Obama Best BS Artist Since Bill Clinton

Rollingstone.com

Feb 15, 2007

THE LOW POST: Between Barack and a Hard Place

The "talent of the century" hits the campaign trail

MATT TAIBBI

Excerpts

The Illinois senator is the ultimate modern media creature — he’s a good-looking, youthful, smooth-talking, buttery-warm personality with an aw-shucks demeanor who exudes a seemingly impenetrable air of Harvard-crafted moral neutrality. If Hillary Clinton even dares to open her mouth within a hundred feet of him at any time during the campaign, she’s going to come off like a pig digging for truffles. Even Edwards — the so-called “slick” candidate from ‘04 — sounds like a two-bit suburban Buick dealer next to Obama. You get past the “issues,” and it’s a wipeout.

***

Here's the thing about Obama, the reason they call him a "natural" and a "rare talent." When Hillary Clinton spouts a cliche, it's four words long, she's reading it off a teleprompter, and it hits the ear like the fat part of a wooden oar. Even when Hillary announced she was running for president, she sounded like she was ordering coffee. Obama, on the other hand, can close his eyes and the cliches just pour out of his mouth in huge polysyllabic paragraphs, like Rachmaninoff improvisations. In this sense he's exactly like Bill Clinton, who had the same gift. He is exactly what is meant by the term bullshit artist. My usual instinct when presented with this type of Zelig-esque, Eddie Haskell, non-stick personality is to violently reject it. But over the course of the last few weeks I've found myself increasingly amused by the Obama phenomenon. For one thing, he clearly pisses off Hillary to no end. Same with Biden and all of those other windbag jerk-off assholes in that revolting "national security Democrats" clan in the Senate.

Related
OBAMA KISSING UP TO THE LOBBY