Christopher Hitchens wonders why Barack Obama is so vapid, hesitant, and gutless:
By the end of that grueling campaign season, a lot of us had got the idea that Dukakis actually wanted to lose--or was at the very least scared of winning. Why do I sometimes get the same idea about Obama? To put it a touch more precisely, what I suspect in his case is that he had no idea of winning this time around. He was running in Iowa and New Hampshire to seed the ground for 2012, not 2008, and then the enthusiasm of his supporters (and the weird coincidence of a strong John Edwards showing in Iowa) put him at the front of the pack. Yet, having suddenly got the leadership position, he hadn't the faintest idea what to do with it or what to do about it.
I've noted this in the past. Obama wasn't prepared, either mentally or in terms of experience, to be a candidate this time around, and had no expectations of it happening--it was just for practice and name recognition. To repeat, he's like the dog that chases cars, but doesn't know what to do with when when he catches it.
And calling him a "dusky Dukakis" has to sting. Particularly because it's true.
No it's not. Mike Dukakis actually was a governor of a biggish (population, not size) state, and had made some sensible reforms to it. He may have been a goofball, but he was way more qualified to be President than Obama.
Carl, a random page of any phone book and a dart would produce a better prez than the O-man.
Hmmm.
Frankly I don't get the sense that Obama has "grit".
It's an old term no longer in popular use but it was something tossed around when I was a kid in very rural NH. And it was one of the more terrible condemnations that could be used on a person at the time.
And I think the biggest problem that Obama has is that either he doesn't have a strong set of core beliefs -or- he does and is hiding them.
That sort of fakery sets off every alarm.