I’m a fan of The Atlantic magazine, but I’m not a fan of Atlantic columnist Andrew Sullivan. He can be interesting given that he considers himself to be a conservative convert from liberalism, but his views are mostly warmed-over liberalism, what you can get in droves on Huffington. But for whatever reason, I had a look at his Daily Dish blog earlier today; and can I believe my eyes? Is Andrew Sullivan actually expressing doubt about President Obama’s leadership? Sullivan, who last autumn put Barack Obama on the highest pedestal, who reveled in the Democrat’s landslide victory in November — can it be?<\/p>\n
Over the past few days, Sullivan has posted two comments both entitled “Reality Check”. On today’s check<\/a>, he shows a graph regarding Obama’s declining approval rating, and introduces it with a simple statement. Worth quoting:<\/p>\n Americans are losing confidence in Obama’s ability to bring change. Because he hasn’t.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n What? Does Andrew Sullivan no longer believe in Obama’s “change that we can believe in”? Or was he just having a cranky moment (since he posts every hour or so throughtout the day, you’d expect his blogs to vary a bit with the contents of his stomach and other psycho-physiological factors)? A second post from yesterday<\/a>, similarly titled “Reality Check”, examined another graph, this one regarding the public’s declining confidence in Obama’s health care reform efforts. Here he says:<\/p>\n It [the eventual health care bill] will be like the climate change bill, a very modest, largely toothless start with very modest potential to affect change.<\/span> <\/p><\/blockquote>\n Then Sullivan gets gloomy, but perhaps gives Obama an out:<\/p>\n But government in bankrupt, divided, late-imperial periods are never very pretty to watch.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Ah! Bankruptcy, division, imperialism: Sullivan seems to be doing the knee-jerk liberal thing here, lining the table up to blame it all on George Bush. But once Obama gets through with purging our nation of the Bush-Chaney evil (and admittedly, those guys could get pretty evil), people like Sullivan should look forward to an Elysian future. Instead, Sullivan hints at an unfortunate future:<\/p>\n The final collapse – the dollar going south or hyper-inflation – is when it gets interesting again. Ready for Obama’s second term?<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Oh goodness; the true Obama believers are starting to not believe. Obama got himself elected on the force of his oratorical skills, on his ability to enchant people. But I suspected early-on that what got Obama elected would wear off at some point. I didn’t think it would be this soon, though (although the elevated unemployment rate obviously has the nation in a bad mood; no President could be highly popular under present economic circumstances, circumstances that will get better if Obama can avoid interfering with). <\/p>\n Now we will find out what Barack Obama is truly made of. I pray for our nation that Obama has what it takes for true leadership. <\/p>\n As to what I myself am truly made of — well, they say that you are what you eat. And also perhaps what you drink. I drink a fair amount of beer, as Obama himself drank tonight in order to help smooth over his rather stupid comment last week about the Henry Louis Gates arrest. I heard on the radio that Obama is a “Bud man”. I myself am a Shipyard man. I like variety, and with all the various microbrews and craft brews and imported labels out there, you could go for months or years and not drink the same beer twice (unless you’re a real guzzler). I suppose that beer variety agrees with my fear of commitment. <\/p>\n But if I did have to commit to one beer for the rest of my life, it would be with Shipyard Export. To me, Shipyard is just a nice beer; it balances body, hops, and a twinge of malty sweetness with much finesse. I could drink it day after day and still be pretty happy. And yet, the beer experts don’t seem to have much regard for it. On the two biggest beer rating sites, “The Yard” doesn’t do terribly well. Beer Advocate gives it<\/a> a B minus, and Ratebeer.com gives it<\/a> a 2.84 out of 5, which is at the 31st percentile for its class (i.e., “golden ales”; thus, 69% of other golden ales are rated better). <\/p>\n Oh well. Once again, the world and I don’t see eye-to-eye on things. If you want to know, the top dog beer on Ratebeer is some obscure Belgian Trappist ale called “Westvleteren”. Belgian ales are nice, admittedly, but I really think that most drinkers would get sick of them if there was nothing else at all to drink. How does Budweiser do on Ratebeer? Well, regular old Bud gets a 0 percentile and a 1.39 out of 5.0. About the only thing it beats are the light beers (Bud Light gets a 1.16 out of 5.0). <\/p>\n One final point: now I know for sure that it’s summer, as I saw some lightening bolts streak across the sky a few nights ago while finishing up an evening jog (although the heat, humidity and long days were otherwise a good clue). When I was a kid, summer meant swimming and ice cream and sparklers and lemon ice and barbecue foods and getting up late most every day. That’s all gone for me now. But there’s still the occasional light show that nature provides whenever the clouds get rubbed the wrong away against intersecting hot and cold air flows. Ah yes, summer — when cold beer (hopefully Shipyard!) seems the coldest. Cold beer and hot lightening. It works for me!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I’m a fan of The Atlantic magazine, but I’m not a fan of Atlantic columnist Andrew Sullivan. He can be interesting given that he considers himself to be a conservative convert from liberalism, but his views are mostly warmed-over liberalism, what you can get in droves on Huffington. But for whatever reason, I had a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=169"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1521,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169\/revisions\/1521"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=169"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=169"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimgworld.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=169"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}