Hope and change? One Americanuck's view

Walt is waiting with baited breath [He's been eating cheese. Ed.] to see what Hussein Obama is going to say in his own defence when he accepts the Democractic nomination tonight. This would be a good time for some straight talk, an admission that all those promises of change remain largely unfulfilled.

Should we expect the Prez to say he failed? No. Should we expect him to admit he lied? Oh hahahahahaha... What we should expect is not "Repeat after me: yes we can!" but "Repeat after me: we did the best we could under the circumstances." (I admit I didn't make that up; it's the text of the editorial cartoon in the current Economist.)

Unfortunately for Obama, the excuse that he was just a captive of events isn’t much of a campaign platform. I didn't make that up either. It's taken from an excellent column by American-turned-Canadian columnist Margaret Wente: "Hope and change won't cut it now", in today's Globe and Mail. (The drawing above is the work of the Glob's Anthony Jenkins; credit where credit is due.)

Ms Wente says she was a big fan of Obama's back in the day, the day being about four years ago.
"He was attractive, he was smart, he was young and, best of all, he wasn’t George Bush. The United States was in an awful mess, and the world economy was teetering. The old order was finished, and everyone was desperate for change. I was ecstatic when he won. I had faith that he was smart enough to get it (whatever it turned out to be). I knew his halo would be tarnished soon enough. But I figured he could scarcely make things worse than they were."

"Today," Ms Wente continues, "the love affair is over. If I were voting in this election, I don’t know what I’d do. The main thing Mr. Obama has going for him is that he’s not Mitt Romney, who strikes me as a decent enough man who’s been taken hostage by a bunch of lunatics. Unfortunately, the fact that you’re not the other guy is not the most inspiring argument for re-election." Indeed.

Reading on... "[Obama's] greatest problem is that he doesn’t seem to know the old order is finished. He seems to think that all he needs to do is tax the rich, wait it out and soon the good times will return. That’s not a vision, or a plan. It’s a fantasy.

"Mr. Obama doesn’t seem to know there’s a problem. If only he could bring himself to say, as he did in 2009, that it’s time for 'a new era of responsibility'. That hopey changey stuff won’t cut it any more. Americans are still in crisis, and they’ll need more than happy talk to fix it."

Those are the highlights of Ms Wente's able argument. Click here to read the column in its entirety.