"The Absurdly Fortunate Rise of Barack Obama"

By Dave Andrusko

I hope your Easter was a blessed time which you were able to spend with family. I also hope your week has gotten off to a promising start. Before I forget, my sincere thanks to all of you for the kind comments sent in response to last Thursday's column.

Pro-Abortion President, Barack Obama

People, like me, who scribble for a living are often prone to making too much out of too little. In this case, however, I think if we piece together the rising tide of evidence it supports the conclusion something very serious is going on with pro-abortion President Barack Obama.

The first instance would be easy to make fun of him--gosh, even the Washington Post starting a column about it with "CHARLOTTE--Even by President Obama's loquacious standards, an answer he gave here on health care Friday was a doozy."

In case you missed it, the President took 17 minutes and 2,500 words to answer/rebut/steamroll/filibuster "a woman named Doris [who] stood to ask the president whether it was a 'wise decision to add more taxes to us with the health care' package," the Post's Anne Kornblut reported. ""We are over-taxed as it is,' Doris said bluntly."

Caught off guard, Obama started out "feisty." His meandering answer covered the waterfront, and then some. But that's nothing new. Unscripted, he goes on and on and on.

And even though "Halfway through, an audience member on the riser yawned," and that "it was not evident that he changed any minds at Friday's event," AND that "people in the back of the room began to wander off" as Obama went through a laundry list of lists, these were not what made this a verbal debacle.

Consider this. The reportorial crew that is so desperate to bail water out of the leaking ship of state uses as its main pump the assurance that Obama is so dazzling that the public will, like dutiful children, readily change its widespread opposition to ObamaCare.

But if we acknowledge, as the Post does, that "Public opinion on the bill remains divided, and Democratic officials are planning to send Obama into the country to persuade wary citizens that it will work for them in the long run," in light of the upcoming mid-year elections it is not reassuring when Obama looks and sounds like a dunderhead.

Adding to the image of an Administration adrift are Obama's ghastly job approval numbers. They've dropped to an alarming 44%, both in a CBS poll and Rasmussen. A year ago April the figure was a whopping 68%!

Specifically on the health care issue, Obama's approval figure tumbled to an all-time low of 34%. If health care is his "signature issue," and the best he can do is one-third approval and a marathon 17-minute answer to a simple statement, you know Obama's in real trouble.

But the most ominous development may be found tucked away in an unintentionally revealing book review that appeared in the Washington Post over the weekend. Written by one Obamaphile (Gwen Ifill, moderator of PBS's "This Week") about the new book of another Obamaphile (The New Yorker's David Remnick), Ifill actually concedes that Obama has led an incredibly charmed political life.

Ifill, who wrote her own ain't-he-amazing book about Obama, praises Remnick's "The Bridge: The Life and Rise of Barack Obama" at some length only to suggest, however obliquely, that Remnick is so in the tank for Obama that he gives him the benefit of every possible doubt.

For example, Ifill writes, "If he [Obama] can't be in control, he is ready to move on. Remnick mentions frequently how easily Obama can get bored. He was bored at Occidental, the first college he attended; bored at the University of Chicago, where as a teacher he focused on writing his first book; bored in the Illinois Senate; and even bored in the U.S. Senate, where he was more interested in writing his second book. Remnick obviously admires the president, so he does not interpret such lofty boredom as peevish or self-absorbed, as critics might."

Then in another unintentionally hilarious remark, Ifill observes, "Perhaps it is that generosity to Obama -- gushy praise, Nobel Peace Prizes -- that drives his political competitors nuts." Well…..

Well before he was even nominated, anyone who read even those who praised Obama effusively knew that Obama (to put it gently) had a highly limited attention span, an ego the size of Chicago, and a willingness to play hardball when it served his purposes.

All this--the immaturity and narcissism-- was covered up by a supplicant press corps. So it is hardly comes as a surprise that the same people would hide how far down the field ObamaCare pushed the agenda of Planned Parenthood.

If you get a chance, read Ifill's review. It's at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/02/AR2010040201516.html.

By the way the link on the Post web page to the review reads, "The absurdly fortunate rise of Barack Obama."

Please send your comments to daveandrusko@gmail.com.