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A Chicago pol not quite big enough to be where he is

October 20, 2012 by B. Daniel Blatt

Instead of take the time to outline his plans for a second term in the second debate, President Barack Obama last Tuesday did something perhaps no previous president had done, attack his opponent in personal terms.

On Thursday in the Wall Street Journal, Peggy Noonan wonders if the president will pay “a certain price” for ending “a certain part of the old-school American political style“.  The Athena of punditry reminds us how he started out:

Gov. Romney’s says he’s got a five-point plan? Gov. Romney doesn’t have a five-point plan. He has a one-point plan. And that plan is to make sure that folks at the top play by a different set of rules. That’s been his philosophy in the private sector, that’s been his philosophy as governor, that’s been his philosophy as a presidential candidate.” Mr. Romney, said the president, likes a world in which “you can ship jobs overseas and get tax breaks for it. You can invest in a company, bankrupt it, lay off the workers, strip away their pensions, and you still make money.”

Peggy contends he said things that were “harsh and personal” and that he called the Republican “selfish and greedy”.  “What the president said at the debate”, she notes, “was nothing he hadn’t said on the trail”:

His campaign has been personal, accusatory and manipulative. But there in the room on a tiny stage, for a sitting president to come out with that kind of put-down—I couldn’t imagine a JFK doing it, with his cool, or a Jerry Ford with his Midwestern decency, or a Reagan, or the Bushes. When you are president, you don’t stand next to an opponent and accuse and attack. You keep a certain almost aesthetic distance. You know the height of the office you hold. You let the debate come to you, and if at some point you get an opening to uncork a joke or a more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger criticism, you move.

She assumes the Democrat was “trying to look strong and commanding, to take control”, but wonders if instead he looked “like a hack, like a tough Chicago pol who isn’t quite big enough to be where he is”.  Read the whole thing.

RELATED: When desperation strikes incumbents

Filed Under: 2012 Presidential Election, Mean-spirited leftists, Obama Arrogance, Obama Incompetence

Comments

  1. davinci says

    October 20, 2012 at 12:32 pm - October 20, 2012

    When it comes to class and a good upbringing, Obama lost it, or he let the Chicago thug style of politics change his entire persona.

  2. V the K says

    October 20, 2012 at 12:35 pm - October 20, 2012

    Ed Morrissey at HotAir remembers the last time desperation drove an incumbent president to schoolyard namecalling:

    I recall the moment when I realized for the first time — not feared, but realized — that Bush would lose the election. Bush was campaigning in Michigan at the end of October, trying to whip some energy back into his campaign in the home stretch, a task that would fall far short just a few days later. Bush went after Clinton and Al Gore in a personal, demeaning way I’d not heard from the President before then:

    At a midday GOP rally at Macomb Community College, the president unleashed a rhetorical fusillade on Bill Clinton and running mate Sen. Albert Gore Jr., attacking their fitness for office, their character and charging, “My dog Millie knows more about foreign policy than these two bozos.”

    Namecalling and fearmongering are not what a politician does from a place of confidence.

  3. T says

    October 20, 2012 at 1:41 pm - October 20, 2012

    “When it comes to class and a good upbringing, Obama lost it”

    Class and a good upbringing—Obama never had it to begin with.

  4. Just Me says

    October 20, 2012 at 2:43 pm - October 20, 2012

    When we were watching the debate my 13 year old son said “Obama just keeps calling Romney a liar but he isn’t answering any of the questions.”

    If a 13 year old can pick up on Obama’s lack of substance and decision to attack, then any honest person with half a brain should notice it also.

  5. mixitup says

    October 20, 2012 at 4:26 pm - October 20, 2012

    Sadly “Just Me,” obama is not interested in nor does he want to appeal to honest people or even people with a brain or a sense of decency. You have inadvertently described his base. His ideal supporter is the now infamous “Obama cell phone” lady.

    The very best that can happen is that her and her ilk stay home.

  6. Lori Heine says

    October 20, 2012 at 4:36 pm - October 20, 2012

    #5 — If she doesn’t get a free big-screen TV for showing up at the polls, she probably will just stay home and eat Twinkies.

  7. spotted reptile says

    October 21, 2012 at 1:02 am - October 21, 2012

    Romney is class, Obama is crass.

    We are now seeing two completely different people exactly as they are. One is confident, statesmanlike and likeable, the other is arrogant, childish and repulsive.

  8. lethargic says

    October 21, 2012 at 1:05 pm - October 21, 2012

    “When it comes to class and a good upbringing, Obama lost it ….”

    Unfortunately, BO never had either. You have to feel sorry for the little boy he was. He never really knew his father, had a transient stepfather, had a ditzy mother who dumped him on her parents while she went off looking for more exotic tail. The grandfather was dubious. The most solid adult in that child’s life was the “typical white” grandmother. And which of that pantheon of love and compassion was it that BO threw under the bus 4 years ago … only the best one of the bunch. Grandma may have done her best, but she was outclassed by the evil around them.

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