Hey, Where Are My Mantyhose?

Obama: Not Man Enough to Be President

Without ensuring safety for America and its allies, nothing else a president does matters at all. And on this subject, Obama has promised us that his regime will be even more disastrous than Clinton's was. - Orson Scott Card

What an enormous number of sheaths!
Isn't the kernel soon coming to light?
I'm blessed if it is! To the innermost centre,
It's nothing but sheaths - each smaller and smaller -
Nature is witty!
- Henrik Ibsen, Peer Gynt, Act V, Sc.5

When you peel off all his layers of signifying and symbolizing, of blathering and bamboozling, Obama is -- it must be said -- simply lacking in the elemental qualities of manliness necessary for the Chief Executive of the United States of America. Obama is like the onion in Peer Gynt. Once you strip off the layers there's nothing in the center.

There are a great many layers about helping people, about caring, about giving and devotion to the Obama onion. Those pungent peels work well with the poor, the grasping, the gullible, the craven, and the rich-so-rich that nothing dents their days or melts the ice in their cocktails. But the layers are just the common malarky of the con-man who hopes that by stimulating your greed for grub or good feelings now he'll be able to hoover your bank account later. It's an old con and for a lot of people it always works. That's why con-men are always with us; not because they are so smart, but because so many are so stupid. Con-artists (and Obama is a brilliant flim-flam man) not only know this, they depend upon it.

Obama, when we look at the three-card monte money game of his campaign, is very much a man with hand full of gimme and a mouth full of much obliged. Just this morning, as he has for so many mornings, he wrote to me asking for five bucks. This after he squandered so many millions just last night with his noninfomercial for flaming narcissists of all five genders. What can I say except the man and his minions can't handle money.

None of this is probative however. What is essential to me when I think about who deserves my vote is whether or not the person for whom I'm voting has the right stuff to lead this country. Right up at the top of that list for me is manliness. And by that I do not mean a quality exclusive to men. Rather I mean the old-fashioned values of courage and the ability to do the right thing, the strong thing, under pressure - regardless of the consequences. Those who do not know what I mean by "manliness" by now will never know it, but by way of example I'll cite the most recent President to possess it, George Bush.

The manliness of Bush is, regardless of the perverted souls who look upon him as the source of evil in the world, really not open to question. Some would say that it is, perhaps, too much with him, that he should have been a more subtle player in the fields of power politics. That's for history to decide in the long term. The short history is that nobody has attacked America on its home soil since September 11. This is not an accident. This is because there was, in the minds and hearts of our many enemies, no doubt as to what might happen to them and their countries if such an attack had come. No doubt. None. Niente. Nada. Zero. Zip. The only question was whether the Bush response would be in the form of an airborne division or a small, man-made sun being brought to life about 5,000 feet above their capitol city. This is not a bad question for our enemies to have in mind. The question itself keeps the terrible answer at bay.

In an essay in early September I asked: Does Obama Possess Courage?

What has Obama done that demonstrates real, classical courage? I would really like to know.

To my mind, courage is a far more necessary element for a leader of the United States to possess than any other. It even trumps experience. I've heard a lot from Obama and his supporters about it taking "courage to vote for Obama." But really all it takes to do that is to get to a polling place in November, go into a voting booth, and pull a lever, push a button, or mark a paper. It takes no courage at all.

Since then there has been nothing I've observed that makes me think Obama has a shred of personal courage. Perhaps he does, but if so he has been keeping a very low profile in courage. He's never been tested for this -- even as his opponent has met and prevailed over these tests time and again.

Indeed, given the numerous examples in word and deed from Obama and his campaign, there is every reason to begin to believe that the candidate not only lacks personal courage, but is -- in fact -- a coward; the kind of craven gangster who is used to getting others to do his dirty work while he preens before his cult of worshipers and gets fitted for another real sharp suit. Indeed, there's a whiff of something ineffably feminine about Obama. He is, at bottom, the very model of a modern metrosexual. This, of course, accounts for his appeal in the cities and among the youth. It does not reassure. When it comes to the Republic, I'd prefer Caesar over Caligula.

A brief glance around the world will tell those who are not sleeping or in a media-induced stupor that the globe is not only a dangerous place, but is getting more dangerous by the day. The overall temperature of the human race is going up, and hotter is not better. Last month, before they locked Biden in that campaign attic reserved for crazy relations and mouth-shooting wives, the VP to be told everyone that, yes, they're going to test Obama. But he said we shouldn't worry because Obama has "steel in his spine."

Really? Maybe when it comes to running internet porn site standards on his credit-card scams. Perhaps when it comes to getting his minions to try and ruin a plumber in the mid-west. Maybe when it comes to electrifying the weakest of our youth; a youth fattened on a life of peace and circuses.

But a wider world awaits the next President; a world that can kill 3,000 Americans at their place of work in a single morning. A world that wants to see, more than anything, the destruction of American hegemony so that their dreams of conquest can go forward unabated.

After thousands of years of crawling up from the swamp of totalitarianism we can see, at last, in the distance a world where this ancient nightmare is removed from the world. But we cannot get there if America does not stand.

Again. The world cannot rid itself of the terror of totalitarianism if America does not stand.

For that to happen we need to have a leader -- man or woman -- who possesses real, demonstrated courage. For that to become true we need to have a leader who has -- man or woman -- real manliness.

Obama is intelligent, charming, good-looking, stylish, well-educated and slick. He's everything that other people who value such surfaces look for... not in a leader, but in an icon. And that's what they're buying by buying Obama, an icon. A glowing plastic post-modern Jesus for the dashboard of their Prius. They know, as we all know by now, that he can talk the talk. He just can't walk the walk. He's soft talk and no stick.

I keep coming back to the one indisputable fact first spoken in Sarah Palin's acceptance speech: "There is only one man in this election who has ever really fought for you ... in places where winning means survival and defeat means death."

One of those places where defeat means death is in the Oval Office on a very bad day.

Just to be clear, I'm not saying Obama is not a man. He's just not man enough for the job.

Gerard Vanderleun

http://americandigest.org/mt-archives/american_studies/obama_not_man_e.php