"the adults are back in charge." This is exactly what they said in 2000 about Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, whose wisdom and gravitas were supposed to save us from the undisciplined, all-nighter, pizza-boxes-in-the-Oval-Office Clinton era. Exactly. How'd that work out for us, again?

Come to think of it, the establishment beltway media were probably the originators of the "adult supervision" encomia back in 2000. For all of the dough they make, they sure do rely on a lot of cliches that should be retired the third time they're used. ("No drama Obama," and "team of rivals" are two expressions that suggest only laziness and me-tooism rather than original thought and research.)

I suppose all of the worship of a "strong father" figure implicit in the quotation ("tell them to pipe down or there's no dessert"), not to mention infantilization of the political opposition, explains why the beltway crowd went so uncritically ga-ga over Commander Codpiece back in 2001-03. They're clamoring for another bullying father figure to tell the hoi-polloi to can it or else the belt comes off again. How sad that these putative adults still need a Big Daddy to tell them what to do and what to think. I'm afraid Obama will disappoint them by being insufficiently authoritarian, for their tastes anyway. (Then again, maybe he won't.)

I remember DKos back in the day when Donna Brazile said that bloggers had gotten themselves a seat at the table (summer 06). OMG! The self-righteous wailing that ensued! How dare she dictate what we get! We don't have a seat at the table, it's our #$$@^@^* table!! Etc, etc ad nauseam, eleventy-one!

When you see these bozos falling all over themselves to propagandize for establishment figures who were persona non grata only 12 months ago (and sometimes even less), you have to realize that it's elegant proof that if you feed the bloggers a little TV time and a smidge of campaign fellatio, they'll eagerly grovel for any morsel you bother to give them.

is that had Clinton won, and she'd made the same moves Obama has, the fauxgressive blogosphere would be screaming their heads off.

(and I just wish that Greenwald would flat out admit that he was hoodwinked by Obama, rather than pretending he was just some sort of impartial observer for the last year....)

... with 2008.

I bet if you took out the names and replaced them with blanks, the stories would be more or less identical. Like Historiann, I remember the "adults are in charge" line.

"It's what they always say." Purest kabuki.

coverage. Might be more difficult without the data bases which charge, however.

Would also be interesting bcz the MCM keeps using the Clinton transition as an example of a Badly Done Transition.

The Telegraph reports that at the press conference announcing the new foreign policy team Sen. Obama said, well, what Bush has said (and probably other US presidents as well):

... the former Illinois senator, whose rise was built on his opposition to the Iraq war, delivered a message of surprising toughness that at times could have come from George W Bush.

Mr Obama said: "To ensure prosperity here at home and peace abroad, we all share the belief we have to maintain the strongest military on the planet."

With the responsibilities of office just seven weeks away, he added that his administration was "absolutely committed to eliminating the threat of terrorism".

"We cannot tolerate a world where innocents are being killed by extremists," Mr Obama said in the wake of Bombay attacks, adding that he was "heartbroken" by the deaths of six Americans in the massacre.

"We have to bring the full force of our power, not only military but diplomatic and political, to deal with the threats," he said, also vowing that the US would stand with India.
...

...recalling the model of former President Harry Truman, he said that "the buck will stop with me". (My emphasis)

Please pass the change, thank you. I need some with my hope.

Via Commenter Fran at Moon of Alabama post on "Of the only tool you have is a hammer."

It's been absolutely disgusting to hear those singing the president-elect's praises the loudest have been the establishment and conservative columnists. Today, conservative columnist Kathleen Parker, who'd just weeks ago said in no uncertain terms that Obama wasn't a "full-blooded American is now going totally meta dusting off the weeks-long post-election meme that the real "change" is simply that Obama is president:

WASHINGTON -- Sound the alarms, man the barracks, alert the producers! Barack Obama, agent of change, isn't a-changin'.

As the president-elect recycles Clintonistas for Cabinet appointments -- even considering Hillary for secretary of state and keeping Bush's defense secretary for at least another year -- conventional wise guys are wondering: Where's the change?

Perhaps we're looking for change in all the wrong places. In other ways, less apparent but of long-term importance, Obama may be the change he promised.

Setting aside the obvious -- complete sentences, free of words yet to be discovered -- he is uniquely positioned to change the world on multiple levels.

As Jeff Gedmin, president of Radio Free Europe, recently put it: Obama is a weapon of mass attraction. That attractiveness isn't just physical, but is a matter of style.

She then goes on to dust off another all-too-used tactic this election season in telling black Americans what Obama means to them, using tired memes about black people (i.e. lazy, bad fathers):

Again, setting aside specific policies, Obama's example could have society-altering effects, especially in the African-American community. By his example, he telegraphs the following messages: Being smart is good; education is good; being a good father is essential. Being an egghead is cool.

She then gets frivolously sweet, but not before she takes some major digs at the left:

Conservatives insist, correctly, that culture matters. Many liberals think so, too, by the way. Why, some liberals even stay married their entire lives to the same person and raise children to do the same.

You want Ward Cleaver? Meet Barack Obama. Michelle is June Cleaver with a law degree. Family values don't get any more traditional than the Obamas, who ooze marital bliss and whose adorable daughters make feminist cynics want to bake cookies and learn to smock.

She finally goes on to rail against liberal policies that have "failed" the black community, and continues the whole "nobel savages" approach, if you ask me.

Really, if it wasn't clear before it should be crystal clear, now, that Obama was packaged for the Village and particularly those conservative writers who shift with whichever way the wind happens to be blowing. He is not for us, and never was.

Peter Beinart has an article in this weeks time telling us to quite down. It's always been about suppression with them. You can't tell the emperor that he doesn't have any clothes, you just can't, because that would ruin everyone's picnic.

Conservatives weren't so happy back in the 60s when a black man was telling black families to speak well, go to school and work hard.

There is no one less Cleaverish than the Obamas - two incredibly ugly people who have exposed their daughters to the misogynist rantings of the Reverend Wright. Tell me the Cleavers took Wally and the Beav to KKK meetings and you might have something, but short of that, I see nothing that the two families have in common.

The LA Times has been sitting on two different stories of Obama being unfaithful to Michelle for over a year now. No one married to someone like Michelle would actually be happy. I can't even imagine how those two face each other in the morning without turning to stone in the process.