Once Obama was Jane Fonda then he became Dr Strangelove

Barack Obama is tanking badly and appears to have lost the plot. He’s frantically selling an idea of himself that fewer and fewer people are buying. His appearances are becoming as hotly anticipated as another Barry Manilow Farewell Tour.

This is a shame because Obama is one of the more remarkable politicians to appear on the American scene in recent years. He is extremely intelligent, well educated and, by political standards, a decent, altruistic and very capable man. He speaks beautifully in a rich, warm baritone. He’s terrific looking: handsome, tall, rapier-thin, athletic and graceful, a tailor’s dream. Few politicians are his equal in commanding a stage. And he is black and such tractable African-Americans can do well among the political elites in this country: ask Colin Powell or Condoleezza Rice.

Obama speeches are now the usual feelgood-God-bless-America-we’re-the-greatest, with hammer and anvil parallelisms. . Obama gives it a multicultural twist, reprising the now famous story of his mixed-race background, modest upbringing and unlikely rise to the top of the ladder and the American dream.

In the autumn of 2002, around the time Hillary Clinton, John Kerry and John Edwards voted to give Bush the authority to invade Iraq, Obama spoke at an antiwar rally in Chicago:

When he was Jane Fonda he made this speech:

"What I am opposed to is a dumb war. What I am opposed to is a rash war. What I am opposed to is the cynical attempt by Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz and other armchair, weekend warriors in this administration to shove their own ideological agendas down our throats, irrespective of the costs in lives lost and in hardships borne. What I am opposed to is the attempt by political hacks like Karl Rove to distract us from a rise in the uninsured, a rise in the poverty rate, a drop in the median income – to distract us from corporate scandals and a stock market that has just gone through the worst month since the Great Depression. That’s what I’m opposed to. A dumb war. A rash war. A war based not on reason but on passion, not on principle but on politics.

Then he became Dr. Strangelove and became a prolific user of drones:

His early opposition to the war is no longer an asset, so it was dispensed with. For everyone’s against the war now, except the crazies. But Obama has become an advocate of the use of drones and this is very 'Strangelovian' Still he is still the best that the US has at the moment but then is that really saying a lot.