Never fear, Gentle Reader. More than enough has been said about the substance of the debate: about who prevailed, about why, and about the reactions of commentators on both sides of the political divide. But something occurred to me this morning, after reading these comments by the worthy Ace of Spades:
Let me suggest something that many conservatives realized after the debate: Obama did not do that badly. For Obama. He was the same listless, droning, exhausted-of-ideas scold we have seen for at least two years now (and maybe three).He was Obama. This is what he is. He is not quick-witted. He is not, as I think I saw Mickey Kaus note, a wonk. He has never been a wonk, a detailed-policy guy.
He is a guy who speaks vacuously of hopes and dreams and change and fairness.
He always has been.
The problem, for the liberals, is not Obama. This is what you bought. This is your guy. It wasn't his A game, but it was something close to his B+ game.
Indeed. And as many other pundits have stated, when he was compelled to confront a much better man without the media’s protective shield, Obama looked small. It couldn’t have been any other way. Ergo, that media shield, and left-liberals’ overpowering desire to believe that they’d found their savior, were the only things that prevented them from realizing long ago how small Obama really is.
But all this is now well recognized on the Right, at least. It’s a secondary implication that’s on my mind this morning:
After all, the alternative media – FOX News, talk radio, and the Internet – have never ceased to give Obama his true coloration. It was mainly a matter of asking certain questions over and over:
- What were Obama’s pre-public-office substantive achievements?
- How did he perform in the Illinois state senate?
- How did he perform in the United States Senate?
- Which promises from his 2008 presidential campaign has he fulfilled?
- Has he ever accepted the blame for a failure under his hand?
- How much credibility has his objective performance earned him?
Merely for asking such questions, we in the Right have been shouted down by the Left, and dismissed by Obama’s more overt allies in the media, as racists. Now that the majority of Americans have grown immune to such vitriol, it’s time to ask the Grand Finale Question:
Surely part of the answer is the protection of their reputation for being trustworthy, impartial reporters of the facts. Of course, had they not been ideologically and emotionally committed to smoothing Obama’s path into the Oval Office, that need not have been a concern. However, they gave Obama’s electoral prospects priority, and in the aftermath have had to prevaricate and dissemble in hope of preserving their own reputations and stature as journalists.
That insight could be used to detach quite a lot of Americans from the Mainstream Media. Persuading them to take the alternative media more seriously would constitute a second challenge.
Marshall Fritz, the legendary founder of the Advocates for Self-Government, repeatedly emphasized the importance of “the Blues:” those persons who are drawn to the communications trade, whose first and strongest response to events is emotional, and who are given charge of the reporting and interpretation of events to a mass audience. Inasmuch as there are now effectively two communities of “the Blues,” the older one on the Left and the newer one on the Right, it should be a priority for lovers of freedom to minimize the influence of the former, and to promote the latter as the more trustworthy source of news and related opinion to American consumers thereof.
Left-liberals’ chagrin over The Won’s performance in Denver is a tool well suited to that effort.
1 comment:
"What did the Mainstream Media hope to achieve "?
Obama has done four years of damage to our country. He has placed an ideologue in charge of every federal department. He has transferred billion and billions to friends and cronies. He has allowed for massive new regulations to be implmented. Even if he loses the election he has created an economic disaster that is slowly but inevitably collapsing. He has set the stage for social termoil in our country that some think would be on a greater scale then what we are seeing in Greece or Spain. He has made commitments to millions of illegal aliens that will be difficult for the next president and congress to reverse. He has allowed unions to take more power which is threatening almost every state and local governments solvency. I could go on and on. The question might be but why would Obama, the Democrats or the media want any of this? The answer is that happy well fed people with a good government are not easily convinced to accept Marxism. If your goal is to destroy our constitutional government and replace it with something else then this is how you would do it.
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