"A Dusky Dukakis"?

The . . . comparison is, of course, a cruel one . . .

LOL.  Hitchens, on a roll to (not quite) rival George Will's, complete with epithets and observations we will remember.  Obama is "vapid and hesitant and gutless," says Hitch, because

after the self-imposed Jeremiah Wright nightmare, he can't afford any more militancy, or militant-sounding stuff, even if it might be justified. [...] He couldn't have picked a gifted Democratic woman as his running mate, because he couldn't have chosen a female who wasn't the ever-present Sen. Clinton, and so he handed the free gift of doing so to his Republican opponent (whose own choice has set up a screech from the liberals like nothing I have heard since the nomination of Clarence Thomas). [...]

[A] lot of us [...] got the idea that Dukakis actually wanted to lose—or was at the very least scared of winning. Why do I sometimes get the same idea about Obama?

Interesting:  Hitch thinks Obama started out in the primaries running to set up 2012, and was caught unprepared by the events and enthusiasms that propelled him into the lead.  That at least would have allowed him to be sincere when he said in 2004,

You know, I am a believer in knowing what you're doing when you apply for a job. And I think that if I were to seriously consider running on a national ticket, I would essentially have to start now, before having served a day in the Senate. Now, there are some people who might be comfortable doing that, but I'm not one of those people.

And:

RUSSERT:  There's been enormous speculation about your political future. Will you serve your full six-year term as a United States senator from Illinois?

OBAMA: Absolutely.

I'm surprised more hasn't been made of Obama's introducing Joe Biden as "the next President of the United States."  I saw him put his lips together to say "president" the first time (check my liveblog), and catch himself, and then do it again and it got away from him.  A chill went through me, because I saw it as a very significant slip, a public confession of his own appropriate sense of unreadiness.  It makes you realize that he's not just an incredibly ambitious man, but to some extent the prisoner of the Democrats' desperation to win -- as Mark Daniels astutely writes at the Moderate Voice, the latest Great JFK Hope, as Sarah Palin is the latest Great Ronald Reagan Hope.  They're both political preemies, while McCain is on political life support -- a consequence, it strikes me, of the anguished national cry of ANYTHING BUT ANOTHER BABY BOOMER.  Thanks to My Generation's evasion of authentic maturity, we're going to be governed from the incubator and/or the respirator.

ADDED:  While I'm hitching rides on other bloggers' coattails and showcasing other writers' felicitous phrases, here's a concept the world definitely needed:  subprime relationships.

Comments

[huxley]

Hitch thinks Obama started out in the primaries running to set up 2012, and was caught unprepared by the events and enthusiasms that propelled him into the lead.

That's my take too, though I'm not so sure about the people around Obama.

And I'm not sure, assuming that was the case, how Obama should have played it. He's kind of like the Robert Redford character in The Candidate who asks after they win, "Marvin...What do we do now?"

Clearly at this time Obama is unqualified to be POTUS, yet here he is with a 50-50 chance of winning.

The people I blame are the higher-ups in the Democratic party who should have known better, but instead out of Clinton rivalry and Camelot longings threw their lot in with this dangerous, leftie rookie.

[Mark Daniels]

Thanks for linking, Annie.

Mark

[amba]

"Dangerous" seems too strong a word for him. (The left is using the same word for Palin.) That implies that he has some coherent Machiavellian agenda and the strength to carry it out. I don't see either. Naïveté and irresolution could be dangerous, of course, but more by what's not there than by what is.

[amba]

It's a really good piece, Mark.

[Ron]

Hasn't Reynolds at Instapundit been saying this same thing about Obama? I thought he's mentioned it several times...

[Donna B.]

I think Obama is dangerous in the way you mention and that his being so irresolute may allow him to be easily be taken advantage of.

[Maude]

Your link "here's a concept" (subprime relationships) sent me into the Gawker writing. Yech! I much prefer your felicitious phrasings. Imagine having a mind that thought in those terms. A frontal lobotomy would be the only solution.

[Melinda]

From the Hitchens piece: Here's a swift test. Be honest. What sentence can you quote from his convention speech in Denver?

Can't quote verbatim, but the line about "The Ownership Society: You're on your own" is the one that's stuck in my head. Surprised the Democrats haven't made more of that one.

[Tom Strong]

I can't read that headline without thinking of Jon Lovitz as Dukakis on SNL, way back when:

"I too am a swarthy person..."