The Hollow Man

Four years ago, I predicted of George W Bush, "Many will be the night during his second term that Bush will wish he were still in Texas, and still drunk." . I predict that there will be nights when Obama will wish he were still in Springfield.

Well I wish he were still in Springfield, but he's not. This is excerpted from Spengler (a pseudonym) who writes for AsiaTimes.com I think it is spot on:

Absolute Power Gets Blamed Absolutely
By Spengler

"Economic disaster will occur in geopolitical hotspots, starting with Pakistan. New York Times reporter David Sanger wrote on January 11 that Pakistan's nuclear arsenal might be Obama's worst nightmare. The candidates for "worst nightmare", though, have multiplied since I warned at the end of October that the world isn't flat - as one New York Times writer likes to say - but rather flattened (see The world isn't flat, it's flattened, Asia Times Online, October 28, 2008). The prospects of a narco-state on American's southern border, now widely mooted in the press, might be the most daunting.

What will Obama do? He has more answers to urgent problems than the verses of Barnacle Bill the Sailor ("I'll tell Iran/that I'm the man"), but they are just as fanciful.

I have never met the man, but I have interviewed a fair sampling of his supporters, and conclude that Obama learned the power to cloud men's minds, like the Shadow on the old radio show. Apart from ambition, there is no "there" there. There are as many Obamas as there are interlocutors. He is a hollow man, I concluded, a Third World anthropologist studying us with engaged curiosity but complete emotional detachment. In this respect he is unpredictable.

I predict that he will do nothing much at all. The American economy is in trouble because Americans got too much cheap credit to buy houses, using their price appreciation to buy other consumer goods. Obama proposes to provide more cheap credit to homebuyers and incentives to buy consumer goods, which seems an odd response to the problem. Now that Americans are scared out of their wits and likely to save every available penny, it is hard to flush with enthusiasm over his program's prospects.

Obama's secretary of state, the redoubtable Hillary Clinton, will pursue the same tired formulas in the Middle East and South Asia into tighter and tighter little circles, until she quits in frustration. His Treasury secretary, Timothy Geithner, will do precisely what he has done in the past year in his capacity as head of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, which is to use the federal balance sheet to buy trillions of dollars of toxic assets. And Defense Secretary Robert Gates will continue to attempt to engage the Iranians, as he has done since the Islamic Revolution in 1979, when he took notes for president Jimmy Carter's national security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski in meetings with the newly empowered mullahs.

He will make resonant speeches, hold frequent press conferences, consult friend and foe alike, and tread water while America's economy and strategic position continue to deteriorate. His entourage of one-trick wizards, as I called them in a recent commentary, will pick over the broken American economy for trophies to put into private equity funds. (See Obama's one-trick wizards, Asia Times Online, November 25, 2008). Without casting aspersions on anyone involved, the opportunity for self-dealing in a multi-trillion-dollar bailout-cum-recapitalization of the financial system exceeds the grandest dreams of Third World kleptocrats.

At a certain point he will have to take a decisive stand on something. And then we will learn who Obama is, and what he wants. Four years ago, I predicted of George W Bush, "Many will be the night during his second term that Bush will wish he were still in Texas, and still drunk." (see Careful what you Bush for, Asia Times Online, August 3, 2004). I predict that there will be nights when Obama will wish he were still in Springfield.