Why aren't things working? "I've got the skill. I know the art. But my smooth-talking isn't making the difference. Why not?"
"It's in the listening, stupid." Things are not working because Obama is not interested in what people are thinking and talking about. He wrongly believes that his power comes from the conversations he is speaking. They do not. He is completely controlled by the listening in the country, and if he is unable to speak into that, he loses the patience of his audience. And that is what is happening.
People are not stupid. Politicians and intellectuals of various types act as if they have some inside knowledge about life. When the government attempts to stimulate growth by borrowing and spending, for example, people know that it doesn't work in their lives so it isn't difficult to question whether this will work on a larger scale. When one loses a job, is it time to go borrow money? Whatever the hole one is in, borrowing money only makes it deeper. Wouldn't it be better to cut expenses, sell some things and create some operating room to produce a value that someone might pay you money for? Debt makes that process harder, logic tells me.
So unless a person is some kind of sycophant or wants to live in fantasy, he's going to be listening for how Obama and his Administration square themselves with reality. If, on the other hand, he hears Obama and his associates driving an agenda and not getting what the people are concerned about, then the people's experience is that they have not been heard and that Obama doesn't care about them.
Any ideas that fall on deaf ears go nowhere. One has to get what the ears want to hear and then his speaking will work wonders. But so far, the O is unwilling to find out what the ears want to hear. So they get more frustrated.
And, essentially, this explains the whole damn thing.
Obama is agenda driven. His powerful intention to push his agenda is what prevents him from hearing people's concerns. He seeks to dispell, even thwart, any attempts to reach him. When over a million people showed up on his lawn on September 12, he left town and acted like no one drove across country to Washington. He should have been down on that mall with his ear to the ground. Is it not clear that Obama is not interested in governing the people - all of them? But rather is scared of them and takes refuge in his toadies?
Reading a tabloid, Obama was reported to be smoking up to 2 packs a day. He's not getting the sleep he needs and is losing weight. He screams at his staff and makes impossible demands. At a recent public meeting a young boy asked, "Mr. President, why do people hate you so much?" Is this the question that is dogging him day and night?
Apparently Beck and Limbaugh are on O's enemies list. Why? He should be listening to them. They definitely do have their ear to the ground and know what is going on. That's why they have huge audiences - the very thing that Obama needs. Hmm. What's wrong with this picture, Mr. O?
Given that Obama is a personality, actually a celebrity personality, I could get why he would be concerned about such a question. As far as I can tell, he's never gotten any of his motivation from being a lawgiver nor a judge nor even a cop. He does like moralizing - those "I will always..." and "I will never..." statements - but his payoff is getting elected. He loves the attention and privilege (hotshot status) that comes with that. That looks to me to be the end of the story.
I don't see a President Obama who is on the side of humanity except in an old-fashioned, old country, anti-American kind of way. He takes sides and wants to take from one and give to another and revel in the power he has over people. He's not showing me any wisdom or even-handedness in the application of the law. He never mentions the subject. In the case of the Boston professor and the cop, he didn't even bother finding out what was going on. Rather, he immediately called the cop stupid and said that it is a known fact that cops profile blacks. This is the kind of thing that undermines the space people have for him. Those on the receiving end of those judgments don't like it and those on the other end get scared, not knowing where that kind of partisanship can lead.
But even with all of the negativity that he has drummed up over the months, he could change that quickly if he wanted. All he would have to do is set aside his agenda and start listening to people and their concerns. Seriously doing that, his solutions would likely start to dance with those concerns.
As it is, he's going to stress himself out and may even crack. If he's a puppet, which increasingly he looks to be, then he is not going to have any room to make adjustments. When Clinton learned this lesson after the Republicans took control of the Congress, he began to have some programs and policies that actually responded to what the country wanted and needed. But until he got the lesson, he was failing. Will Obama learn? Does he have the room to learn? Time will tell us.
Will The O grow? That is the question.
(Since writing this, I've seen two articles on listening. They are posted in the comments section. Perhaps O will begin to grasp this fundamental dynamic in any relationship. If not, the applause is going to thin out, man by man.)
