Breaking the spell

Magic is a very old art, and one of the oldest rules in it is: Never repeat a trick.

Because when you repeat a trick, the little incidental words and movements that carried no significance for the audience suddenly become glaringly obvious as important clues to the mystery.

Curtain up.

Ladies and gentlemen! Live from New Orleans, Louisiana, we proudly present the astounding, the mystifying, the amazing President Barack Obama!

We take you now to the University of New Orleans, where a town hall meeting is just about to wrap up. The final question for the president comes from a little boy who is in the fourth grade.

"Why do people hate you?" 9-year-old Tyren Scott asked. "They're supposed to love you. And God is love."



"That's what I'm talking about," the president answered. His answer runs four paragraphs and includes his observation that people are "worried" and "feeling frustrated."

We take you now to Portsmouth, New Hampshire. It's August 11th and President Obama is holding a town hall meeting, where he is about to call on an 11-year-old girl.

"All right, this young lady right here. She's still enjoying her summer. When do you go back to school?"

"I go back to school September 3rd."

"September 3rd, okay. What's your name?"

"Julia Hall from Malden, Massachusetts."

"Nice to meet you, Julia." (Applause.)

"I saw -- as I was walking in, I saw a lot of signs outside saying mean things about reforming health care. How do kids know what is true, and why do people want a new system that can -- that help more of us?"



President Obama's answer is eight paragraphs long in the White House's transcript and includes the sentence, "I recognize there is an underlying fear here."

Julia Hall turned out to be the daughter of a coordinator of Massachusetts Women for Obama, but White House spokesman Robert Gibbs insisted to reporters that the president chose questions at random.

If Tyren Scott has a connection to the Obama team, it hasn't yet become public.

But it certainly is strange that two children at two separate town hall meetings would ask a version of the same question, the question our famously thin-skinned president apparently asks himself every day: Why doesn't everyone love me?

His answer, it seems, is that the American people are a quivering mass of anxiety.

This would explain why he's on television so often. He thinks he's reassuring the nation. He thinks his policy goals are being blocked by irrational anxiety, stoked by unhelpful voices in the media.

So his goal is to silence or discredit the unhelpful voices, while staging little theatrical productions aimed at sending out the message that no serious, honest, well-informed person questions the wisdom of the president's policies.

Like any good magic show, it just makes your skin crawl.


Copyright 2009

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