Another Rube Self Identifies

David Zurawik of The Baltimore Sun says:

Viewing him now on TV in his promise-not-realized persona made me both sad for what might have been and angry for letting myself believe in the TV imagery of a night in Grant Park in November.

Knowing something about shared memory and the way the national psyche intersects with media, I believe millions of viewers like me unconsciously associate the Obama they now see on TV spinning and dodging and looking like a worried man with the giant they thought they saw in 2008 -- the one we kept comparing to Roosevelt, Kennedy and Reagan as great media presidents.

I admit I thought he was a going to be a great TV president -- in fact, the last great TV president, the book end to JFK, given the way media were headed.

But I now know I was looking at neither greatness nor the end of the TV Era.

Almost enough to make you cry. Almost. Except I saw all this coming (look back over my election coverage in 2008). As the title says: Another Rube Self Identifies.

Of course he fails to identify the core problem. His belief in socialism. I'm referring to the reporter of course. ∅bama I already knew about.

You will always have the rubes among you.

Which is why we will always have con men among us. Predator. Prey. Oddly I prefer to be neither.