{"id":2433,"date":"2011-04-14T11:29:26","date_gmt":"2011-04-14T18:29:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/elbertcounty.net\/blog\/2011\/04\/14\/obama-vs-obama\/"},"modified":"2011-04-29T10:24:38","modified_gmt":"2011-04-29T17:24:38","slug":"obama-vs-obama","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/elbertcounty.net\/blog\/2011\/04\/obama-vs-obama\/","title":{"rendered":"Obama vs. Obama"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Victor Davis Hanson<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The president gave the sort of scare speech he not long ago warned  against, and blasted the income-tax rates he not long ago agreed were  necessary \u2014 in a context in which he has just presented a budget with a  $1.6 trillion deficit of the sort he now says is unsustainable, and has  warned about recklessly voting against raising the debt ceiling in a fashion that he himself had once done, in a larger landscape in which he had  once damned attacking Middle East countries in optional wars,  Guantanamo, renditions, tribunals, preventative detention, intercepts,  wiretaps, Predators, and leaving troops in Iraq, and then embraced or  expanded all that and more (this list is infinite and includes  everything from drilling to campaign financing to earmarks).<\/p>\n<p>These weird about-faces raise interesting questions that transcend the current politics of the deficit:<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>a) Has Obama in his past careers never been called to account  and so reached a point where simply being Obama means that we are not  supposed to apply standards of accuracy, memory, and consistency to him  in the way we do to all others?<\/p>\n<p>b) Or does an absent-minded Obama carelessly make up things up ad hoc  as he goes along, forgetting what he said earlier, but secure that his  hope-and-change delivery of the moment will so mesmerize the audience  that no one will remember or care if at times he ends up saying exactly  the opposite of what he had said earlier?<\/p>\n<p>c) Or is he so blatantly partisan a politician that he has no  principles at all and knowingly says things that are aimed at appealing  to 51 percent of the public at any given moment, and therefore will  always change with public opinion?<\/p>\n<p>d) Or is he so cynical that he understands campaign rhetoric has  nothing to do with actual governance, and so he is allowed to say  something that he knows in advance that he is not bound to follow?<\/p>\n<p>e) Or is he so bored with the trying job that he feels no responsibility to offer reliable, consistent governance, and so rashly throws things out and then hastens back to the more enjoyable PR aspects of the office?<\/p>\n<p><strong>ANSWER<\/strong>:  <em>All Of The Above<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Victor Davis Hanson The president gave the sort of scare speech he not long ago warned against, and blasted the income-tax rates he not long ago agreed were necessary \u2014 in a context in which he has just presented a budget with a $1.6 trillion deficit of the sort he now says is unsustainable, and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-2433","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-obama","7":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/elbertcounty.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2433","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/elbertcounty.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/elbertcounty.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elbertcounty.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elbertcounty.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2433"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/elbertcounty.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2433\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/elbertcounty.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2433"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elbertcounty.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2433"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/elbertcounty.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2433"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}