Richard Cohen, the Washington Post today: "The President Who Doesn’t Care" is the headline. (paraphrasing) "The crowds adored Obama, but not as much as he adored himself."
Richard Cohen, in this piece as you read it, realizes -- and he says as much -- that Obama is a small, politically driven president; that he's not at all what was constructed to be. “History was draped over Obama like a cape. His bona fides in that sense were as unimpeachable as Bobby Kennedy’s. The crowd adored Obama, although not as much as I think he adored himself. Liberals were intolerant of anyone who had doubts.
“Obama was not a man, but a totem. A single critical column from me during the campaign triggered a fusillade of invective. The famous and esteemed told me off. I was the tool of right-wing haters, a dope of a dupe. Kennedy had huge causes. End poverty. End the war. He challenged a sitting president over Vietnam. It could have cost him his career. It did cost him his life.”
He’s talking about Robert Kennedy, now.
“The draft is long gone, and with it indignation about senseless wars. Poverty persists, but now it is mostly blamed on the poor.” Oh, speaking of that, I had this in the Stack yesterday and didn't get to it. From the Weekly Standard: “New data compiled by the Republican side of the Senate Budget Committee shows that last year the United States spent over $60,000 to support welfare programs per each household that is in poverty.”
Now, we had this last week when it came out. As usual, you're on the cutting edge if you're here first. We mentioned this. The amount of money that we are spending on poverty per capita in this country is enough to wipe it out for one year. Not forever, because the new year then starts and the people who are in poverty are not earning anything themselves.
But we're spending enough so that there should not be any poverty, and yet there is! How is this explained? “[T]he United States spent over $60,000 to support welfare programs per each household that is in poverty. The calculations are based on data from the Census, the Office of Management and Budget, and the Congressional Research Services.
“‘According to the Census’s American Community Survey, the number of households with incomes below the poverty line in 2011 was 16,807,795,’ the Senate Budget Committee notes. ‘If you divide total federal and state spending by the number of households with incomes below the poverty line, the average spending per household in poverty was $61,194 in 2011.’
“This dollar figure is almost three times the amount the average household on poverty lives on per year,” and yet we've still got poverty. Welfare was meant to bring people below the poverty line to a better place, but it doesn't, obviously. And welfare reform had the work requirement in it, and that was reducing the number of people on welfare, but Obama stripped the work requirements out.
He also stripped the work requirements out of the food stamp program, by the way. That doesn't get a whole lot of discussion, but he did. The real poverty in this country right now under Obama is the middle class. They’re not classified as poor, not getting a lot of help from the Fed, struggling to keep a roof over their heads. One in six in this country are in poverty, despite what we're spending. At some point, when are people gonna get clued in that the government can't solve these kinds of problems?
RUSH: I want to go back to this Richard Cohen piece in which Cohen says that Obama's a small politically driven guy, small politically driven president, that he never was what he was made out to be. "The crowd adored Obama, although not as much as I think he adored himself." Remember Jon Meacham and Evan Thomas of Newsweek, they were at Grant Park watching Obama on election night, 2008. (imitating Meacham and Thomas) "Boy, this guy's creepy. It's like he's above all of us. He's up there, and he's watching us watch him. It's really creepy." And then they thought how weird is it, you win the election, and you send your wife and kids packing so that you're the only guy on the stage. You don't want your family there. They're saying this, after recommending to all of us that we elect the guy, after helping create the mythology that was Obama.
And now Richard Cohen is coming along and he's simply upset because he doesn't think Obama cares. By the way, if I might say so here, I think there are a lot of people -- well, I know there are; I hear from 'em -- there are a lot of Democrats, some of them prominent, who really think Obama doesn't want to win. He's giving them that impression. They really fear that Obama doesn't have it in him. He doesn't want to go through this. He doesn't think he should have to. Elections are for plebes. He agreed to have to do it one time. He's not into it. He really doesn't care. They're really depressed about it, a lot of Democrats are. I think they're a little all wet. I think Obama craves being reelected. I don't think he likes campaigning. I think he does think all this is beneath him. But I don't buy this notion he doesn't want it.
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