The Quiet Conservative January 19, 2008
The Man Behind the Curtain
The Pew Research Center released a pre inaugural study that 79% of Americans have a favorable
view of the incoming president, Barak Obama. This includes 59% of Republicans. The study reflects
the American view that Republicans will work better with Democrats under an Obama
Administration, and a full 70% have said the incoming president has done a good job explaining his
incoming policies.
Really.
In the Wizard of Oz Dorothy, the scarecrow, the lion, the tin man, the Munchkins, Glenda the
Good Witch, the Wicked Witch, and the entire greater metropolitan area of the Emerald City, thought
the man behind the curtain was the great and powerful Wizard of Oz. Instead, when the curtain was
pulled back they found a slightly blustering con man from the Midwest. Tomorrow America gets a
peek behind the curtain erected by the national media to see who they have lionized. When the
ceremony is over a man without discernible accomplishment becomes the most powerful man on
earth for four to eight years.
There is no more hiding for The Great and Powerful Obama. No levers to push for present, no
smoke and mirrors of rhetoric to hide the signature on the laws. Having won the prize tomorrow it
becomes bitter reality. There are some signs that reality has already closed in on him.
Strident in his failure to support the war, he now becomes responsible if it fails. Long the
harbinger of socialism or outright communism in economics, it is his decisions that will show up in
the market when ideas that have failed everywhere for a hundred years will fail here. It is his
appointed officials that will be responsible for an energy policy based on sunshine and windmills
when it fails to produce enough energy and prices go through the roof. It will be his party that owns
failure in foreign policy, economics, domestic job growth, and law and order. You can't blame the
Republicans, they are too busy trying hard to be Democrats.
The press will do their part to cover up what happens. They will try and blame the Republicans as
they did to bolster public opinion for the Clinton era, and destroy George Bush during his time in
office. But the rise of the independent media and the continued failure of the established press
means the curtain is starting to tear and more and more people can see through it. We can spot the
man behind the curtain. We can see what he is doing. Whether we can get people's attention
remains the question.
Tomorrow the man who worked on the top of the Blagojevich campaign for governor both times,
the man who bought his house in a deal with Tony Rezko, the man who sat in the Reverend Wright's
church for twenty years and never heard a thing, the only virgin in the whorehouse of Illinois
politics, the man who came from a broken home and who was mentored by a sexual deviate member
of the Communist Party, the man who will not release his original birth certificate, his passport
records, his college records, or his Illinois voting records; the man who might not pass a drug test, the
man who cannot define when life begins, the man who cannot be identified as achieving a single
notable accomplishment, takes office. 79% of Americans are happy about this. 70% think he has
explained his policies well, but couldn't tell you what they were.
After tomorrow, the Great and Powerful O must perform his feats in front of the curtain. For a
man used to getting by with a smoke and light show behind the curtain, it will be interesting to see
how he performs.