In a fine piece of commentary, Dorothy Rabinowitz of the WSJ puts her finger on the source of growing disenchantment with our president. In her view, which I think is correct, Mr. Obama's worldview is alien to that of most Americans who live their lives at altitudes considerably lower than the rarified atmosphere inhabited by our university academics. Rabinowitz writes:
For it was clear from the first that this president-single-minded, ever-visible, confident in his program for a reformed America saved from darkness by his arrival-was wanting in certain qualities citizens have until now taken for granted in their presidents. Namely, a tone and presence that said: This is the Americans' leader, a man of them, for them, the nation's voice and champion. Mr. Obama wasn't lacking in concern about the oil spill. What he lacked was that voice-and for good reason.
Those qualities to be expected in a president were never about rhetoric; Mr. Obama had proved himself a dab hand at that on the campaign trail. They were a matter of identification with the nation and to all that binds its people together in pride and allegiance. These are feelings held deep in American hearts, unvoiced mostly, but unmistakably there and not only on the Fourth of July.
A great part of America now understands that this president's sense of identification lies elsewhere, and is in profound ways unlike theirs. He is hard put to sound convincingly like the leader of the nation, because he is, at heart and by instinct, the voice mainly of his ideological class. He is the alien in the White House, a matter having nothing to do with delusions about his birthplace cherished by the demented fringe.
And it's not just the organs of the conservatism, like the WSJ, that are calling attention to the many manifest shortcomings of the man in the Oval Office.
Lefty icon Daniel Ellsberg has called Mr. Obama a liar and worse. The Daily Show's Jon Stewart humorously blasts Mr. Obama for his sophomoric "Kickass" comment. Even the sycophantic Chris Matthews and yellow-dog Democrat James Carville have unloaded on the man who every day validates the foresight of those who predicted that he would not, and could not, live up to the promise of competence upon which so many based their vote.
I'm certainly not saying that the Left misses George Bush, but I do think they're beginning to realize that they made a huge mistake in denying the nomination to Hillary Clinton. Whatever they thought of Hillary, with her they would at least have also had Bill. They rejected her thinking that with Barack Obama they would have a Sidney Poitier or Denzel Washington character in the White House. What they got instead is beginning to look more like the Chris Tucker character in Rush Hour.
Anyway, read Rabinowitz's column. It's very good.
RLC