Does this remind you of anyone?
(His) gift with language — his powerful speaking style and the graceful prose and compelling story of his best-selling memoir — has been an engine of his dramatic, high-velocity rise in presidential politics. But he has also shown a tendency toward seemingly minor contradictions and rhetorical slips that serve as reminders that he is still a newcomer to national politics.
It reminds me of candidate Bill Clinton. I don’t think the problem has anything to do with being a newcomer. It has to do with being too full of it. The increasingly banal Barack Obama has a lot in common with Bubba Clinton, at least when it comes to his smooth talking breezy style and the ease with which he is able to pander. It’s a gift frankly.
That kind of politics is completely effective, most especially on people who are not paying attention. And, as we know in this country, that counts for a lot. However, given the media saturation, one has to wonder how long candidate Obama can get away peddling such brazen BS,
Speaking early this month at a church in Selma, Ala., Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) said: “I’m in Washington. I see what’s going on. I see those powers and principalities have snuck back in there, that they’re writing the energy bills and the drug laws.”
It was a fine populist riff calculated to appeal to Democratic audiences as Obama seeks his party’s presidential nomination. But not only did Obama vote for the Senate’s big energy bill in 2005, he also put out a press release bragging about its provisions, and his Senate Web site carries a news article about the vote headlined, “Senate energy bill contains goodies for Illinois.”