Obama radiates an ethos of integrity, humanity, good manners and elegance that I’m beginning to miss, and that I suspect we will all miss a bit, regardless of who replaces him.
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| QED |
Obama radiates an ethos of integrity, humanity, good manners and elegance that I’m beginning to miss, and that I suspect we will all miss a bit, regardless of who replaces him.
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| QED |
5 comments:
David Brooks is ahead of the curve. I know how you guys like to bash the Dear Leader but given this year's slate of potential replacements a couple years from now you're all going to develop a new appreciation for him. Maybe even miss him.
I know how you guys like to bash the Dear Leader but given this year's slate of potential replacements a couple years from now you're all going to develop a new appreciation for him. Maybe even miss him.
Not a chance. The last Democrat who left America better than he found it was Grover Cleveland.
Not true. Carter left us reagan. Give credit where due.
Anon, you are quite right about the quality of the replacements. Many have the potential to be truly terrible. But Obama had a certain, Je ne sais quoi about his disaster that will be hard to match. Actually, I do have an inkling what it was. His race. Ooh, did I just say that? Why yes, yes I did. What was the problem with his race? Nothing, in itself. He was no less qualified to be president because of it. But with a bit of nuance we can easily see that it changed the dynamics of how we related to him and to each other, and he to us. "You are criticizing him because of his race" became an easy way to invalidate criticism without discussion. A president who is not subject to harsh critique should not be president. Because then that president can start to do things that shouldn't be done. Have we been "bashing" "Dear Leader"? Why the pejoratives? Was it unfair to criticize Bush for "leading us into a war on false premises"? I don't think so. Is it bashing Obama to say that he weaponized the IRS and was a divisive president? I don't think so. Why do you?
Here's a thought. We need presidents who will be subject to withering, unfettered criticism. This means, at this point, that we need a Republican president. So much the better if that president is a female or hispanic because that president would surely be crucified daily. Let's demand more from our leaders. Or otherwise maybe we should stop pretending that we have a free press and rule of law and all that jingo.
Evidently Brooks has been vacationing in Colorado, because he's obviously been smoking something really, really good to come up with that. How else do you confuse "refusing to prosecute the felons in his administration because they'd pipe up about their boss" with "running a scandal-free administration"? I think I wrote some similar things after an all night Grateful Dead concert.
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