
 |
|
Nov. 20, 2009
Nov. 19, 2009
Jonathan Tobin: ADL Crosses the Line with Report Bashing Obama Critics
Nov. 18, 2009
JWisdom.com: The (Jewish) Dating Game
with Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff (8 minutes)
Nov. 17, 2009
Steven Emerson: How Does the 4th Amendment Impact Terror Finance Investigations?
JWisdom.com: If Frank Sinatra married Edith Piaf
with Rabbi Y.Y. Rubinstein (2 minutes) Life lessons from what would be regarded as the most inappropriate lyrics ever sung
Nov. 16, 2009
JWisdom.com: Deconstructing faith
with Rabbi Warren Goldstein (9 minutes)
Nov. 13, 2009
JWisdom.com Sarah's subjective reality
with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 6 minutes)
Nov. 12, 2009
JWisdom.com Does God get tired?
with Rabbi Harvey Belovski ( 5 minutes)
Nov. 11, 2009
JWisdom.com Marriages are not made in Heaven
with Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff (VERY fast 15 minutes)
Nov. 10, 2009
Michael Doyle: Author of book exposing CAIR ordered to remove supporting documents from Web
JWisdom.com If the creation so loudly shouts the existence of the Creator, why aren't more people believers? with Rabbi Naftali Brawer (9 minutes)
Nov. 9, 2009
Mark Steyn: Shooter exposes hole
in U.S. terror strategy
JWisdom.com It's never too late to
have a happy childhood with Sarah Chana Radcliffe (5 minutes)
Nov. 6, 2009
JWisdom.com Zero to 1/60th: How
to Empower An Hour with Gavriel Aryeh Sande (7 minutes)
Nov. 5, 2009
JWisdom.com Hidden Hints: Unlocking
Faith & Prayer with Rabbi Jay Yaacov Schwartz (10 minutes)
Nov. 4, 2009
JWisdom.com When God played peacemaker
With Rabbi Sroy Levitansky (5 minutes)
Nov. 3, 2009
JWisdom.com Are you are closet idolater?
With Sara Yoheved Rigler (10 minutes)
Nov. 2, 2009
JWisdom.com Abraham's Strange Change
With Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer (5 minutes)
|
| |
Jewish World Review
July 31, 2009
10 Menachem-Av 5769
A Shooting Star Dims
By
Suzanne Fields
| 
|
|
|
| |
|
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
Barack Obama was a rock star on the campaign trail and his aura
went undimmed in his first few months of office. But then he began taking
too many curtain calls. The applause subsided, but he kept coming back to
center stage to try harder to wow us. He forgot what every star must learn,
that you've got to know when to get off that center stage. If you don't have
anything new to say, shut up. This applies even to presidents.
He's reaching for applause lines with the same ol' same ol'. So
his poll numbers begin to shrink. He pushes, and pushes, a flawed health
care scheme without having anything new to add. Then he goes off script to
accuse the Cambridge, Mass., cops of behaving "stupidly" in the arrest of
professor Henry Louis Gates, and loses the applause of fans in the second
balcony.
When Obama replaced George W. Bush as the top banana, his speech
if not his politics was dramatically refreshing. We were relieved to listen
to someone who wouldn't muff his lines, miss a cue or garble the English
language. Even those who disagreed with what the new president had to say
appreciated his speechifying skills. We became a collective version of
Moliere's "Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme," delighted to discover a leader who
could speak prose.
But we also discovered that a golden-tongued devil could deceive
us with the alchemy of smooth talk at a time when we need straight talk.
Great rhetoricians inevitably betray a weakness, small though it may be.
That's why the poet John Milton gave Satan the best lines, sprinkled with
vivid similes and sparkling metaphors, in "Paradise Lost." All the better to
deceive. By comparison, God in His heaven is plain to the point of boring,
but the smart reader gets the divine meaning.
Nobody likes being deceived. When the Congressional Budget
Office said Obama's health care numbers were wrong and his scheme would cost
a lot more than we had been told, some of us grew suspicious. When the
accountants at the celebrated Mayo Clinic said the cure was worse than the
disease, more of us decided that we didn't want the president's medicine.
When the Blue Dog Democrats vowed not to be rushed to such an important
decision, a lot more of us began to listen closely to other sides.
The Clinton administration knew Hillarycare would be a tough
sell, so they kept it secret while they worked on it. That scheme crashed,
anyway, when we discovered that it would make health care worse, not better
but more elusive. The Obama administration has gone to the other extreme,
turning it over to Congress where everybody wants to get an oar in, and
we're frightened on a daily basis. Meanwhile, the president keeps repeating
his defensive rhetoric, defying the drip, drip, drip of hard, cold facts.
His health care scheme promises change, but it's hard to see how both
quantity and quality of care will not be compromised. Can the president
deliver both? He no longer sounds like a man who thinks he can.
The frightening facts are sometimes subtle and can't be found in
presidential press conferences. Will the new emphasis on bureaucratic
control mean that the medical schools will attract mediocre applicants from
a diminished pool of bright young men and women, who are willing to enter a
profession that will tie them up in a tangle of endless red tape? Does it
mean that the scientists who've produced miracle drugs through a capitalist
system, which rewards accomplishment, will take their inventiveness
somewhere else? As old people increasingly outnumber the young, will health
care be increasingly perceived as an expensive burden to be avoided?
There's another wrinkle that's difficult to straighten out. The
push to require giving insurance to people regardless of pre-existing
medical conditions may lead young men and women to opt out of paying for
health insurance, until they find themselves with a medical condition that
requires expensive care. They'll risk gambling that they can pay for it
themselves when they need it.
The president likes golf because the greens provide refuge from
the public. Just as he wants to get away from us, more of us feel the urge
to get away from him. Too many press conferences and speeches without
anything new to say bores us, too. While he works on his backswing and short
putts, he might think about the tough questions that so far he can't answer.
He can take his time getting back to us.
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.
Comment on JWR contributor Suzanne Fields' column by clicking here.
Suzanne Fields Archives
© 2006, Creators Syndicate, Suzanne Fields
|
|

Arnold Ahlert
Mitch Albom
Michael Barone
Dave Barry
Tony Blankley
Andy Borowitz
David Broder
Stratfor Briefing
Mona Charen
Linda Chavez
Ann Coulter
Greg Crosby
Larry Elder
Suzanne Fields
John Fund
Frank J. Gaffney
Lloyd Garver
Jonah Goldberg
Julia Gorin
Jonathan Gurwitz
Paul Greenberg
Lewis Grossberger
Victor Davis Hanson
Betsy Hart
Nat Hentoff
David Horowitz
Laura Ingraham
Cheri Jacobus Jeff Jacoby
Paul Johnson
Jack Kelly
Ed Koch
Ch. Krauthammer
Michael Ledeen
John Leo
David Limbaugh
Kathryn Lopez
Rich Lowry
Michelle Malkin
Jackie Mason
Dick Morris
Bill O'Reilly
Jim Mullen
Clarence Page
Kathleen Parker
Dennis Prager
Wesley Pruden
Tom Purcell
Jonathan Rauch
Celia Rivenbark
Robert Robb
Cokie & Steve Roberts
Pat Sajak
Debra J. Saunders
Culture Shlock
Roger Simon
Michael Smerconish
Thomas Sowell
Mark Steyn
John Stossel
Cal Thomas
Bob Tyrrell
Diana West
Dave Weinbaum
George Will
Walter Williams
Byron York
Mort Zuckerman

Robert Arial
Chuck Asay
Baloo
Chip Bok
Dry Bones
Lisa Benson
John Branch
Gary Brookins
John Cole
J. D. Crowe
John Deering
Brian Duffy
Everything's Relative
Mallard Fillmore
Jake Fuller
Bob Gorrel
Joe Heller
David Hitch
Jerry Holber
Steve Kelley
Jeff Koterba
Dick Locher
Chan Lowe
Ranan R. Lurie
Jimmy Margulies
Rick McKee
Michael Ramirez
Kevin Siers
Jeff Stahler
Ed Stein
Danna Summers
John Trever
Gary Varvel
Kirk Walters

How 2
Lori Borgman
The Savvy Consumer
Elder matters
Fixit
Dr. Peter Gott
GET A JOB! by Marty Nemko
Richard Lederer
Tech Maven
Every Monday Matters
Nutrition Myths
Bookmark These
Bruce Williams
How Stuff Works
|