Pleased To Be Both

clipped from network.nationalpost.com Scott Brown’s win was the real report card on Barack Obama’s one-year presidency. He may have given himself, in an interview with Dame Oprah of Afternoon Fluff, a B+. Voters of Massachusetts were more clear-eyed and rigorous. They went, let us say, with a “gentleman’s D.” How did this happen? Obama was a chandelier presence in a world of political moles. Obama is a parochial politician. He emerged from the small pool of the university environment and Chicago politics -- the former, I think, more significant than the latter. Take his jibes at Scott Brown’s pickup, which he delivered repeatedly in Boston two days before the vote. Only the thickest of tin ears could imagine that slurs and putdowns about driving a pickup have any appeal beyond arugula snobs trading nose-in-the-air witticisms about rednecks. With a persona that oscillates between professor and hipster, he patronizes -- he’s either smarter or cooler than anyone else in the room, and, worse, looks very pleased to be both.