A “Bored” Obama Is Distracted and Not Listening

Huffington Post’s Mayhill Fowler may support Obama but — as she showed in her now-legendary sneak-taping and reporting of Obama’s remarks about “clingy” smalltown folk at his fundraiser for the elite of San Francisco — she is not afraid to tell the truth, and her observations and insights about Obama’s disconnect from his audiences are disturbing.

You’ll recall that, at the end of my round-up of press reactions yesterday, I quoted from the pre-press conference article in the New York Times, “Eyes on Blue-Collar Voters, Obama Shifts Style,” which revealed, according to “interviews with several associates and aides,” that “Mr. Obama was described as bored with the campaign against Mrs. Clinton.” Even Maureen Dowd has noticed that Mr. Obama has lost his “fizz.” While Hillary Clinton is more “more energetic and focused and beaming,” Ms. Dowd writes, Obama is “uneven and gauzy, often fatigued … [and even] his speeches don’t have the same pizazz.” Hillary Clinton is “bristling with life force,” while Obama “looks like he wants to run away somewhere for three months by himself and smoke.”

Like a fizzy Coke gone flat from sitting out too long with the cap off — or like a souffle sunk by curious cooks opening the oven door one too many times — Obama is not showing the ability to stay “up,” let alone the steely resolve that Hillary Clinton has to keep campaigning. And one has to wonder if this is an indicator that he’s also not made for the presidency, where the long slog never stops and the pressures, indiginities, attacks, and even off-the-reservation associates tend to constantly cause problems. Apparently, Barack Obama just wants to be left to just be president — like he just wants to be the nominee — and eat his waffle and little sausage in peace.

Here’s what a highly observant Mayhill Fowler reports in today’s Huffington Post:

[...]

Did Senator Obama know to whom he was speaking? Likely not. That’s been his problem lately on the campaign trail–not knowing exactly where he was. He even made a joke about it in Hickory when he tried to recall where he had just met someone whose story he wanted to tell. “We were down in–where were we?” Quickly he came up with Winston-Salem, and everybody laughed. Monday in Wilmington, however, not only did he seem not to know Wilmington but the date and time, saying that it was “March” and “nine months to November.” The fact that his audiences are largely composed of die-hard fervent loyalists usually masks this underlying dis-connection.

But it’s worth noting that Senator Clinton always knows exactly where she is and to whom she is speaking. On Sunday in Wilmington, for example, her opening remarks touched in quick succession on several important things about the town: the glorious setting on the Cape Fear River, its connection to the military, the upcoming commissioning of the new submarine North Carolina there next weekend, and the fact that “this country has been very good to me and to many of you,” for people who are lucky enough to live in Wilmington are lucky indeed.

Hickory itself got short shrift. Indeed many of the people at the Obama town hall meeting weren’t from Hickory at all. Non-Carolinians from retirement communities around Asheville had driven over. As for the Tar Heelers themselves, they came, despite gas prices, from “three counties away.” …

[...]

Getting the nuances and particularities of a community just right is a problem, perhaps an inevitable one, for a candidate whose necessary life is in the campaign bubble. Not only do Senator Obama and his press entourage never really see towns like Hickory but they don’t see the opposition first-hand, as well. Therefore, Senator Obama has no idea that, despite whatever her campaign may be up to, Senator Clinton hardly ever mentions him anymore. Despite his remark to Hickory that he’s told his staff the campaign needs to get away from going negative, Senator Obama laid into Senator Clinton, usually in conjunction with Senator McCain, several times during the afternoon. At one point he said, “Lately the other candidates aren’t talking about their ideas–they’re talking about me.” As far as Senator Clinton is concerned, nothing could be further from the truth. She presents more ideas on the stump than she has time for. This misrepresentation incensed a group of women friends in Hickory. They had seen Hillary Clinton several times in North Carolina and had come to hear Barack Obama before finally making up their minds. Scratch twelve votes for him.

“Don’t hit on Hillary.” Only the day before the Hickory event, Jean Weiss, a feisty eighty-two year-old, told Obama, when he called on her, thinking he would get a question, just that. Age admonishing youth, it was a powerful moment that the crowd much appreciated. That Senator Obama seemed to have forgotten Weiss only a day later may be a sign only of Wright-driven stress.

Often on the campaign trail, however, despite his frequent comment that as President he will listen to the American people, Barack Obama seems to hear only what he wants to hear. Given the mass adulation with which he is received now, audiences don’t seem to perceive Obama’s selective detachment. If Obama is the next President of the United States, however, the mainstream media as well as bloggers will be busy documenting the various scenes in which this dynamic manifests itself.

Perhaps former ambassador Joseph Wilson’s title of his April 17th op-ed published at Huffington Post and here says it best: “The Obama Campaign: Consent of, or Contempt for, the People.”

Joe Wilson extends Obama’s disconnect from “bedrock” Americans to his disconnect from our nation’s foreign policy professionals:

As it happens, at the same event in San Francisco, Senator Obama made other remarks, equally startling, insulting our Foreign Service, Intelligence Officers, members of Congress who provide oversight, and friendly governments. Like his comments about small town Americans, Obama demonstrated a cavalier disregard for Americans who every day get up determined to make this a better country, whether running the general store in a small town, or representing our national security interests in a foreign country.

This is what Obama said:

Experience in Washington in not knowledge of the world. This I know. When Senator Clinton brags, ‘I’ve met leaders from 80 countries,’ I know what those trips are like. I’ve been on them. You go from the airport to the embassy. There’s a group of children who do a native dance. You meet with the C.I.A. station chief and the embassy and they give you a briefing. You go take a tour of a plant that with the assistance of USAID has started something. And then you go.

Obama’s arrogance and contempt for career professionals in the national security community is palpable. His contempt reminds me of something Bill Kristol, the editor of the right wing war mongering Weekly Standard, said in a debate with me shortly after the launching of the Iraq War in 2003. We were in Midland, Texas, Laura Bush’s home town, and Kristol was asked if he had ever spent time in the Middle East region, to which he responded “I’ve always believed on the ground experience is highly overrated.”

That callous disregard for professional expertise and experience is, of course, one of the reasons we so badly miscalculated the consequences of our actions in Iraq. That arrogance is no less offensive coming from Senator Obama. And it is no less wrongheaded. …

Ambassador Wilson also points out that one of the main reasons for Obama’s “disconnect” is that he simply hasn’t put in the time, the effort or the hard work necessary to KNOW these people or to KNOW the issues:

Senator Obama should know better. After all, in his professional capacity as Chairman of the Senate subcommittee responsible for Europe and NATO, he was in charge of ensuring Congressional oversight of the administration’s efforts to generate greater NATO support for operations in Afghanistan.

The fact that, by his own admission, he was too busy running for president to convene a single meeting of that subcommittee, should not absolve him of responsibility for acquiring at least some understanding of and respect for the work of career professionals who dedicate their lives to the service of their country. …

He lists that subcommittee chairmanship on his campaign site biography. What he wanted was to be the chairman. He just didn’t care about doing the job required of the chairman.

Just like Obama wanted to be a U.S. Senator, not do the inordinately stressful and time-consuming challenges of acting as a U.S. Senator.

Running for president is not sufficient reason to become president.

And being president is not the same thing as acting as president.

But apparently Barack Obama not only thinks that running entitles him to the office, he also thinks that he needn’t get to know either the people of Wilmington or Hickory, North Carolina, let alone do the people and leaders of Europe, who he was tasked to overlook and investigate.

In short: He has contempt for and indifference towards the people for whom he would be elected to work.

Barack Obama is running for the title, not the job.

And, in clear-as-day contrast, Hillary Clinton is running for the job, not the title.