The Kansas speech: Has Obama at last become the one they’ve been waiting for?

posted at 5:07 pm on December 8, 2011 by Howard Portnoy
[ Moonbats ]   

Good news if you’re a diehard supporter of Barack Obama. The man whose promise of hope and change seemed elusive for so long to so many has finally arrived. Despite many false starts, Obama, the Work in Progress, has finally metamorphosed into Obama, the Completed Oeuvre.

Don’t believe me? Maybe you’ll believe former Clinton labor secretary and current professor of public policy at the U. C. Berkeley Robert Reich, who wrote on Tuesday, “Here, finally, is the Barack Obama many of us thought we had elected in 2008.”

The occasion for Reich’s jubilation, which was shared by many on the left, all breathing a collective sigh of relief, was the now-legendary game-changing speech that the president gave in Kansas that same day. In the speech, Obama channeled Theodore Roosevelt, who gave a rousing speech of his own in 1910, in which the Republican leader carved out his vision of a new, more progressive America.

So there you have it: Game over. As James Taranto wrote sarcastically in a related context, “Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich might as well just go home and spare themselves the humiliation” in 2012.

Now that Democrats finally have the strong, committed leader they voted for in 2008, what more is there to say? One thing that might be said is that this meme of Obama’s second coming— reflected in headlines proclaiming “Finally, the Obama We Elected” and the like—sounds familiar. It’s a place we disbelievers have somehow been before.

Maybe it was in Detroit where Obama delivered a Labor Day jobs speech that prompted Zeke Miller of Business Insider to title his article “Finally, Obama Delivers the Fiery Jobs Speech Everyone’s Been Waiting For.”

Or maybe you read Andy Ostroy’s analysis of the new, less gentle Barack Obama at the Huffington Post titled “Obama Finally Gets Tough.” Here’s the lead paragraph in case your memory needs refreshing:

Finally there’s some tough love in the Oval Office. President Obama came out swinging on Monday, heeding the advice of his critics in taking a firm stand on his positions for fixing the economy and reducing unemployment in the face of intense, unyielding opposition from Republicans. He boldly declared that there would be no cuts on spending without an increase in taxes on the wealthiest Americans and corporations, and issued a veto threat to back up his new found mojo.

Maybe the familiar chord this refrain sounds harks back to July, when the editors of National Review opined in an article titled “The Debt Ceiling: Obama Is Finally Angry” that

Barack Obama has had enough. That’s all one can say after Friday’s press conference, where Obama was angry and energetic. He was unabashedly partisan and unapologetically annoyed.

In August, Obama was declared finally angry, in March finally passionate on health care.

I could go on in this vein, but I think you get the general idea. Obama has been reborn or reinvented more times than anyone can remember, but despite the proclamations he always ends up in the same place—far down in the polls, bereft of ideas, and fearful as ever of commitment to his party or his ideals.

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