PRUDEN
Obama At the Top of the Televangelist Game
By Wesley Pruden
Friday September 11, 2009
Here now Wesley Pruden addresses the way Televangelists
speak or how wolves speak as their fleece and devour the flock of God.
OPINION/ANALYSIS:
Barack Obama did what he does best. Billy
Graham once said Bill Clinton could make a great evangelist, but Bubba's not a
patch on this president. Mr. Obama early on mastered the cadence of the black church -
dropping his voice on the last word of the sentence to make the listener pay
attention - and he understands the power of language. He speaks great prose. He
understands that a televangelist concentrates on sales, not
substance. The sales here not being the Gospel of Jesus
Christ but rather the numerous techniques employed to make merchandise of the
Flock of God, their Trafficing in the Gospel and thereby living the life of
royalty, Their addicting men unto themselves.
The president was on his
game Wednesday night, soaring with a promise of partisan geniality and
finishing with the resurrection of a corpse. No one in the House chamber would
have been surprised if Teddy Kennedy had walked in from
"The time for bickering
is over," he said. "Now is when we must bring the best ideas of both
parties together, and show the American people that we can still do what we
were sent here to do."
The faux humility - the
appeal to his Republican "friends" - was intended to seduce the
independents who have been deserting his game for weeks. The Republicans
contributed to the emotionalism of the evening with an outburst of frustration
and bad manners - "You lie!" - that was
unexpected manna from Democratic heaven. The ferocity of the media exploitation
of the incident reveals the desperation of the Democrats to find something,
anything, to stop the bleeding. (Rahm Emanuel, the president's chief of staff,
calls Rep. Joe Wilson's shout-out unique in American history, demonstrating
once more how little this administration knows of the history of
But neither the resurrection
of Teddy Kennedy nor the exploitation of bad manners is likely to change
things. Everyone expected the president to offer something to change the debate
but what he delivered was warmed-up leftovers.
If the president and his
party were serious about "showing the American people that we can still do
what we were sent here to do," he would trash Obamacare, whatever it is,
and start over. He could start by applying some of his concern with Wall Street
greed to the greed of the tort lawyers who have turned the courts into a casino
with payouts that lottery winners envy. Fat chance.
Mr. Obama offered
"demonstration projects" in a few states to test ideas for
"reforming" the medical malpractice abuses that are driving up the
price of medicines and persuading doctors to move their shingles from one state
to another, seeking relief. This is the "reform" that tort lawyers,
on whom Democratic candidates feed like maggots on roadkill, could cheerfully
abide. They know that nothing would come of it because the right honorable
senators would kill a serious threat to the casino.
The few details of health
care reform laid out Wednesday night differ only superficially from the details
that trickled out over the summer, the gasoline on a grass-roots fire. The
little that was new Wednesday night seemed taken from the scheme proposed
earlier in the week by Sen. Max Baucus, chairman of one of the committees
writing reform legislation. Mr. Baucus proposes penalties ranging to $3,800 on
families without mandatory health care insurance. If the Baucus scheme works,
it could be applied to other public policy dilemmas. We could cure
homelessness, for example, by imposing stiff fines on the homeless who refuse
to buy houses. (That would spur the housing market, too.)
The temper and tone of Mr.
Obama's remarks was scolding for everyone who disagrees with him, offering to
resolve angry argument by requiring those who disagree with him to change their
naughty minds. He attempted to hoodwink his own flanks with a little
televangelistic magic, too. He appeared to defend the so-called "public
option," which for the unregenerate left is nonnegotiable. He knows this
is an empty promise, too. Democratic votes will doom that. Soon we'll see who
hits the sawdust when the president makes his altar call. That's the test of
every evangelist.
Barack Obama studied law at
Harvard, not Yale, as I wrote earlier this week. Apologies to
both Harvard and Yale. I was distracted by the boola-boola from the White
House.
Wesley
Pruden is editor emeritus of The