"There's an interesting line building on Obama that somehow success and intelligence are a handicap," said Mark Sawyer, a UCLA political scientist. "If he wasn't extraordinary, he wouldn't be there. But then he is extraordinary and it becomes, 'He is just too good, too well spoken, too accomplished.' "
For more, go to:
http://www.latimes.com/...
It's refreshing to read that at least one reporter has not drunk the Kool-Aid.
However, he does not go far enough. What he leaves out from a rather superficial survey is the big elephant in the room: Racism. Too bad. What could be more obvious? Words like "presumptuous", "arrogant", "too confident" "un-American", "exotic" (one of Pat Buchanan's favorites) are all code for.....
Uppity. And we all know what follows the word Uppity, don't we?
Too-clever pundit George Will, on Sunday's This Week, was the latest conservative chorister to add his voice to the "arrogant" meme in his clumsy attempt to put down Obama's credentials as "too upper-crust", a Columbia grad and President of the Harvard Law Review." Come again, George: "too upper-crust"? Not one peep of protest, except from Donna Brazile (the black Democratic strategist). Someone should have at least reminded Mr. Will that our Dear Leader went to Yale & Harvard, got mediocre grades, then, with real arrogance, bought himself the presidency via his Daddy's connections. Sadly, this passes for a news panel in today's media.
The smears worked with John Kerry. So they will do it again. Strike the opponent right in the solar plexus where he is strongest. Karl Rove and his troops did a superb job of eviscerting Kerry's outstanding military record, while painting him as "elite" and "arrogant", drawing repeatedly on his education, knowledge of French and, of course, that damning windsurfing photo. At the same time, Kerry did not point out that Bush was the real "elitist", the truly "arrogant" one of the two---a rich son born to an old aristocratic Yankee family, grandson of a CT senator, son of a President, who arrogantly walked into the presidency with an ideological agenda to destroy Saddam Hussein under false pretenses. Kerry had a great opportunity and squandered it. Bush had already convinced enough voters that he was "just like them". Kerry lost, albeit very closely, largely because the other side controlled the media narrative.
Will they succeed again? Why, for example, is no one in the mainstream media pointing out John McCain's "arrogance", as one could easily do, since his claims of readiness for president are belied by some very hard evidence to the contrary. Remember Wesley Clark? Everyone demanded that Obama condemn him for stating a pretty obvious truth: "getting shot down is not a qualification to be president". That was a clear, concise statement that is perfectly true. It could have been the basis for a genuine argument. What happened? It was so throughly smacked down by so many Republicans that Obama felt the need to "reject" the comment. No one has heard a word from Wesley Clark since. Just one example.
One has to ask: where is the outcry against the series of despicable ads produced by McCain over the last week? That old trick, put out a false ad, watch it play out over and over for free by a voracious media eager for controversy, then back off later, worked to perfection in Obama's non-Landstuhl hospital visit. They even had an attack ad ready just in case he did visit the hospital, so all bases would be covered. Now we are hearing from McCain that the bizarre Britney/Hilton ad was meant as "humor". Spend all that money on just "humor"? Really? What that ad displayed, stupidly but clearly, was that most insidious of old racial shibboleths: Black Man With Blond White Women (one blond bimbo was apparently not sufficient).
The latest news, folks? Thanks to our Dumb & Dumber Media, Senator McCain, a lackluster, bumbling, rather pathetic and intellectually-challenged candidate is suddenly closing the gap in the national tracking polls over the weekend. The Rovian mud-slinging will continue unabated, once they saw how quickly and easily the success of Obama's foreign trip was co-opted by a slew of negative ads, thrown out as bait for all the chattering classes to bite into.
And bite they did. At Obama's Florida news conference on Saturday, most of the questions from the media centered on the opposition's latest racial & smear tactics. Obama showed some exasperation, but he still stuck to his statement that McCain was not a "racist", just "cynical". He's between a rock and a hard place here and they know it. Unfortunatately for him, the more those guys attack on "race", the better for them. Keeping that front and center means they don't have to put forth anything positive about their candidate.
At some point in time, and the sooner the better, Barack Obama is going to have to open up the throttle all the way and attack each and every one one of McCain's weaknesses. So far, he's hasn't done that with much success.