The suit is a bespoke one. One would not expect anything less. The talent to speak fluently and attractively to many persons at once, both those for whom he was, at first, a "tabula rasa" as well as those who were predisposed to adore him, is nearly breathtaking. This facility was, and remains, not unlike the beauty of an Elizabeth Taylor, an Angelina Jolie or the kind of attention arresting, head swiveling of any unusually charismatic presence, one that is pansexual in its magnetism (remember a male commentator's "thrill going up my leg" remark?) and prone to enticing the listener's intellect to "hush now and go to sleep. All will be taken care of."
The hunger for leadership in the United States since the presidency of Ronald Reagan has, for some time now, shown signs of graduating into the first stages of psychic starvation. How else to explain the election of George W. Bush (though the term "Al Gore" may help in part to elucidate on this particular case), preceded by that of William J. Clinton and most recently, the elevation to the Oval Office of a "Community Organizer?" He is one with no executive experience and a background as rootless and as out of the American mainstream as that of a rail riding hobo: albeit a very intelligent vagabond, one who again, is blessed with exceptional speechmaking talents and skills and a seeming eloquence the potency of which has so far stretched its grasp sufficiently and adequately enough to satisfy enough empty souls in the body politic who can't or won't reflect on the coming abyss, its gaping maw rendered huger and huger thanks to the incompetence and/or malevolence of this current Salamander-in-Chief.
Pangs of hunger were appeased: first, most easily by a robust economy (thanks in no small measure to a balanced budget) at the turn of the century and a pre-9/11 mentality that could luxuriate in the Lewinsky scandal as a guilty pleasure and diversion, feeding both our devotion to our Puritan heritage and to the counter-culture jollies of our faded youth. The outrage over the leader of the Free World not checking his libido at the threshold of the Oval Office was blunted by our collective moral ambivalence and the old American quasi-religion of the strict bifurcation of a private life and a public one. We were too busy as we thought we were eating heartily and oh, so successfully: epicurean delights in the form of skyrocketing equities, ballooning bank accounts and ever more lucrative real estate deals. These "steaks", "lobsters" and "caviar" were proven to be not reliably nourishing over time and a small voice seemed to remind us that the issue of Character, however irritating and inconvenient, especially while we were accumulating small or large fortunes, perhaps now merited a reexamination.
The history of Clinton's successor included an undeniable bout with alcoholism. This was a new titillation, the news about which, many of us anticipated, with a strange hopefulness. Too soon for too many it was learned that this presidential candidate had struggled and had apparently overcome the problem. Whether a wife's ultimatum or an epiphany that resulted in a Born Again Christian's testimonial, the end of the story, of either motivation, was the same and was grudgingly accepted as real. Then the early radical re-characterization of his presidency as one primarily defined by foreign wars began to further strengthen our solidarity with him. A just cause (Afghanistan) to right the great wrong of September eleventh's infamy kept Bush in our prayers if not our hearts. But time and the slower and slower slog that the fight against Islamo-fascism was becoming helped to revive our always-near-the-surface anxiety, impatience and hypercriticism. Bush was likable, but he was hardly an especially articulate man. Why we fought seemed too simple to some. And of course, unlike our earlier conflicts, especially WWII, our highly professional and volunteer armed services, strangely, made us crankier and less inclined to tolerate the blood, gore and body bags (perhaps too many Nintendo-like images of targets being neatly zapped, dating back to the first Gulf war caused us to chafe without snappy results from supposed supermen). Iraq was also deemed by many as an elective venture (as if some Marquis de Queensberry rule dictated that we sustain another blow like Pear Harbor or 9/11 before proceeding). The Left's usual self-loathing that assumed villainy among oil men as trumping the evil of medieval misogynists, a Stalinist psychopath, and those enamored of beheadings and homicide/suicide bombings, began to be vomited out in a hopeless attempt at cleansing through logorrhea and the same old tired "peace protests", retreads of the masturbatory 1960's.
Bush had no aversion to spending money. This somehow did not endear him to so-called Progressives. He had had a lot of experience with a lot of money throughout his life. The projection of our own malaises onto this man was both predictable and inevitable. The Left's enormous distaste for Western armies defeating non-Western ones soon led to more and more criticism of the struggle against El Qaeda and the Taliban. The wars were enormously expensive and the nation's deficit expanded like a lonely housewife's waistline at an out of town MacDonald's after being jilted by her lover. Somehow and somewhere during his second term, our forty-third president permitted some strangely perverse behavior, anathema to any self-respecting banker. The kindest take on this situation: he did not have his eye on the ball in this world of financial institutions and real estate (Freddy Mac and Fanny Mae and the improprieties surrounding these and other entities). The notion that one could buy what one could not afford (nothing novel in Washington) had at last come to storm the ramparts of the holy doctrine of Higher Finance. Greed bent the rules and the promise of home ownership to anyone and everybody was now not a mere sentiment but a strategy of righteousness (always well within the comfort zone of Liberalism) that phased out fiduciary prudence and common sense.
We all know the history of the last three years: exhaustion and abhorrence with and of seven years of war, the near economic meltdown on the eve of the 2008 Presidential Election, and the subsequent hankering, rather again…a hunger for leadership and the change that could only, it seemed, be spelled "Barack Hussein Obama." Now we've got him. And he surely has us, not by the short hairs as much as by our severely shrunken collective testicles (matched no doubt by his own, if only someone would pull down the emperor's B.V.D.s for all the world to see). More than 4 BILLION DOLLARS PER DAY are spent by this current administration (on second thought, I guess that does take "cojones" of a gargantuan size or a kind of uber-chutzpah that is oblivious to the concept of shame). Can this "moolah" even be printed quickly enough (leave alone for a moment the issue of its looming worthlessness)? And many Americans still "like" him. What the (insert four letter Anglo-Saxon word here) does that mean and where does that get us? Ted Bundy was a very handsome and likable man. Hitler loved his dog. Women genuflected, lasciviously or not, before John Dillinger. The probable semi-good news: "Phorty-phour" is not an irresistible Leopold or Loeb of Politics, but likely just an exceptionally able Chicago-style politician (read: "unpleasant, but predictable crud").
Hell, let's go over a cliff on August 3rd or whatever day Chicken Little says the sky will fall. Maybe something will be learned and eventually accomplished as a result, and somnambulism will be jolted, replaced by a great awakening. Let's just "lock and load" (this metaphor hasn't been outlawed yet) and get this little Socialist turd out of the White House and on a permanent vacation back to Hawaii or whatever place else he flips a coin about and decides is his true home. And let's do it right in 2012: no divided government may actually mean no divided country. How 'bout even going for the "Hat Trick?" Harry Reid and his ilk also deserve well earned, unlimited rest complete with hammocks, mint juleps and the simple antidote to any possible insomnia (a result of guiltily, yet mercifully, being on the sidelines of history): a diatribe by Barry. After all, a fact slowly dawning on more and more Americans each day is that each subsequent mellifluous proclamation by our Dear Leader brings less enthrallment, more ennui and less confidence that his is not indeed a dark agenda of a rigid and frankly, a stupid ideology.
He came to bring us together? Are we not more torn asunder than ever by the notion that endless spending brings that Pot of Gold? Can we afford this charming android? His heart is in the right place, you say? With or without the Wizard of Oz's gift, I'll take the Tin Man and his ticker (or sincere desire for one) any day over Obama and his calculating reverse sump pump of destruction. Better to rust than to rot.
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