While I couldn’t care less about Bill Maher’s ‘Obama being on TV too much’ schtick here, as seen on last night’s Real Time on HBO, his scathing criticism of Obama which follows it is dead on the money.
Some highlights:
This is not getting the job done, and this is not what I voted for.
Maher continues by arguing that “if you can’t shove some real reform down [Republican] throats now, then when?” before adding: “I never thought I’d say this, but what he needs in his personality is a little George Bush. He needs to stop worrying about being loved, and bring out that smug, insufferable swagger that says, ‘Suck on it, America!'”
“I’m glad Obama is President,” Maher concludes, “but the ‘Audicity of Hope’ part is over. Right now, I’m hoping for a little more audacity…”
UPDATE 6/20/09: Maher follows up this monologue with another, equally as scathing, the following week. Details and video here…
Video of this week’s scathing monologue is above right, the complete text transcript follows below…
This is not getting the job done, and this is not what I voted for.
This why I don’t want my President to be a TV star. Because TV stars are too worried about being popular and too concerned about getting renewed.
Oh, you can relax about that one, Mr. President. The party is doing everything it can to ensure you’ll get re-elected…the Republican party.
Speaking of the Republicans, if you can’t shove some real reform down their throats now, then when? Folks, Barack Obama needs to start putting it on the line in fights against the banks, the energy companies and the health care industry.
I never thought I’d say this, but what he needs in his personality, is a little George Bush. … He needs to stop worrying about being loved, and bring out that smug, insufferable swagger that says ‘Suck on it, America!’
George Bush had horrible ideas — torture, deregulation, pre-emptive wars, tax cuts for the rich — but he pushed them through in their full measure. Never mind the Congress or the Constitution…the Geneva Convention…Magna Carta…Hammurabi’s Code…the point is, he didn’t care if it made him unpopular with every human on the planet not named Cletus or Fred Barnes. Which it did.
And what we need to do, is to marry the good ideas that Barack Obama has, with a little bit of that Bush attitude, that certitude. I’d love it if Obama came out one day and said “Jesus told me to fix healthcare!”.
In concluclusion, Bush was bad. But he never cared if he was seen out in a restaurant having a burger with Dick Cheney. If he wanted a burger, he picked up the telephone and said “I’m the President, bring me a burger!” … And they would say, “Sir, this is NORAD. Would you please stop ordering burgers into the red phone?”
I’m glad Obama is President, but the ‘Audicity of Hope’ part is over. Right now, I’m hoping for a little more audacity…
yuck, i could have sworn that maher was a libertarian, but he sure does sound like a whining little democrat. ick. i’ll stick to john stewert, thank you very much.
Can I just say something here? I hate Barack Obama’s centrist guts.
The first two comments here don’t promote a great deal of humor, so let me do the best I can…
The republicans are always able to find humor in audacity; so can the democrats – squared!
Heh, Larry, nice try… 😛
I’m stuck on “The Audacity of Hubris”, which is completely not funny, more in line with John’s sentiments, so, well, yer doing better than I am anyway….
Maher was dead-on and his audiance seemed to agree totaly with him.
As usual, Maher tells it like it is…
Sad but true.
Finally. Finally someone, even a masquerading lib., spoke up and criticized Obama. I am so tired of O being on TV every single day; I thought once the campaigning and election were over we’d have a break. He’s diluted the importance of our president speaking on important matters. Enough! He’s a limp wristed pres. to be sure and he could use a little backbone to hopefully stand up to our adversaries. That I’m afraid is a hollow wish.
What’s PUMA for “I told you so”?
Progressives just had their first shot at the big-time in decades–and they blew it completely.
Five minutes of googling would have shown that Barack Obama is a neocon. He voted for the Cheney energy bill, which no real Democrat would do.
Let’s face it: the Left had their hopes up, so they saw what they wanted to see. In this, they are only human. But what a screw-up.
Maher should use his airtime to advocate Term Limits in Congress instead of blasting the President. Change does not happen overnight. It’s difficult to get anything done with an 19th century Congress. When will Americans wake up and realize the politicians we have in office today don’t have the people’s best interest at heart. They are the real threat to our ecomomic recovery.
Comment #9 – I am so sick of hearing this crap, the lie that obama is not responsible for anything he does because blah blah blah blah…
There are the fools that proclaim that his actions never match his rhetoric because he is such a smart politician – that he is just a master of strategy. THIS IS A LIE.
Then there is the crowd that proclaims that he can’t do anything because of someone else or some other group of people. To listen to these folks, you would think he is a little boy. The lie that its because of the repugs, faus news, lying liars like rush limpballs & bill oliely, pelosi, blah blah blah… Those that take this position are really just admitting that obama was lying when he said “yes we can.”
Obama showed us long before the election that he would sell us out and that is precisely what he is doing. Enough of the excuses already.
Perry @ 8 asked:
I’ll answer the same way I answered you the last time you asked this same question: “You think Obama’s bad? Imagine how much worse Hillary would have been.”
Feel free to send that to your PUMA friends, and/or put it in your pocket so you don’t have to ask the same silly question a third time, here. K?
Ilean Hill @ 9 said:
Term Limits would do nothing. The corporate interests would simply find other corporately supported candidates to bump up into higher office each time. The solution is in getting the corporations the hell out of campaign funding and turning to publicly financed elections.
The rest of your comment I have no particular problem with. But you’d be a chump to fall for the old “term limits” stunt. The only ones who *actually* want that is the party out of power, since they think it’ll help them get back the majority (and they’ll drop their interest in term limits just as soon as they get into that majority – see the Republicans who came to power promising term limits in 1994, and see how fast almost all of them thereafter dumped that scam.)
re global warming –I suspect we are going to see the first major increase in mpg in American cars in years. Whoever’s fault it is, the US government is going to end up as majority owner of the auto industry. Right now Ford is selling a 7 passenger van in Europe that gets something like 29 mpg city, 43 highway — the S-Max — and it isn’t even a hybrid — so it is just not true that Detroit is incapable of producing fuel efficient cars. http://www.mpgomatic.com/best_gas_mileage_van.html
However “centrist” you think Obama is, there hasn’t been anyone who took fuel efficiency seriously since Jimmy Carter, and that’s nearly 30 years ago.
Heheh, you should have elected Ron Paul when you still had the chance. He’s got the guts – they don’t call him dr. No for nothing 🙂
Yeah, right, martin.
RON PAUL DID NOT EVEN HAVE THE GUTS TO SHOW UP AT THE REPUG CONVENTION!!
Please don’t give me this crap that he is about anything more than grandstanding.
I am total agreement with Maher … totally disappointed! The answer to change is to rid Congress of payola from BIG BUSINESS AND LOBBYISTS As long as this corrupt system is in place the rich run the country not the people.
If this means Obama’s going to allow his leftist socialist policies to be reined in by some Republican common sense, I say more power to him. Maybe there’s some hope for him after all.
[ed note: This is not our usual “Phil”. And, Phil, please pick another screen name if you intend to comment further, otherwise people will be too confused. Thank you. –99]
Kucinich. And BlackAgendaReport gets Obama clearly on health care and war(s) http://www.blackagendareport.com
I admit to voting for Obama. I won’t do it again.
I don’t think there should be any guilt associated with voting for Obama. I’m a third party activist, but what choice do voters have? Vote for an unsatisfactory likely winner or a semi-satisfactory sure loser and possible spoiler? Our system is rigged. For now, the best we can do is vote how we feel is best and then recognize that the presidency is not the center of the political world, and do our best to work toward our goals without the help of the president. We’re never going to see a Kucinich or a Ron Paul in the presidency – it’s not a position for such openly radical people, especially with a rigged election system like the one we have.
Brad – I thought the term limits were dumped after 1994 because of constitutionality. As I understand it, Paul Jacob and his group got term limits in a bunch of states through initiative, but then it was ruled that they were unconstitutional because states couldn’t apply term limits to federal positions.
Plus, I think if we had more statewide initiatives and a national ballot initiative process, that would make term limits a lot less useful. Citizens would have a better tool to hold politicians accountable.
Obama is not the problem unless you want him to behave as unconstitutionally as Bush. The problem with Obama is he is trying to get the Congress to perform as they historically did in the early 19th century, when Congress had most of the power. The problem is that Congress has allowed all its power to be usurped by the Executive branch. They don’t want to be blamed for anything so they wait for the president to do things like come out with a spending bill (and then criticize the details). Constitutionally the laws and spending are supposed to originate in the legislative branch. Congress is supposed to have control of the purse and declarations of war (not the executive branch). We have the weakest legislative branch in our country’s history (because they have been manipulated, controled and extorted by previous administrations) which leads us to a do nothing congress, when we need a highly active one. Yes, they have passed a few things but there are so many important things to do and the Dems have such a majority they should be able to do almost anything they want.
The Dems claim they are for the common person, but what have they done for the common person? Bail outs for the banks and car companies help the rich, and keep the entire economy form falling apart. This is not a benefit for the common person, especiially.
Maher is not wrong in criticizing Obama. Though from a libertarian’s point of view Maher seems to be a bit hypocrtical in seeming to want a very strong centralized government that forces things through regardless of the democratic process. How libertarian is he?
Those of us on the left need to remember what we criticized Bush for and not condone or suggest the same practices in the current Democratic administration because of expediency or pay-back. Then the Dems would look no different than the Republicans they replaced and will be voted out accordingly.
Obama deserves to be criticized , but the Congress, its lack of leadership and lack of spine against lobbyists, deserves more.
By ‘openly radical’ I guess you mean honest and rational with a backbone.
I voted for Ron Paul, although of the ‘big 4’ (Obama, Clinton, McCain, and Edwards), I preferred Obama over the others.
Maher hit the nail on the head with this one. To people who like to lump Maher with the ‘dems’, you just dont get it. The only way you can make that conclusion is if you’re so narrow minded that you lump everyone who doesn’t march lock-step with the GOP talking points into a basket called ‘liberal/dem’. That’s pretty ridiculous since that means 5 trillion people on this planet would then be ‘liberal/dem’, and 30 million would be ‘republican’.
He really hit it on the head again when he said the GOP will make sure Obama gets reelected. The republican strategy of the past 6+ years has to be the dumbest approach ever (except for the stealing elections part …. until they get caught).