Kabuki Theater

Trey Smith

During the recent presidential campaign, much was made of Mitt Romney's waffling on the issues. If he told an audience today that he favored a particular policy, you knew that, in no time at all, he'd tell a different audience the precise opposite! A little later he might double back to proclaim that he had been "misunderstood" and he has favored policy x all along.

For a lot of voters, it appeared that Mitt was little more than a pandering politician willing to say ANYTHING to get elected.

Obama was guilty of this same sin as well, but he has been able to get away with it because he possesses an attribute that poor Mitt doesn't -- charisma. The charismatic leader can lie through his teeth and few will be the wiser. Not only can the charismatic leader be loose with the truth with little fear of recrimination, but he can also accuse his opponents of doing exactly the same thing as he does or says without most people realizing the inherent contradiction!

Shamus Cooke makes this point abundantly clear in an article posted at CounterPunch in regards to the impending "fiscal cliff."

Yes, Obama talked incessantly about the rich “paying their fair share” during his campaign, but he greatly exaggerated his willingness to make this happen, as well as the real differences between the Republicans and Democrats when it came to fixing the deficit.

This fact is revealed by the pro-corporate grand bargain that Obama nearly brokered last summer to fix the fiscal cliff.

The New York Times explains:

The White House agreed to cut at least $250 billion from Medicare in the next 10 years and another $800 billion in the decade after that, in part by raising the eligibility age. The administration had endorsed another $110 billion or so in cuts to Medicaid and other health care programs, with $250 billion more in the second decade. And in a move certain to provoke rebellion in the Democratic ranks, Obama was willing to apply a new, less generous formula for calculating Social Security benefits, which would start in 2015.

There you have it. Obama was already guilty of everything he accused the Republicans of during his presidential campaign. His “tax the rich” demagoguery was mainly for show, the exact same promise he broke after the 2008 election.

This is one of the chief reasons I tried as hard as possible to ignore both corporate party candidates during the campaign. Really, both appeared willing to sell their soul to the devil IF it meant that they would win the race. Put a different way, you would have to be a bit crazy to think that there was any substance to their words; they merely were pandering for votes and nothing else!