Andrew's case for Barack Obama, i.e. the great post-boomer hope, is now online - and free.
« Rudy's Secret Weapon | Main | But Will It Play in Iowa? » Obamarama02 Nov 2007 01:09 pm Comments (9)
Andrew Sullivan is such an apologist for Obama that it's hard to take anything he says seriously. Remember how he used to fawn over George W. Bush from 2000-2003? It's not like the guy's unearthing some super secret Obama information we need to be able to trust his word on. If his analysis of Obama's appeal strikes you as sensible then why not take it seriously? 
It's hard to take anything written by an overwrought hysteric seriously. Since there isn't any secret information, an article like this only persuades to the extent that you trust the writer's judgment. Having seen the author exalt and then abandon two political messiahs and one war to date, I don't.
Since there isn't any secret information, an article like this only persuades to the extent that you trust the writer's judgment. I would think an article like this would only persuade you to the extent that you trust your own judgment. How hard is it to judge an argument on its merits without resorting to an ad hominem assessment?
Maybe I'm not being clear. Sullivan doesn't know any significant facts about Obama that I don't know. So the only thing he can offer is his selection and interpretation of the known facts. Given his track record, I wouldn't trust his selection and interpretation. And if ad hominem slurs aren't allowed, most of Sullivan's website will have to come down.
I didn't say anything about ad hominem slurs, I'm saying it doesn't make sense to reject someone's interpretation of the situation you yourself are equally familiar with just because you don't like that person.
Andrew is just being Andrew: i.e., using his formidable verbal skills to talk himself into another bad idea. Obama as a post-60s figure? Huh? Then how come Obama's spiritual adviser for the last 20 years has been that quintessential 60s black radical, the Reverend Jeremiah A. Wright, a man who accompanied Louis Farrakhan on his visit to Col. Qadaffi just before Obama joined his church? Obama didn't join Wright's Afrocentrist church to be a Christian. As it's clear in his memoir, Obama joined a black church to finally help him be black enough. It's possible that Obama finally grew up into a mature man some time after publishing his autobiography at age 33 (perhaps after his humiliating rejection by black voters in his 2000 Congressional primary run), but the personality on display in "Dreams from My Father" is not anybody you'd want for President. He comes across as literarily gifted but not quite right in the head: humorless, self-obsessed, and hypersensitive, like Joan Didion or an unfunny Evelyn Waugh. There are hints that Obama may have gotten his head straightened out following his 2000 defeat (perhaps, speculatively, by undergoing Cognitive Behavioral Therapy). He certainly seems more balanced now than in his first book. But there's a simple test of whether anyone in their right mind would consider him as Presidential or Vice-Presidential timber and that would be that he must first do a Sister Souljah on the extremist Rev. Wright and break off with him.
Andrew is flatly irrational on the subject of Hillary and Bill. That is the only significant factor behind his endorsing Barack. It says nothing about Barack or the field or about Bill: Sadly it has only to do with his own irrational hatred: sad that he is so interesting on other topics: sad that his passion is craziness here.
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Andrew Sullivan is such an apologist for Obama that it's hard to take anything he says seriously. Remember how he used to fawn over George W. Bush from 2000-2003?
Posted by Enis Penvy | November 2, 2007 2:45 PM