The Banality of Obama

Banal isn't the first word that comes to mind when I think of Obama, but I think Bruce Walker may have just sold me on his argument that it should be the first word that comes up when we think of our new president.

Pundits have been critiquing the new administration for its socialism, for its willful ignorance of foreign policy, for its puerile missteps, but the salient fact of the Obama Presidency is its banality. He who promised change has dredged up the failed nostrums of the past as if they were something new and fresh. In fact, the ordinariness, the dullness, the lifelessness of the Obama Administration is obvious.

[snip]

[W]e have a president who is not even an innovative ideologue. He is more like a cipher. His rhetoric is lifeless and poll driven. His almost daily new campaigns reflect nothing more creative than the last news cycle.

People worry that Barack Obama is an American Lenin. No: Barack Obama is an American Konstantin Chernenko, a very dull man with very tired programs. The invented giddiness which Obama gets from the mainstream media is already getting tedious to the public. Pravda reports of addresses by General Secretary Chernenko invariably informed readers of the "prolonged, stormy applause" which followed. That is the banality of Obama.