Campaign Fatigue(s)

Obama’s use of grassroots volunteers wasn’t a problem for us during the campaign.  In fact, we’ve talked to more than one Republican who has commented enviously on how successful the Obama campaign’s decentralized structure was — particularly in regards to how effectively the campaign was able to collaborate with foot-soldiers from extremist organizations like ACORN and MoveOn.org without scandal or loss of goodwill.  The political horse race, after all, lends itself to talk of pragmatism much more than discussion of principle.

However, now that candidate Obama has become the head of the executive branch of the federal government, many of the same actions, which seemed merely unconventional, now seem overbearing, creepy, and potentially dangerous.  Take for instance, the current effort to send his community organizers or volunteer foot-soldiers door-to-door collecting emails, addresses, and other personal information.  Is the administration using an army of ideological malcontents to investigate and start up personal files on allies, and potentially foes, of Barack Obama?  Will the administration retaliate if you refuse to provide such information to the canvassers.  If J. Edgar Hoover were doing this, the Left would be outraged.  When Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez have done it, the Right has been outraged.

We don’t expect to see outrage in this case because most folks won’t be able to assign a malicious intent to Obama’s endless campaigning.  We do, however, expect to see people suffer from a bit of campaign fatigue and grow weary of the television appearances, the media stunts, the celebrities, the speeches filled with Orwellian double-speak… and the community organizing.  To some extent, the modern presidency is an office for a political star whose primary job is campaigning, but we suspect that more than a few of his own supporters who understand just to what extent the stimulus package was the Chicago-style politics of spreading the wealth around to a big-tent of Democratic interest groups, are ready to see him demonstrate that he can lead as well as politic.

Below is a snippit of a recent video from Obama’s Organize for America edited by NakedEmperorNews on YouTube.  Obviously, the idolatrous chanting and pointed subtitles are not part of the original Organize for America distribution.  We aren’t surprised by canvassing with an emphasis on email collection in an election, but it just seems unpresidential at this stage.