Cowboy Confessional

Is Obama nano-thin or jello?

I spent an enjoyable hour chatting with my childhood chum and painfully funny fellow Chris Muir, creator and chief instigator of the Day By Day Cartoon. We share an insatiable appetite for politics and bashing anyone remotely disingenuous.

So naturally we talked a long time about Barack Obama.

I betray no secret in exposing Obama’s gift for reciting lofty teleprompter platitudes. His lighter-than-air oratory now generates complaints from residents in heaven, a plane to which Obama’s speeches have ascended. Jesus is particularly pissed over Obama’s messianic messaging that threatens to steal His thunder in the actual second coming.

Chris claimed that Obama’s policy and character were “nano thin” — so slight as to be transparent and thus impervious to serious assault. Try to spear his position and like morning mist his position separates, engulfs and reforms. My more simplistic take was that Obama is like a fist full of Jello: whenever you squeeze to get a grip on it’s substance, it simply squishes through your fingers.

And oddly a newspaper that is slightly to the left of the American Communist Party agrees.

On the same day Chris and I traded Obama Barbs, the San Francisco Chronicle — a paper with an editorial board manic enough to publish my op/eds — ran a pair of page two Obama stories, the substance of which being that Obama has no substance.

In a single day Obama changed his position on offshore drilling and reneged on his vow to debate McCain in town hall formats, opting instead to swat softballs tossed by mainstream media mates instead of grenade lobbed by agitated voters.

I’m no McCain fan. I wish he at least offered the entertainment value of other candidates. After eight years of presidential preposterousness, McCain may be boring enough to be electable.

Obama offers voters something of which to be wary. When trapped — changing position, playing the race card or side-stepping his notorious acquaintances — he nuances. He attempts to explain away what he did or said by shifting slightly to one side or another, propelled using nearly Orwellian language. His position on anything is as firm as a fist full of Jello.

Obama’s polling slide shows that his act is wearing thin. It is not just libertarian-leaning free thinkers like Chris and myself who believe this. Willie Brown — an icon of the California and San Francisco Democrat machines — was quoted in the same edition of the Chronicle saying (and I edited for brevity):

Right now, Obama still appears overscripted. Too perfect.

When Obama gets off the teleprompter, he is as dull …

But right now, Obama is way too focused on being precise in his presentation. Everything has to appear well thought out.

Remember, the public never really trusts a politician until you make a mistake. They don’t want “perfect” - they want human.

No politician can be trusted without the aide of tar, feathers and loaded shotguns. Obama’s policy and promise shape-shifting makes me want to invest in feather futures.

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