Dowd Does Obama

Here's a nice tongue-in-cheek NY Times op-ed piece by Maureen Dowd that makes fun of the dethronement of Obama in favour of the new senator from Massachusetts:

The only question left is: Why isn’t Scott Brown delivering the State of the Union? He’s the Epic One we want to hear from. All that inexperience can really be put to good use here.

Obama’s Oneness has been one-upped. Why settle for a faux populist when we can have a real one? Why settle for gloomy populism when we can have sunny populism? Why settle for Ivy League cool when we can have Cosmo hot? Why settle for a professor who favors banks, pharmaceutical companies and profligate Democrats when we can have an Everyman who favors banks, pharmaceutical companies and profligate Republicans? Why settle for a 48-year-old, 6-foot-1, organic arugula when we can have a 50-year-old, 6-foot-2, double waffle with bacon?

Everyone in Washington now wants to touch the hem of President-elect Brown — known in the British press as “the former nude centrefold” — who has single-handedly revived the moribund Republican Party. It uncannily recalls the way they once jostled to piggyback on the powerful allure of One-Term Obama.

This is all good fun, but so long as you pick politicians by the current fad, you are going to continue to have bad government. You need to pick politicians by policy, by party platform, by clear statements of what they promise to do once in office. But politics is Madison Avenue in the US so all the voter gets to see is the "horse race" aspect, i.e. whether a politician is polling well, how "strong" he looks, whether the spin doctors are performing well or poorly. Sad.