by Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n
National Review Online<\/em><\/p>\n Conservatives caricature 24\/7 Barack Obama\u2019s reliance on the teleprompter. True, his speeches are scripted; but we forget why so: He is very good at reading a prepared script as if he were talking off the top of his head, and he is very bad at actually talking off the top of his head. In the former mode, he sounds pleasantly moderate and mellifluous; in the latter, sort of creepy and awkward.<\/p>\n Yet the result is paradoxical: Obama seems to feel false when he sounds balanced and eloquent reading someone else\u2019s ideas on a teleprompter, and genuine only when he is extreme and\u00a0ad hoc<\/em>\u00a0in his own words. Because teleprompted eloquence is by definition somewhat artificial, Obama believes that his real wit and insight are appreciated only in extemporaneous exposition.<\/p>\n Yet here lies another paradox: His lack of judgment is not evident on the teleprompter, but is only fully illustrated when he is off it and his more extreme ideas are candidly expressed.<\/p>\n All presidents reveal glimpses of themselves through gaffes and off-the-cuff candor. Richard Nixon\u2019s various paranoias were most evident on the secret White House audiotapes. Reagan\u2019s anti-Soviet feelings were behind his open-mike joke, \u201cWe begin bombing in five minutes.\u201d When George W. Bush blurted out \u201cDead or alive\u201d or \u201cBring \u2019em on,\u201d the impromptu bombast seemed to reflect his cowboy image.<\/p>\n Such revelations are all the more striking in Obama\u2019s case since rarely has a president\u2019s ideology been so at variance with his public persona. His real views have been gleaned mostly from unguarded moments when he talks confidently without prompts \u2014 and therefore sounds conniving and shallow.<\/p>\n We learn about Obama\u2019s views toward Israel not from campaign speeches, in which he soars with platitudes to raise money from the Jewish community, but when he is caught on an open mike with French president Sarkozy rudely ridiculing Israeli prime minister Netanyahu, or in a leak about snubbing the Israeli leader at the White House, or in a statement by the Palestinian foreign minister to the effect that administration officials had advised the Palestinian leadership to \u201csit tight\u201d during the present election year \u2014 until Obama no longer need face the electorate and thus its displeasure for forcing concessions upon the Israelis.<\/p>\n For all the talk about the need for federal courts to audit errant state immigration legislation or to strike down the Defense of Marriage law, Obama does not believe in either an inactive or an active judiciary, only in one that parrots his own ideology. When jurists do this, they become sober and judicious; when they might not, then we hear an impromptu screed that Supreme Court justices are \u201can unelected group of people\u201d who should not \u201csomehow overturn a duly constituted and passed law\u201d \u2014 \u201can unprecedented, extraordinary step of overturning a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress.\u201d<\/p>\n Are we worried about Obama\u2019s na\u00efvet\u00e9 in dealing with the Russians on arms control, short-changing the Poles and Czechs on missile defense, and not quickly dropping the failed reset diplomacy? We should be, but we know that only because we have ignored his scripted rhetoric about Russia and listened instead to his embarrassing gaffe when he was caught on another open mike assuring President Medvedev that after the election our president would be more flexible with Putin, in a fashion that most Americans would find disturbing. In that exchange, the president seemed to regard all Americans as veritable Pennsylvania clingers, backward emotional folk who do not understand the diplomatic nuances of their more gifted technocrats.<\/p>\n Impromptu bows to a Saudi sheik or a Japanese monarch are also not written in the margins of the script, but they likewise give insights into the sort of multilateral, we-are-all-equal worldview that Obama envisions for America. Almost any time the president is abroad and goes impromptu, he must send shivers up the spines of his handlers: How he will react to the anti-American rant of a Daniel Ortega, or what new critique of his presidential predecessors will he come up with in Turkey?<\/p>\n Take also the question of race. Officially, in scripted speeches, we still hear the healing tropes of 2008. Unofficially and in clumsy fashion, we are told that America is a society in which police officers stereotype and act stupidly. Presidential wisdom about the Trayvon Martin tragedy is limited to a tribal reflection that the son Barack Obama never had would have resembled the deceased \u2014 an odd observation whose exact intent is still not clear. In 2008, \u201ctypical white person\u201d and the clingers speech were also\u00a0ad hoc<\/em>\u00a0and not teleprompted, but these repulsive remarks proved to be more accurate harbingers than any soaring script explaining away the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.<\/p>\n How about healing and unity \u2014 as in the no-more-red-America-or-blue-America sermons of the past? For the answer to that we turn to the imprompu \u201cIf they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun,\u201d \u201cGet in their faces,\u201d \u201ctea-baggers,\u201d and \u201cpunish our enemies.\u201d Or consider Obama\u2019s private call to Sandra Fluke and his later quip that he did not wish his daughters to grow up in a world in which a Rush Limbaugh defames women \u2014 without much cognizance that his own campaign affiliates had gladly accepted $1 million from the misogynist Bill Maher, or that he now\u00a0de facto<\/em>\u00a0owned the comments of his celebrity supporter, who had said far worse things about women than had Limbaugh \u2014 but without commensurate presidential rebuke.<\/p>\n Obama felt impulsively that he must editorialize that the shooting of Representative Gabrielle Giffords teaches us about the need for civility in public discourse \u2014 without much worry that soon those words could come back to haunt him. They surely did when labor leader Jimmy Hoffa Jr., in Obama\u2019s presence, appeared to threaten violence, with the promise, \u201cPresident Obama, this is your army. We are ready to march. Let\u2019s take these son-of-a-bitches out and give America back to an America where we belong.\u201d<\/p>\n The inadvertent Obama gives glimpses of his them-vs.-us world, in which doctors lop off limbs and rip out tonsils for cash, fat cats junket to Vegas on their kids\u2019 tuition money, the uncaring don\u2019t know when to stop their profiteering and they worry little about spreading the wealth. In the world of the flippant Obama, energy prices should \u201cskyrocket\u201d; Brazil should sell us the sort of offshore oil we ourselves will not develop; and proper tire pressure, tune-ups, and algae can substitute for more drilling. In these moments of candor, there are no speechwriters, and no canned phrases moving down a screen, spiced with the Nixonian \u201cMake no mistake about it\u201d and \u201cLet me be perfectly clear\u201d fillers. The thoughts, phraseology \u2014 and incoherence \u2014 are all Obama\u2019s own.<\/p>\n If it comes down to a choice between an eloquent delivery of someone else\u2019s neatly crafted liberal ideas and Obama\u2019s\u00a0ad-hoc<\/em>\u00a0revelations of his own hard-left worldview, it is no wonder why most of us prefer the teleprompter.<\/p>\n \u00a92012 Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online Conservatives caricature 24\/7 Barack Obama\u2019s reliance on the teleprompter. True, his speeches are scripted; but we forget why so: He is very good at reading a prepared script as if he were talking off the top of his head, and he is very bad at actually talking off […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[536],"tags":[12,210,329,1026,1027,277,372],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-dz","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":411,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/anatomy-of-a-disastrous-debate-performance\/","url_meta":{"origin":841,"position":0},"title":"Anatomy of a Disastrous Debate Performance","author":"victorhanson","date":"October 8, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson PJ Media The Romney-Obama debate was bizarre for so many reasons. Usually spin masters needle the media immediately to \u201cprove\u201d that their so-so candidate won. But after this debate, almost no one made the argument that Obama was close to winning \u2014 so great was the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Election 2012"","block_context":{"text":"Election 2012","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/obama-administration\/election-2012\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":362,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/angry-reader-3\/","url_meta":{"origin":841,"position":1},"title":"Angry Reader #3","author":"victorhanson","date":"November 11, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Private Papers Angry Reader #3 writes: I won\u2019t take the time to deconstruct your little essay line by line but trust me, almost everything you post is pure, unadulterated, kool-aid-inspired nonsense straight from the fever-swamp of the Reich-wing disinformation echo-chamber, all of it intended to create\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Angry Reader"","block_context":{"text":"Angry Reader","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/angry-reader\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1871,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/obama-versus-obama\/","url_meta":{"origin":841,"position":2},"title":"Obama versus Obama","author":"victorhanson","date":"January 27, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Will the real Barack Obama please stand up? by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online There is little need any more to offer consistent opposition to Barack Obama, since he himself is already running hard against the many previous incarnations of Barack Obama.\u00a0 The first one we met was Barack\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "January 2010"","block_context":{"text":"January 2010","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2010\/january-2010\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1183,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/bering-there-the-obama-sequel\/","url_meta":{"origin":841,"position":3},"title":"Being There–the Obama Sequel","author":"victorhanson","date":"January 8, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson PJ Media Rip Van Obama President Obama went into a deep slumber in December. When he woke up this January, he found himself back even in the polls, with neither a press conference nor another overhyped presidential televised address to be heard. Sleep, quiet, and solitude\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Campaign 2012"","block_context":{"text":"Campaign 2012","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/obama-administration\/campaign-2012\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2032,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/obama-becomes-the-fall-guy\/","url_meta":{"origin":841,"position":4},"title":"Obama Becomes the Fall Guy","author":"victorhanson","date":"September 19, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services Suddenly, liberal op-ed writers are trashing \u2014 even lampooning \u2014 Barack Obama as a one-term president (\u201cone and done\u201d). Centrist Democrats up for reelection in 2012 openly worry about inviting a kindred president into their districts, lest the new pariah lose them votes.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Campaign 2012"","block_context":{"text":"Campaign 2012","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/obama-administration\/campaign-2012\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":7776,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/our-face-in-the-crowd\/","url_meta":{"origin":841,"position":5},"title":"Our \u2018Face in the Crowd\u2019","author":"victorhanson","date":"August 18, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ PJMedia Elia Kazan\u2019s classic\u00a0A Face in the Crowd\u00a0[2]\u00a0is a good primer on Barack Obama\u2019s rise and fall. Lonesome Rhodes arises out of nowhere in the 1957 film, romancing the nation\u00a0as a phony populist\u00a0[3]\u00a0who serially spins yarns in the most folksy ways \u2014 confident that he\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "America's Future"","block_context":{"text":"America's Future","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/americas-future\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/obama_face_in_the_crowd_on_brick_wall_8-17-14-1.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/841"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=841"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/841\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5846,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/841\/revisions\/5846"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=841"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=841"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=841"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}