How did Barack Obama become such a turkey?

Alexander Cockburn: After an adulterer and a moron, we now have a bore in the White House

LAST UPDATED 12:46 PM, NOVEMBER 26, 2009

No one told us it would be boring, but it is. We're talking here about the Obama presidency. Having an adulterer and a moron at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue for eight years apiece, plus Dick Cheney down the corridor, spoiled us. Which side of Bill's head did Hillary hit with the lamp? Would George fight his way to the end of the sentence in his daily battles with the English language?

These days tranquility reigns - or seems to - in the Obamas' private quarters. Senior White House staffers remain loyal and tight-lipped. Small wonder Jay Leno's nightly TV show is sagging. There's been nothing to make jokes about, at least until Sarah Palin went on her book tour.

Jimmy Carter was another Democratic president who didn't drink or fornicate or steal. But he had Brother Billy and the colourful Bert Lance as his director of OMB, already mired in southern Gothic scandal by the middle of Carter's first year in office.

He had the late Hamilton Jordan as his chief of staff, getting drunk at state dinners and making lewd verbal overtures to the wife of the Egyptian ambassador. Obama's chief of staff Rahm Emanuel may be foul-mouthed, but thus far he's run a ship offering about as much drama as the upper executive tier of an insurance company in Ames, Iowa.

Politics are getting duller by the day too, as the idealists watch their expectations trickling all too swiftly through the hour glass. Visions of a decent state-backed public system of health insurance have – in the current bills – mutated into their polar opposite: enforcement of compulsory purchase of private health coverage – the "reform" imposed by those insurance executives in Ames - and an Obama-backed hike in health insurance costs for low-income seniors.

Obama makes gestures to please everybody then it’s business as usual

The fact that Obama's dipped below 50 per cent in public approval, so the pollsters tell us, is nothing particularly unusual for a new president at this stage of the game. What's going to stop him sliding down more? Next week, he's scheduled to announce that that he’s ordering 34,000 more troops to head for Afghanistan.

I heard someone on NPR say this was Obama's compromise between General Stanley McChrystal's original demand for 50,000 troops and those who have been imploring Obama to nix further deployments and bring all the troops home. In other words, we have a typical Obama compromise, making gestures designed to please everybody, but in the end going along with Business as Usual.

Like his performance on Guantanamo: pledge to close it down, then drag your feet, continue secret renditions of captives to other prisons like Bagram, and finally engineer the resignation of Gregory Craig, the White House counsel who was trying to close Guantanamo, now open until every remaining prisoner can be sent to replications of Guantanamo

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The longsuffering Russians found the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics boring, waiting in queues, waiting for apartments, waiting to grow old on the list to buy a very bad car, etc. The untermensch of the German Democratic Republic grew so bored with socialist utopia they committed suicide in record numbers (only Hungary exceeded East Germany for suicide) - this was depicted as the central motive for the main character in the film 'Das Leben der Anderen', 'The Lives of Others'. And you think a socialist/communist American president will not bring on the boredom like corn dogs on a stick? Why not?

Posted by michael jose at 11:43am on November 27, 2009

Oh yes we need an exciting president - someone who will go to war at a moment's notice - cause 100 000 deaths - very un-boring

Posted by bill@iway.na at 11:54am on November 27, 2009

Alexander Cockburn = you are the example of how valueless media criticism can be. I have read through any number of your scathing comments about men you could never hope to do or be a tiny fraction of who they are, and I am frankly sick of it and sick of you. I, who has been an anti-American critic through the last two presidencies - and longer, is asking you to shut up or change your job to that of a gasoline attendant, or both, OK? (Really, no offense meant to any bone-fide gasoline attendants...)

Posted by J J at 3:28pm on November 27, 2009

Obama is simply a damp squib.It wont go off it just fizzels.

Posted by ROBERT BOYD at 4:12pm on November 27, 2009

Give it up, Cockburn. If you want entertainment, I suggest you follow the parsimonious, truly outrageous and mean spirited antics of the pachyderm party. Why not go to the ballet, a museum or a football game? You could benefit from these entertaining activities. Frankly, I question your understanding of what it is to be an American. Are you an American? If you are, did you flunk 10 grade Civics (not to be confused with American History)? It's a requirement for obtaining a High School Diploma in the U.S. You are a crashing bore.

Posted by Midyola at 4:49pm on November 27, 2009

Alexander, I have sometimes read your amusing acerbic essays on life here in America. I moved to this diverse and delightful community of immigrants 15 years ago. However your assertion that Obama has become a turkey, and may even be boring is wide of the mark. It indicates that you are further from the White House than you pretend to be, and struggle for a catchy headline. Obama has many tasks ahead of him, unlike most of his predecessors, he actually works very hard and appears to take a lot of risks with his popularity. I once overheard my Grandma say "You can be a parent, or a best friend..but you cant be both" I rest my case. Steve Crozier, Santa Barbara CA

Posted by Steve Crozier at 6:11pm on November 27, 2009

This commentary misses out, because it fails completely to mention the realities in US-politics, i.e. the puppet masters behind the scene, that control any U.S.-Prez from dusk to dawn. No one will likely ever hear about them -- David Rockefeller, senile and daft meanwhile, being perhaps the possible exception. Thus, @michael jose is ridiculously off the mark, attempting to mislabel sorry-Obama as "a socialist/communist [U.S.] American president" -- this tells us about @michael jose's ignorance about what's really going on in the U.S., and this is symptomatic for the vast majority of U.S. households. It's a herd of ignorant sheep, being mentally moved about by media-shepherders and demagogues, while, at the same time, curiously falling prey for the suggestion that they are in some magic way "in control". Obama is a presidential-actor, let's at least begin to face this, albeit uncomfortabel, truth! He can't do sh.t, without the handlers of his "presidency" -- got it? Have you ever wondered why Ronald Reagan was such a "successful" president? He was a great actor! The one time, Reagan really believed that he WAS president was in Iceland, when he met Gorbatshov and the two had an understanding about disarmament. Gorbatshov, at the time, was in control of his Polit-Bureau -- Reagan had no control: just read about the aftermath, ... how quickly Reagan had been whistled back by the "presidential-handlers". There were insinuations such as 'Reagan had temporarily passed out' a.s.o. ... . Mark Twain once stated: "Anyone, who does not read, will have no advantage over someone, who cannot read!" U.S.-American ignorance does not happen by chance, it stems from laziness, intellectual laziness! ... with greetings from Germany ...

Posted by Michael Reinelt at 10:38pm on November 27, 2009

All you media people who created Obama Messiah, and protected him as if he were an innocent new born baby deserve to be bored. I am amazed that an Englishman would consider Obama eloquent when he reads his "sing-song" speeches. If I had a choice I would certainly prefer the moron to the adulterer or the Manchurian candidate. A nation gets the government it deserves and both America and Britain are going to suffer from the choices they make.

Posted by myrna smith at 1:10am on November 28, 2009

'There's discontent and disillusion on the liberal and progressive side'. Yet another example of a left wing liberal hijacking words, in this case 'progressive', and aggressively peddling it, as if to contradict the insinuation that it represents unchallengable political thinking would be in some way abhorent. This is how the disgusting disease of 'politiical correctness' forces its warped totalitarian ideology onto others, with the very phrase itself, psychologically designed to intimidate people into accepting that those who disagree with its mantra must be 'incorrect' and therefore bad and must to be attacked. I'm sick of hypocritical liberal bullies. They've had there way for donkeys years now and the world has never been in a bigger mess.

Posted by Jerome Peter at 1:24am on November 28, 2009

O'Bomber is a gutless warmongering yankee thug. It makes no difference if he black or white, Republican or Democrat... he's an AMERICAN, and so he is a xenophobic warmongering madman like every other American.

Posted by Neil McGowan at 10:45am on November 28, 2009

I share the sentiments of the previous poster, JJ...I have waded through Cockburn's prose and it is clear he is one of those persons who wants attention at all costs. If he can't think of anything clever to say he simply attacks and insults. He does not have facility with humour to have made this a bit of irony. I suppose he is maintained on staff to prove that there are readers out there.

Posted by suzann Dodd at 1:46pm on November 28, 2009

"politics are getting duller by the day . . . ", so are you Alex, so are you. DanInTheApple

Posted by Primo Famiglia at 4:15am on November 30, 2009

Europe had some pretty charismatic leaders in the 1930's. Didn't do us any good. Boring is better, thank you.

Posted by DanW at 8:25pm on December 20, 2009