14/11: Obama and Ayres: the real problem
Category: Politics
Posted by: A Waco Farmer
Today, the Okie Gardener continues his series voicing his misgivings concerning the presidency and character of Barack Obama.
The Gardener considers the revelation that Bill Ayres and President-elect Obama were evidently much closer than maintained during the campaign.
My thoughts.
True, Obama's denials were disingenuous. Were they egregiously so in terms of a politician running for president? Hard to say. Reasonable people will disagree.
Of course, the Gardener touches on our real crisis: a mainstream media no longer providing an honest check to power.
An Aside: I fear that the Gardener overlooks another critical problem we face: an alternative (conservative) media that is not very serious in the aggregate.
However, the outlandish and disturbing fact in the Ayres revelation is not that Obama dissembled. Politicians lie. Dogs bite. Credit Card Companies charge interest. Caveat emptor.
Of course, as the Gardener suggests, the real worry here is that the prObama press corps seems willing to run interference for this man regardless of the high toll on their own integrity and credibility—and our modern tradition of the Fourth Estate as a balancing agent.
Barack Obama is president, which I continue to believe is not necessarily a disastrous thing. While I will criticize him vociferously when he errs and/or pursues ill-conceived or deleterious policies, I reaffirm my pledge to lay off him when possible out of respect for the office and consistent with my belief that we need him to succeed more than we need him to fail.
However, the element that frightens me most is this fact of life: the only governor on a President Obama in this current atmosphere seems to be his own decency. And while he strikes me as a decent person, my sense of human nature (to echo Lord Acton) is that powerful leaders lose perspective fairly quickly--and, of course, leaders with absolutely no checks to their own power veer off into the bar ditch with alarming regularity.
The Gardener considers the revelation that Bill Ayres and President-elect Obama were evidently much closer than maintained during the campaign.
My thoughts.
True, Obama's denials were disingenuous. Were they egregiously so in terms of a politician running for president? Hard to say. Reasonable people will disagree.
Of course, the Gardener touches on our real crisis: a mainstream media no longer providing an honest check to power.
An Aside: I fear that the Gardener overlooks another critical problem we face: an alternative (conservative) media that is not very serious in the aggregate.
However, the outlandish and disturbing fact in the Ayres revelation is not that Obama dissembled. Politicians lie. Dogs bite. Credit Card Companies charge interest. Caveat emptor.
Of course, as the Gardener suggests, the real worry here is that the prObama press corps seems willing to run interference for this man regardless of the high toll on their own integrity and credibility—and our modern tradition of the Fourth Estate as a balancing agent.
Barack Obama is president, which I continue to believe is not necessarily a disastrous thing. While I will criticize him vociferously when he errs and/or pursues ill-conceived or deleterious policies, I reaffirm my pledge to lay off him when possible out of respect for the office and consistent with my belief that we need him to succeed more than we need him to fail.
However, the element that frightens me most is this fact of life: the only governor on a President Obama in this current atmosphere seems to be his own decency. And while he strikes me as a decent person, my sense of human nature (to echo Lord Acton) is that powerful leaders lose perspective fairly quickly--and, of course, leaders with absolutely no checks to their own power veer off into the bar ditch with alarming regularity.
an okie gardener wrote:
Regarding the prObama media, I am not comfortable with the recent Democrat talk of reasserting the Fairness Doctrine. Somehow I do not think the MSM will be affected by a new Fairness Doctrine, but, the new conservative alternative media will be.