Keep The Damned “Change,” Obie

At the heart of today’s brouhaha over Barack Obama’ unfortunate “lipstick on a pig” remark is his played out rampage about “change.”

“John McCain says he’s about change,” Obama said, before listing issues on which he said Arizona Senator McCain had the same position as Bush. “That’s not change. That’s just calling the same thing something different. You can put lipstick on a pig. It’s still a pig.”

Obama-One-Note has been hyping “change” his whole career.  The sad thing is, he’s sincere.  Obama seriously believes that if Washington/Chicago/The World would just “change,” he and others could “get things done.”  Unfortunately, whether he wins or loses, he’s going to find out that’s not how things work.

His “community organizing” days should have taught him that lesson.  Though I left Chicago a hundred years ago, it seems, even I know better than that.  Nobody wants somebody to come to them and tell them that if they would just do things his way, everything would be cool.  Anyone who tries that approach will likely find himself talking to the hand, then the back, then an empty room.  What people in Chicago expect of “community organizers” is for them to be “a guy who knows a guy who can pay a guy” to do stuff for them.  The natural response of a Chicagoan to a suggestion that something can be fixed is, “how much is it going to cost me?”   The reason they expect this is simple, it works.

The famous “we don’t want nobody nobody sent” line ascribed to Chicago politics is true.  When you’re looking for somebody to grease the system on your behalf, you want to be able to trust them.  Plus, if it doesn’t work out, you need to have a name of somebody to go to who can make things right.

This is how all politics work.  People in Chicago and Boston, Philadelphia and New York simply see no reason to pretend otherwise.  Yet, upon meeting this reality, instead of adjusting his impractical ideologies to the process, Obama refused to play along while stubbornly insisting that his failure was the fault of the system.  The system exists because the system works.  Obama’s failure in it is his own.

Sure, he has had to compromise his idealized principles along the way, but only to the extent that it moves him along the path he’s chosen to prove himself right.  Sooner or later though, he’s going to have to adjust. As Steely Dan said in their hit Show Biz Kids,

“While the poor people sleepin’ with the shade on the light

While the poor people sleepin’ all the stars come out at night

Stars, snakes and all manner of predators work best in the dark.  While everyone benefits if the predatory beasts are fed, no one wants to actually see them feed.  Or take a chance on becoming dinner themselves.  Rather than being duped, the “poor people” are active participants in the process; as long as the Washington snakes are making their sausage in the dark, the “poor people” can sleep easy until they need to “find a guy.”

To be sure, there are things that need to change.  As Hillary Clinton discovered when initially attracted to the Alinsky-style organizing Obama seems to embrace, sometimes its more practical to make small changes to the system from within.  Obama on the other hand, seems hell-bent on working up the system for the purpose of over-hauling it, stripping it to it’s bare bones then remaking it in his image.  The flaw in this ointment is that while he may have the best interests of the “poor people” in mind, the “movement” required is not being driven by them, it is being manufactured and exploited by Obama.  Thus his “people powered” government plans of public service, including civillian defense are likely to be met with the same hand, back, empty room sequence his small scale organizing did.  After all, if I’m going to do all the work, what do I need you for?

America, including black America, is not eager for a revolution of the type Obama envisions.   Letting the black guy from Chicago run things for a while is about as much “change” as they’re looking for.  If Obama was really smart, he’d try to be “the guy” and stop trying to “change” the “poor people” who are looking for “a guy of their own” to help them while they sleep “with the shade on the light”.

Be the star, Obie, stop trying to bring the light.

We don’t want nobody nobody sent.

PUMA

Just Say No Deal