy that did this to him, or the bug-eyed screamers from the right-wing media - or even Republicans in Congress genuflecting in front of the Tea Party - then maybe Obama doesn't make it back to Grant Park in November 2012.
And if they've started to lose faith here watching a candidate as strong as Obama come out of the bareknuckle politics of this city and then look so weak as a President, then maybe even Mitt Romney is candidate enough to turn Obama into the first one-term President since George H.W. Bush. Another guy whom a bad economy helped throw down an air shaft.
It is something Romney tries to do right now, playing to his strengths: Standing on the stage and looking good. And looking so much smarter than Rick Perry, it is as if Perry has been held back a couple of grades just in the two months since he entered the race to such gun-toting fanfare.
Obama has done the impossible: Less than five months after the Navy SEALs took out Osama Bin Laden, he's made the killshots a nonissue, even though at the time it was supposed to make him some kind of slam dunk for a second term.
Somehow Barack Obama, the candidate who spoke of hope and change and optimism about the future, now tries to keep his job as President in a jobless America, a nation more pessimistic than at any time in recent memory - certainly any time since 9/11.
"You know what he's doing right now?" a Chicago insider who has seen it all from Obama said over the weekend. "He's looking at the same electoral map everybody else is, and knowing he can't possibly win some of the states he won last time."
We turned around now and drove back down Lake Shore to the brick house behind tall trees on Hyde Park Blvd. Such a short way, really, past the Regents Park gym where Obama played pickup basketball with his buddies. It just seems much further from the November night in Grant Park in 2008, for a President who too often seems to have lost his way.
I'll go with this one: "This happens to be around the corner from the home of Bill Ayers, the guy that idiots on the right tried to make into some kind of terrorist..."
Wow.
Lupica was, is, will always be a sports wannabe wimp. Now the Daily News gives him a political column? Why? To save money on a real columnist?
obambi hasnt been home much
Some guy named Harrison J. Bounell is living there
(Bounell-Biden 2012!)
Obama has done the impossible: Less than five months after the Navy SEALs took out Osama Bin Laden, he's made the killshots a nonissue, even though at the time it was supposed to make him some kind of slam dunk for a second term.
Political analysis has done nothing for Mike's already tenuous grasp on reality.
The best advice for young and old veteran voters; “Never fall in love with your candidate”.
If he/she loses - you will always wonder ‘what might have been’.
If he/she wins - they will never live up to your expectations and often will do something you will never forgive.
Voting for a POTUS is not a love match.
Herman Cain and George Bush thank you.
Lupica should know a weak man.
He sees one every day when he climbs up his stepladder and looks in the mirror.
In NYC, Lupica is to sports journalism what Mike Francesa is to sports talk radio. Both are arrogant punks.
“a President who too often seems to have lost his way.”
This Prez has not “Lost His Way.” The damage he Intended to inflict on our country and way of life is continuing at break neck speed.
The true horror of this administration is that “His Way” has lowered the bar so far that whoever succeeds him in 2013 may be only marginally better or at the very least willing to let bygones be bygones and not go root out and clean up all the contributory pieces of the catastrophe Obama has created.
Actually, MIKE LUPICA is to sports talk radio what Mike Lupica is to sports journalism. He has his won show now. You know how some people have "a face for radio?" Mike's got the voice and quick wit for writing. His radio show sucks. OTOH, Francesa basically invented sports talk, leans right politically, and generally sticks to subjects he pays close attention to. I'm guessing you're a Mets fan and that's why you hate him so much. There are so many NY radio personalities you could have attacked before him: Steven A. smith, Colin Cower, etc.
Let’s give Francesa credit for his in depth knowledge of horses. The Dog always use to tell everyone that Mike was the most expert person in sports radio on horse racing. When the Dog was challenged by a guest on WFAN as to why Mike, whose horses rarely won, could possibly be an expert the Dog responded, Mike has to stop insisting that he has to be both the owner and the jockey.
The same rabid desire to vote for “other” that swept this muslim idiot into office will be soon returning him to his rightful place in the zhitter....
“The best advice for young and old veteran voters; “Never fall in love with your candidate””
Too late! And she’s not even a candidate yet.
Lupica needed a "Chicago Insider" to tell him this?
Get your head in the game, Mikey.
Mike Lupica wrote that line, and the Daily News published it. I am a political junkie. I have posted 30,000 times to FR. I have never seen even the most hardened conservative not concede that Obama was dealt a harsh economy. The point is that he was aware of the situation before he was elected, took the oath of office, and decided he was up to the job. He has now had longer than the entire JKF presidency, one remembered be liberals as Camelot (and forgotten as the last presidency under racial segregation). He has failed.
OTOH, liberals are all too happy to forget that George W. Bush "inherited" Clinton's recession. Remember him? "Eight years of economic prosperity (not)." He also inherited a military being dismantled and a CIA with token bin Laden unit, despite the fact that the man had attacked us 3 times, with massive loss of life, and vowed to do it again.
Mike doesn't know all these things, because he is too busy writing lame sports columns that never fail to mention Sarah Palin.
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