Obam-a-rama? Obamathon? Obaminator? Obamistas?
I’m good and sick of hearing about Barack Obama. I swear, in the last two weeks he’s been featured lavishly in every major publication in the country, and you could almost feel the tremble of the media’s collective orgasm when he hinted he’s considering running for president in 2008.
I’m sick of the hype for two reasons: First, it’s way, way too early for magazines to be wasting my time with fawning 5,000-word profiles. Every time the media does this they get burned - Powell, Dean, McCain, take your pick. But they still do this, every election season.
Second, the premise of all the hype is that Obama is super-popular, a winner, a black American who beat the odds, etc. But the exhaustive biographical profiles of him tend to skip over one very, very important detail: his US Senate seat was handed to him.
Way back in 2004, Obama’s opponent for the US Senate seat was Republican candidate Jack Ryan. Lucky for Obama, Ryan’s problems from a rough-and-tumble primary followed him into the election, and after a judge ordered the release of his steamy divorce proceedings, he dropped out of the race. It was six months before the election, sure, but the Republicans kept their thumbs deep up their asses for a while before finally putting someone up against Obama, and by then the race was merely symbolic. (Not helping the Republicans any was George Ryan’s earlier corruption indictment, which just recently sent him to jail for the rest of his natural life. Illinois Republicans have since stayed away from people named “Ryan.”)
So basically, all Obama has done so far is not screw up. This does take some talent in Washington politics, but if he were to become president, he would have a lot of pre-made screw-ups handed to him upon inauguration, and I’m not confident in his ability to fix them.
My gut feeling is that Obama will fall off the radar sometime during 2007, and by 2012 he will have finally screwed up, or the media will be busy chasing some other crush. And people will say, “Remember when everyone was crazy about that one guy, what was his name? Barama?”
jon wrote:
and who can forget his competition in 2000? Alan Keyes! yeah, the uber-conservative republican that didn’t even live in illinois. he also started campaigning waaaay later than he should have. he didn’t stand a chance. the only thing that he had going for him was that he was black too
Posted on 27-Oct-06 at 12:42 pm | Permalink
pjk wrote:
I accidentally deleted a few comments… here they are:
DT sez:
I realized the extent of the media hype over Obama when my sisters, “right-wing evangelicals,” spoke sympathetically of him at a recent family function. I found the source of their admiration telling. They were impressed by his eloquence most of all. They were in awe of his carefully chosen words and how personable he was on Oprah. Obama avoids appearing to hold a typical partisan stance on many of the issues. Thus, my sisters were intrigued by this man. He does not talk like most politicians, has poise, is confident and even has a great smile.
Obama’s recent waves in the political world are to me another example of the sophistry that has inundated American politics today. Voters no longer understand all of the important issues and are instead willing to accept impression as reality. I’m not criticizing Obama for a lack of understanding on the issues; he is clearly well-educated and understands the debate behind the issues better than I do. My frustration is in the fact that his popularity has nothing to do with issues. My hope is that Mr. Obama’s voting record will eventually be his undoing. Unless you don’t show up to vote, you can’t mince words here.
On a side note, this is a transcript of the Obama/Keyes debates from a couple of years ago: http://www.renewamerica.us/archives/media/debates/04_10_12irndebate.htm
And John sez:
Barackback Mountain
Posted on 27-Oct-06 at 3:42 pm | Permalink
pjk wrote:
“who can forget his 2000 competition?” I can. and I did. thanks for the reminder, jon. it adds something else to my point: obama hasn’t actually overcome any latent racial yadda yadda because he ran for his senate seat against a fellow afro-american. once again: untried and overrated.
Posted on 27-Oct-06 at 3:45 pm | Permalink
daniel silliman wrote:
Re: his 2000 competition: On the other hand, Illinois GOPers ran Keys because, as I recall and don’t care enough to look up, no one else wanted to run against him. Why? Because he was too popular. It wasn’t like Keys was next in line to run for the Senate seat.
Re: your post: I agree with you, Krupa, and yet, I wish it weren’t so. I wish it were true, about Obama. It’d be nice to have a politician who was impressive and respectable even from the opposite party. It would be nice to have a political leader who inspired with something other than fear. It would be nice to have someone who didn’t play to extreme partisanship all the time. It would be nice to have someone who was eloquent.
(If anyone misunderstands me, let’s be clear: this isn’t about Bush. It’s about the whole slew of them, for as long as any of us has been alive at the very least.)
Obama will fade out, sure. He’s a media creation, sure. This is another scam invented by the power-seeking machine, yeah. It’s all a lot of b.s., we know this. But c’mon Pete, don’t you even want to believe a little bit?
Posted on 27-Oct-06 at 9:21 pm | Permalink
pjk wrote:
absolutely dan. if anything, I’m a little pissed at the media for using obama so blatently to raise hope and sell magazines, then abandoning him like they inevitably will.
if you want a positive AND realistic perspective, check out charles krauthammer. the Hammer says obama should run and lose (the primary) in 2008, then run for president for real in 2012 after he’s ripened a little.
I do indeed think obama has some important things to say. in this New York magazine profile he talks about how he believes babyboomer politicians are just playing out the arguments they had in college on a bigger stage - abortion, vietnam, the cold war, bigger vs. smaller govt., etc., and it’s time to move beyond that. this is something that needs to be said, and obama is the only person saying it right now.
oh, and as for the keyes thing, he got into the (2004) race because he’s good at playing the martyr. obama was popular, sure, but mainly because he was charasmatic, and smart enough to just sit back and smile while his opponent destroyed himself.
Posted on 27-Oct-06 at 10:12 pm | Permalink
jon wrote:
yeah, 2004, that’s what i meant
Posted on 28-Oct-06 at 8:43 am | Permalink
neill wrote:
Yeah, Obama was a juggernaut coming out of the Dem primary. The race would have been closer against Ryan than Keyes–hell, it’d have to be–but as Dan pointed out there was a very good reason that the Republicans brought Keyes in to begin with.
It’s tempting to paint Obama as either the newest feel-good candidate or Colin Powell Mk. 2, but the fact of the matter is that he got a pretty damn positive reaction downstate during the entire campaign (whether against Hull and Hynes, Ryan or Keyes). For a black candidate from Chicago, that’s an accomplishment.
Also: people still listen to Charles Krauthammer?
Posted on 28-Oct-06 at 11:06 am | Permalink
Peter Krupa » Flip flop! wrote:
[…] I predicted awhile ago - during a collective national orgasm of Obama excitement - that Obama would implode dramatically or be forgotten by the media long before the primary. I was completely wrong, and I am happy to be so. […]
Posted on 09-Dec-07 at 9:59 am | Permalink