He's gotten a bit like the elderly Lost Boy in Hook, always pushing his "happy thoughts" and looking more and more ridiculous.
Barack wants to be president.
But he doesn't want to work for America.
He wants Americans to make him work for them.
That comes through in speech after speech when he pushed the burdens of the presidency onto the people.
He apparently missed out when "couch potato" was all the rage in usage.
Americans haven't changed a great deal (some studies state we've put on more weight), the term just lost its cachet (the way "It's not rocket science" has -- though some delude themselves into thinking they can continue to work that phrase in).
In a Happy Days episode many will remember, Fonzie has a problem. It is now the sixties. He just can't adapt. Joanie and Chachi are singing folk songs -- what happened to rock and roll!
Fonzie doesn't like change, he explains, and wonders why things can't stay the same.
Were that an isolated moment from a single TV show, that would be one thing.
But the reality is that thread dominates in both popular cultural and the sociological literature.
So here comes Barack Obama, presumed Democratic presidential nominee, selling an undefined "change" and telling the American people it's up to them to make him work.
If you went into an interview tomorrow, the interviewer might ask, "Do you think you can handle the job?" Try replying, "If you make me do it!" In other words, you'll do your job if someone makes you. Most interviewers would immediately say, "Thanks for coming in. We'll call you." And the call would never come.
But how is it that anyone who wanted to could make Barack do his job? He hasn't defined his job. "Change." Empty talk about "change" with nothing as to what that would mean on the job as president.
Hillary Clinton said what she planned to and added, "Hold me accountable."
Americans can do that. Tell us you're going to do something and we'll hold you accountable.
Change is presenting the American people with a plan. Barack's "change" offers Americans no plan. They're supposed to make you do something but the what of it has never been defined.
Equally true is that, should he become president and flop, it falls back on the American people. They must not have made him to do what they wanted him to do.
Considering that the American people have been unable to "make" the US Congress or White House end the ongoing, illegal war in Iraq, we're not seeing any real pressure that could be brought to bear on a President Obama.
Does Barack know any Americans? Outside of Hyde Park?
Go to your neighbor's and hide the TV remote. Pay attention to how long s/he looks for it. Notice that all the time spent looking for the remote -- and think about how much quicker it would have been to go over to the TV just flip the channel by a button on the TV. But gotta' have that remote. Can't live without that remote. That remote means you can sit there and change the channels. Where's the remote!
Or go to the grocery store. Note the abundance of brands for microwave macaroni and cheese and grasp that, on the stove top, we're talking seven minutes to cook macaroni and cheese. Seven minutes is apparently too long and a microwave version was 'needed.'
As a people, as a whole, we are a nation of short-cuts and quick-fixes.
The Cult of Barack would have you believe that the Christ-child can change all of that.
The illegal war passing the fifth year mark was not enough to result in mass actions across the country; however, somehow a toothy grin (with lip gloss) will do what death and destruction won't. He will, it is said, inspire.
And he has, they insist, a movement.
As many commentators who haven't lost their common sense have pointed out (Adolph Reed Jr., Bruce Dixon, Glen Ford, Margaret Kimberly and Paul Street are but a few), a movement does not build around a political campaign for public office.
Should he get into the White House (assuming he's the Democratic Party nominee), there's no movement to hold him accountable, there's no movement to press him on anything.
If his FISA cave taught anything it was that not only will he break his word but when his most ardent supporters take to his very own campaign blog to pressure him, he blows them off.
Maybe he's just lazy?
If so, he at least knows how to live American, if not how to speak to them.
Like Katharine Hepburn's character in On Golden Pond, he's become a nag and a scold.
In the December 7, 1980 issue of The New Yorker, Pauline Kael nailed all that was wrong with that film. What she wrote then can also be applied to Barack Obama today:
Ethel is meant to be a capable, down-to-earth woman, but Hepburn leaps about weightlessly -- she never comes close to touching the ground. She has become a Kate Hepburn windup doll -- chipper and lyrical, floating in the stratosphere, and, God knows, spunky.
[. . .]
Ethel, who is so understanding with her husband, is starchy and impatient with her daughter, telling her, "All you can do is be disagreeable about the past. What's the point? . . . Life marches by, Chelsea. I suggest you get on with it." That's not a mother talking -- it's a headmistress.
Who knew Barack was trying to become Headmistress of the United States?
