The Walk on Water?
By pm317 on April 28, 2009 at 10:55 AM in Current Affairs
I came across this interesting bit in my morning perusal of the Foreign Policy site. Ivan Krastev who is the chair of the Center for Liberal Strategies in Sofia, Bulgaria was asked to grade Obama’s 100 days and while giving him a B+, he says the following:
In my view, a recent joke best summarizes his achievements. In the wake of the G-20 meeting, Obama, Sarkozy, and Putin were walking around a beautiful lake. In the middle of the lake, there was an island. “Let’s go there,” Obama suggested, and started walking on water to it. Sarkozy followed him. Medvedev also followed, but started sinking.
“Should we tell him where the stones are?” Sarkozy whispered to Obama.
“What stones?” Obama replied.
This is a perfect metaphor for the then candidate and now president Obama.
While there is no question he makes certain gullible people think that he walks on water, what may be happening is more the invisible stones as the joke above illustrates that have carried him so far — the unbelievable sums of campaign money that nobody knows or asks where it came from, the fraudulent primary campaign that nobody questioned about, and perhaps, the most opportunistic of all, the economic, man caused disaster that fell on America in September of 2008 that nobody had anticipated (the timing of which still makes some not so gullible people suspicious and prone to conspiracy), all of which got the millions of gullible people to vote for him.
What makes the little allegory even more telling is the fact that the vainglorious Obama is reluctant to recognize what brought him to this point in history — he really thinks he can walk on water! The puppet is unaware of the invisible hands as it were. At what point does he buy his own PR completely and does something so foolish that even his best handlers will not be able to fix? ‘What stones?’ indeed.
Only time will tell.
On the other hand, it is entirely possible that the presidency of the United States is overrated if a 47 year old American Idol with no real accomplishments and a paper thin resume can seemingly pull it off. He will bumble and bungle his way through just like his predecessor and may be even win a second term for lack of a better choice just like his predecessor (at least he will have 4 years of experience being president!) and leave a different mess in the end for the next guy.
by Ronald Scott
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