50 Shades of Lame

October 21, 2012

By Mark Steyn


On the stump, Obama is a man reborn. At a campaign stop outside Cedar Rapids — in what we expert analysts like to call the critical battleground of the Hawkeye State — the president declared: “I’ve got to tell you, we don’t have to collect a bunch of binders to find qualified, talented, driven young women.” No, sir! In the Democratic party, driven young women are dropping into your lap. At the Island Grove Regional Park Exhibition Hall in Greeley, Colo., Joe Biden told the crowd: “When Governor Romney was asked a direct question about equal pay, he started talking about binders. Whoa! The idea that he had to go and ask where a qualified woman was, he just should have come to my house. He didn’t need a binder.” The crowd roared its approval. “What I can’t understand,” continued the vice president, “is how he has gotten in this sort of 1950s time warp in terms of women.”

Yes, indeed. Romney wants to return us to the 1950s, when a woman’s place was in the binder, when every predatory male had his little black binder, and condescending misogynists would interview applicants for lieutenant governor of Massachusetts and smirk, “Why, Miss Jones, you’re beautiful without your binder . . . ”

Notice how very small Obama looks right now. Big Bird, binders, ‘Romnesia’ – all non-issues that avoid having to talk about the real issues. Those issues are being talked about, by Romney and Ryan, not Obama. He’s busy with trivial pursuits and lightweight sloganeering.

He doesn’t want to talk about Libya, or the torching of our embassies, the violation of our sovereign territory by mobs. The high prices for everything. The astronomical price of gasoline. The diminishing American stature around the world. The insane waste of taxpayer money to fund cronies’ business failures. The 23 million unemployed. The skyrocketing national debt. The swelling welfare rolls. The spreading poverty.

Of course he wants the distractions of Big Bird, binders and ‘Romnesia’. If the people wake up to what’s happening, he’s toast and he knows it. Sure, he’ll get his base – or a lot of it – to vote for him. Despite his repeatedly broken promises to them, they’ll vote for him.

Obama is a very, very little man, elevated far beyond his abilities. Winner of a Nobel Peace Prize for absolutely nothing. (Well, he did kill hundreds of people by his personal approval of individual drone strikes, but I wasn’t aware that was an act of peace.)

He’s an empty suit in an empty chair with an empty quiver. He has nothing left but muppets, three-ring distractions and lifted lines from leftist rags to offer.

Cross-posted from Blue Crab Boulevard.