The Very Clever Obama Knows What He is Not Talking About
By Dennis Campbell (02/22/08)
Someone posed a question the other day that was quite valid: Why does Barack Obama say nothing of substance? Why is he so, so unspecific?
Just about everything Obama offers is expressed in generalities. We get almost no details in how he is going to accomplish his grand designs.
The public, and an enraptured media, seem more fascinated by his charismatic personality and oratorical skills than interested in exactly what kind of policies we can expect from Obama.
We do know that he is skilled in the art of duplicity. For example, regarding gun rights, on the one hand he says he supports the 2nd Amendment rights of Americans to keep and bear arms, but at the same time he supports the Washington, D.C., restrictions on gun ownership.
How can you be for something and against it at the same time? Apparently, you can if you are Barack Obama, and he goes unchallenged by the mainstream media.
Obama talks of ending world poverty (something that has not been accomplished in America in spite of three trillion dollars in spending), and bringing people together, and making peace with our enemies.
How? We are never told. Apparently, it is enough just to say the words.
“Change,” and “bring people together,” and the strange “we are the ones we’ve been waiting for” are not substantive statements, they are platitudes and appeals to emotion.
Of course, that is precisely the point. Barack Obama does not want to talk about specifics, because his audience does not want to hear them.
This is something his Democrat opponent, Hillary Clinton, has not grasped, or if she has, it is too late and she lacks the thespian skills of Obama to bring it off. People today, primarily those on the left side of the political spectrum, do not want policy statements – they want excitement, grand promises and soaring rhetoric.
It has been reported, and seems likely to be true, that his campaign workers are admonished to avoid talking about specifics but instead to ask, “How does he make you feel?”
It is quite clever, actually. Obama is appealing to those raised on the mantra of “trust your feelings,” many of them half-educated products of our failed public education system who are drawn more to video games and mindless entertainment than thoughtful analysis.
When I was in college in the late ‘60s, a professor chastised our history class for writing essays with the phrase, “I feel that….”
“I don’t want to know how you feel,” she said. “I what to know what you think.” Unfortunately, she was on the losing side of a battle decided years ago..
So, why should Obama talk about specifics? To reach his base, he should not. He is doing it exactly right. Keep it superficial. Keep it emotional. Get them excited, as pumped up as though they were at a Metallica concert.
Of course, if people really understood where he is coming from, and where he would take this country, most would head for the exits.
Obama is a socialist. He wants the government to control as much of our lives and activities as possible. He wants to redistribute income by taking from those who have and giving it to those who have not. His presidency would usher in a torrent of government controls, from how you raise your children to what you eat.
That this system historically has been a failure does not matter, because people like Barack Obama have been seduced by power. The arrogance of those on the Left says that if they, being intellectually superior – as they consider themselves to be – are given enough power and resources they can solve all of humanity’s problems.
Just the opposite is true, as has been proven throughout time. What works best is freedom –freedom for individuals to make their own decisions, free enterprise, and minimal government interference in our lives.
The Left in America is made up primarily of two groups: Those with a desire for power and control, and the majority – politically and economically naďve, who embrace the idea of the nanny state.
Obama appeals to both. The former understand where he wants to go and are eager to follow. The latter just want someone to tuck them in at night and keep their stomachs full, or have the wrongheaded notion that government is best-suited for determing how we live our lives and run our businesses.
Elect this man, and say goodbye once and for all to the grand experiment called America.
Dennis Campbell
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