Who is the real Obama?

Happening upon interesting tidbits of irony on the internet is always fun, and here is one for the books.

Ace links to “The Source of Barack Obama’s Power to Trick Us” by Matt Stoller whom Ace identifies as a “lefty”. The article is like being dissected by a golden scalpel. “He is brilliant – at being deceptive”.

But there is another narrative, a real narrative about Barack Obama and his administration.  Obama is the ultimate cynic, a dishonest, highly reactionary social and corporate ladder climbing con artist.  Obama is the guy who calls a female reporter “sweety”, who plays poker with the guys, and who thinks that his senior advisor’s decision to cash out after making a “modest” salary of $172,000 at the White House is just natural.  He’s the guy who used the rationale that he’s a father of two girls as to why he doesn’t want young women to have access to Plan B.  He was in favor of gay marriage in 1996, flip flopped for political reasons, and then pretended to change his mind as a matter of conscience.  He runs on populism with a worse record than George W. Bush on income inequality.  His narcissism, and the post-modern ironic sense of self-awareness of how his narrative is put together and tended, is his defining character trait.  It’s not just that he’s a liar.  Lyndon Johnson was a liar, but LBJ lied us into a war in Vietnam as well as a war on poverty.  FDR lied all the time, for good and ill.  Obama’s entire edifice is based on lying , and almost entirely to help sustain his image, with almost no interest in sound policy-making.  Obama understands the threat of climate change, but like the exceptional con artist he is, what happens to others he does not know, or what happens in the future, is irrelevant to him.  He understands banking, and war, and women’s issues, and corruption and Citizens United.  Like a great con artist, he has studied his mark, the American voter, and specifically the Democratic voter, and he undersands which buttons to push.

Ouch. If Matt Stoller really does speak from the political left – this is devastating.

There are two ways, at least, of explaining this guy Obama.  One is that he is an ideologue who truly believes in the Marxist doctrines and is willing to go to any lengths to politically realize them through his office.  The second is what is described above, that he is nothing more than an opportunistic grifter who gets his kicks by manipulating groups of people to no particular end other than to keep himself and his cronies in power and enjoy all the attendant perqs (Airforce One, etc.).  Personally, I'm never sure what he is or what he's trying to accomplish other than preen and strut about enjoying the attention and adulation his office affords him.  Perhaps his second four years in office will tell us which of these Obamas is the real one.  I do know one thing for certain, he's the wrong guy, the wrong personality, to serve as POTUS.