MR. OBAMA MIGHT OCCASIONALLY REMAIN SILENT – AT 9:37 A.M. ET:   There is much buzz about the interview with President Obama in the Sunday New York Times.   The Times's fine reporter, Peter Baker, conducted the interview.  Mr. Obama, as Scott Johnson of Power Line points out, does not come off particularly well:

Yesterday I got around to reading Peter Baker's New York Times Magazine article "The education of a president" in hard copy. One comes away from the article with the uncomfortable feeling that Obama thinks he's just too damned good for us.

Baker's article made news in the middle of last week as a result of Obama's acknowledgment that he didn't know "shovel-ready" from a hole in the ground (to borrow the formulation of Mickey Kaus). In other words, he wasn't lying to us when he sold us his trillion-dollar "stimulus" bill of goods. He just didn't know what he was talking about.

That pretty much sums it up.  From The Times interview: 

When Obama secured the Democratic nomination in June 2008, he told an admiring crowd that someday "we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal; this was the moment when we ended a war and secured our nation and restored our image as the last, best hope on earth."

I read that line to Obama and asked how his high-flying rhetoric sounded in these days of low-flying governance. "It sounds ambitious," he agreed. "But you know what? We've made progress on each of those fronts."

Oh really?  Yeah, I see all those good jobs for the jobless.  And caring for the sick has been turned into the shambles of Obamacare.  The planet is healing?  Obama doesn't even seem aware of the serious scientific debate over "climate change," and whether we're being sold a bill of goods by "experts."  Ending a war?  Securing our nation?  Anyone feel more secure out there?

Our image?  Sure, the adolescents around the world still love Obama, but not the United States.  Our enemies, of course, love him because he's weakened this nation and its resolve.  What an accomplishment. 

It's pretty sad.  Obama's interview is self-indicting.  He's everything, and less, that we thought he is.

October 18, 2010