Jonah Goldberg suggests that Obama is a PostModern in this OpEd for USA Today.  Obama may be the first presidential candidate whose intellectual training may have largely been developed under the rubrick that academics call “postmodernism”.  But some of the particular criticisms here seem to fall more naturally under the category of “politics as usual”.  Obama is extremely arrogant and a liar.  Most politicians are.  I think Goldberg  is correct that Obama’s campaign is more about a movement and less about ideas and policy:

Sure, the campaign has policy proposals, but they are props to advance the narrative of a grand movement existing in order to be a movement galvanized around the singular ideal of movement-ness.

Obama’s hard to pin down.  And he’s wily.  Most of his supporters have been sucked into the movement more because of his “charisma” and some indefinable quality that some people call leadership but I suspect is related to the fact that he looks good in a suit.  And he talks pretty.

I was operating under the assumption, until recently, that Obama was pretty smart and understood how the world works.  Naysaying a gas tax holiday.  You Go O!  Then in a populist proposal of astonishing stupidity, O goes off the rails.  “Gas prices are up.  People are hurting.  Tax the windfall profits of the oil companies (and what exactly is a windfall profit) and rebate $1000 to those hurting Americans.”  Just ignore the fact that even O can’t change the laws of mathematics and his math just don’t work.  What is the effect of decreasing the supply of oil (taxing oil profits) and increasing its demand (rebating money to Americans)?  Anyone?  Anyone?

Steve