Politico: Damaging Obama "storylines"

File this one under the truth will out (no matter how hard the media tries to hide it by spinning its own "storylines"):

John F. Harris of Politico lists "seven stories Barack Obama doesn't want told":

The Obama White House argues that all of these storylines are inaccurate or unfair. In some cases these anti-Obama narratives are fanned by Republicans, in some cases by reporters and commentators.

And in some cases the truth is as plain as the nose on your face. Harris's list is in bold.

He thinks he’s playing with Monopoly money
Indisputable. Karl Rove:

Last year, Mr. Obama made fiscal restraint a constant theme of his presidential campaign. "Washington will have to tighten its belt and put off spending," he said back then, while pledging to "go through the federal budget, line by line, ending programs that we don't need." Voters found this fiscal conservatism reassuring.

However, since taking office Mr. Obama pushed through a $787 billion stimulus, a $33 billion expansion of the child health program known as S-chip, a $410 billion omnibus appropriations spending bill, and an $80 billion car company bailout. He also pushed a $821 billion cap-and-trade bill through the House and is now urging Congress to pass a nearly $1 trillion health-care bill.

Too much Leonard Nimoy
Harris:

Obama, a legislator and law professor, is fluent in describing the nuances of problems. But his intellectuality has contributed to a growing critique that decisions are detached from rock-bottom principles.

I agree in part. Obama has more of the qualities of a contemporary academic, or more accurately, of a college administrator, than of a leader. But genuinely "fluent" or "intellectual"? -- that's a crumbling MSM storyline. (And since when was he much of a legislator? Aside from waging war on the unborn and the "temporarily alive," what did he do in IL or in the US Senate?)

That’s the Chicago Way
Many of the geniuses who voted for him didn't vote for a bully, but that's what they got:

The problem is that many voters took Obama seriously in 2008 when he talked about wanting to create a more reasoned, non-partisan style of governance in Washington. When Republicans showed scant interest in cooperating with Obama at the start, the Obama West Wing gladly reverted to campaign hack mode. [. . .]

The lesson that many Washington insiders have drawn is that Obama wants to buy off the people he can and bowl over those he can’t. If that perception spreads beyond Washington this will scuff Obama’s brand as a new style of political leader.

He’s a pushover
What's more contemptible than a bully? A weak bully:

If you are going to be known as a fighter, you might as well reap the benefits. But some of the same insider circles that are starting to view Obama as a bully are also starting to whisper that he’s a patsy.

He sees America as another pleasant country on the U.N. roll call, somewhere between Albania and Zimbabwe
It's hard not to notice that he telegraphs weakness and runs down his country at every opportunity. Harris:

His peculiar bow to the emperor of Japan was symbolic. But his lots-of-velvet, not-much-iron approach to China had substantive implications.

On the left, the budding storyline is that Obama has retreated from human rights in the name of cynical realism. On the right, it is that he is more interested in being President of the World than President of the United States, a critique that will be heard more in December as he stops in Oslo to pick up his Nobel Prize and then in Copenhagen for an international summit on curbing greenhouse gases.

President Pelosi
Obama and Pelosi have a lot in common: both are power-drunk incompetents trying to make hay while the sun shines.

He’s in love with the man in the mirror
Or as Mark Steyn put it: "Tear down this wall . . . so they can get a better look at ME!!!" No matter the event, it's always about him.


According to Harris, there's a cure for all this:

That is why the next couple of months — with health care and Afghanistan jostling at center stage — will likely carry a long echo. Obama’s best hope of nipping bad storylines is to replace them with good ones rooted in public perceptions of his effectiveness.

I think that means he'd have to do something right.

Linked at Michelle Malkin (buzzworthy)

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