“He seemed like Cream of Jesus on Toast”?

(“Cream of Jesus on Toast” is Violet Socks’ invention.  Read it all here.)

Why don’t we take a stroll down memory lane and revisit February 2008. That was when we found out that Barack Obama was not even original, let alone likely to be audacious:

In FEBRUARY 2008, we knew that he was “just words”.  The last time a US presidential candidate used someone else’s speeches and passed them off as his own without attribution, he was disgraced and had to quit running.  But you guys were cool with Obama doing it because he was such a big CHANGE! agent.  He was going to save the world.  He was The One.

And look what I found yesterday in Will Bunch’s Twitter stream:

@Will_BunchWill Bunch

Then do something!! RT @BarackObamaDeeply disappointed GOP senators prevented Paycheck Fairness Act from being brought up for debate, vote

All of you guys who are now screaming for him to “Do Something!” were, and still are, screaming “Racist!” at us back then for not buying the hype harshing your mellow.  Gee, we’re sorry.  What were we thinking?

Only that the country was on the brink of disaster and that Obama did not understand the mechanisms of government well enough to fix whatever Bush left in his wake.  We needed an engineer, not a dreamer.  But now that he’s wasted the tremendous opportunity he had, something we warned you he was going to do, he is shrugging off his responsibility and telling fibs about the true audacity of FDR.  Anglachel has the rundown in A Hundred Days:

The combination of Hoover, FDR and Obama as a focus of analysis appears to be catching on. I just read Thomas Ferguson’s post The Story Behind Obama’s Remarks on FDR on New Deal 2.0. He starts with a quote from a transcript of remarks Obama gave to “liberal bloggers”:

“We didn’t actually, I think, do what Franklin Delano Roosevelt did, which was basically wait for six months until the thing had gotten so bad that it became an easier sell politically because we thought that was irresponsible. We had to act quickly.” – President Obama

There are two things that jump out at me from this quote, regardless of the context.The first is the self-exculpation – we didn’t get all we wanted because we took a bolder path than FDR, so don’t criticize us! – and the breathtaking erasure of history.

Um, hello? The First Hundred Days of FDR? The stuff of Democratic legend and the bane of Republicans to this day? FDR moved on the FIRST day of his presidency and did not stop for 100 days, passing legislation that would become the most stunning reimagining of American society since Lincoln and possibly since the founding of the nation.
Both of these actions are part and parcel of the movement style campaign politics Obama favors and which is so beloved of the righteous Stevensonians. It is narcissistic and a-historical  (We are the one’s we have been waiting for), refuses to acknowledge politics as they are, and antithetical to mundane, interest-based transactional  governance. It doesn’t want responsibility, only obedience and adulation, and so refuses to take it when things go belly up.

Deep down, you knew.  You had to know.  You screwed us and the rest of the country over anyway.  You ruined the party and its primary election season.  You helped dismantle the left and left yourselves and us weak in the face of Republican winner-take-all political scheming.

We told you that nothing good ever comes of a bad seed.

If you don’t like the fruit, don’t forget that you were the ones who planted the tree.