Beacon Street Journal

The recent McCain ad mocking the celebrity status of Barack Obama, oddly, seems to have served as a catalyst for a revelation of a number of trends that have recently come to the fore. First, despite his whirlwind world tour and unprecedented amount of favorable media coverage, it appears that Obama has hit a ceiling in the national poll numbers. In short, he is stalled. Additionally, it appears that the public is suffering from Obama fatigue. The media blitz seems to have backfired, as many voters, weary from absorbing so much Obama deification have proclaimed: Enough! The telling significance of McCain’s “negative” ad is that it has helped explode the myth of Obama. A myth that has been cultivated assiduously by his campaign in concert with a fawning media. What the confluence of recent events, unfavorably disposed for Obama, demonstrates is the following:

Pay no heed to the wailing of mainstream media journalists who bemoan that McCain is going “negative” against Obama 

After years of witnessing the left-wing Democratic bias of the major broadcast newsrooms, most Americans are astute enough to realize that Obama is the mainstream’s media’s candidate of choice and any reporting is going to be skewed in his favor. The very successful, humorous and auspicious celebrity ad wasn’t negative campaigning, but rather, was a revealing and truthful assertion, delivered in a humorous manner, about what many voters had already come to believe about Obama.  The ad merely reinforced and crystallized the doubts many voters had previously maintained about the viability of his candidacy. With his posturing, he has become a caricature of himself.

Over time, Obama’s rhetorical flourishes have gone from the sublime to the ridiculous. After the victory in Iowa, there were a lot of idealistic calls for Hope and Change. Then the speeches started to contain references to celestial awakenings that would be coeval upon the preordained occurrence of his ascent to the presidency. The McCain ad wasn’t negative but rather factual in nature. For, it revealed the essential truth of all the sermonizing: it was all nothing more than a lot of giddy nonsense.

Before the McCain ad, certain members of the press had begun to ridicule the Chosen One for his presumptuousness and arrogance. Perhaps it was the personal presidential seal, the removal of the American flags on his campaign plane, or the planning for the transition to the White House. In short, many in the media could stomach no more of the bravado.

Barack Obama is a Lousy Speaker

Reading a speech written by another from a teleprompter is not the same as being a great speaker. Reciting lines from this device to an audience is far different than speaking extemporaneously off the cuff at campaign stops and during interviews with the press. In this regard, contrast Obama’s fumbling with the performance of JFK, to whom he is constantly compared. JFK  was a great and natural extemporaneous speaker. His press conferences and impromptu speeches demonstrated his wit, humour and rhetorical fluency. Although they both used the same speechwriter (Theodore Sorensen), the comparison ends there. 

The Berlin speech was a curious admixture of mixed and inappropriate metaphors, New Age mumbo-jumbo and more pure solipsism, rhetorically delivered, as if the world were hanging on every word of The Exalted One. The mention of Obama’s speech in Berlin in the same breath as Kennedy’s ” Ich Bin Ein Berliner” peroration is ludicrous; one was an exercise in self-love, the other, an oration of significance and historical moment. In this regard, the attempt  by the press to pump-up Obama as the reincarnation of JFK, is quite simply, laughable.

When he is away from the lectern and his prepared script, Obama’s handlers have been busy cleaning up after his serial gaffes. Whether it be his comments on the wisdom of meeting with our enemies without preconditions, the characterization of Iran as a “small” problem because of its geographic size, or replacing all the oil we can drill domestically by inflating our tires, Obama’s words belie the claim that he is a great speaker.

The “New Messiah” gig is up

It was only a question of time before the stark contradictions inherent in the candidacy of Barack Obama came to the fore. After the revelation of Reverend Wright, William Ayers, Father Pfleger, the gap between the rhetoric of Hope, Unity and Transcendence and the reality of Obama’s long-term voluntary associations irretrievably tarnished his image. People realized that they were sold a false bill of goods, and naturally, buyers remorse has set in.

Because he was an obscure politician with a meager record of any discernible accomplishments, Obama staked his candidacy on his unique ability to bring people together in unity and transcend racial barriers. How was he to accomplish this task? Why, because he is biracial! However, when the “post-racial” candidate was revealed to have sat in Trinity church for twenty years listening to his pastor spew his divisive anti-American and racist drivel, the fraudulent pretense of Obama the Uniter was exposed. And recently, the “post-racial” candidate has shown no compunction in trying to play the race card, once again, when he deems it expedient. Thus, the bloom is finally off the rose: the practitioner of the “new politics” has shown, by his words and deeds, that he in nothing more than an ordinary, calculating electioneering politician who will say and do anything to secure electoral advantage.

All the media puffery was bad enough, in and of itself; it was bound to unravel during the close scrutiny of a general election campaign. Obama’s great error was that he started to believe the BS about his immortal powers. In retrospect, the egotistical trip to Berlin will be seen as the tipping point that fostered the troubling queries about the nature of his candidacy and his fitness to serve as president. As more time elapses, the pointed questions will keep arising: Why did he feel the need to give the speech? To what end? For what purpose?

It’s one thing to successfully swoon receptive left-wing Democratic primary voters with vacuous high-falutin rhetoric. The rest of the electorate, especially those with both feet firmly rooted on the ground, are not so easily swayed, duped nor captivated. Any further allusions by Obama in his speeches to the cosmological significance of his presidency will be met with a collective chuckle and more well-deserved derision.

That is not to say that by virtue of Obama’s foibles, McCain can win. It is indicative however, that the carefully constructed fiction of a Transcendent Obama is not going to be sufficient to carry him across the finish line in light of the fact that the electorate is still very much grappling with the question: Who is Barack Obama?