Following the Trail

I look at a fair number of web sites each day looking for something intriguing. One of these sites is the Columbia Journalism Review. 

An article about a Town Hall in Nebraska seemed interesting. But the title was not really related to the subject matter, which was Obama's inability to connect with the average person. The author interviewed a number of people in Lincoln, Nebraska. I doubt that each interview was planned. He simply talked to people he met walking down the street.Some interesting quotes:

         He’s nothing but campaigning for himself. 

         I don’t think they can completely understand how hard it is. 

         He's saying a lot of stuff he hasn’t really done. 

The article took me to the Washington Post's Richard Cohen. His article was entitled "Mr. Cool Turns Cold". The 'money quote' for me:

Obama has always been the man he is today. He is the very personification of cognitive dissonance — the gap between what we (especially liberals) expected of the first serious African American presidential candidate and the man he in fact is. He has next to none of the rhetorical qualities of the old-time black politicians. He would eschew the cliche, but he feels little of their pain. In this sense, he has been patronized by liberals who looked at a man and saw black and has been reviled by those who looked at a black man and saw “other.”

Cohen's article referenced Ann Gerhart, another Post writer. She pointed out a distortion by Obama with regard to his mother's health insurance. And she raised doubts as to how close Obama was to his mother, as he did not see her for months in her last year.

An interesting, but once more dispiriting, trail.