Michael Barone Is Always Welcome At My Movie Party…

… or would be if I had a movie party.

In any event in his typically astute Washington Examiner column yesterday Barone, blazing a trail that I blazed often but so long ago that it had become completely grown over and hidden from view, compared Obama to Chauncey Gardiner, the aloof and hapless character played by Peter Sellers in the movie “Being There” (1979).

“As you may remember,” Barone writes,

Gardiner is a clueless gardener who is mistaken for a Washington eminence and becomes a presidential adviser. Asked if you can stimulate growth through temporary incentives, Gardiner says, “As long as the roots are not severed, all is well and all will be well in the garden.” “First comes the spring and summer,” he explains, “but then we have fall and winter. And then we get spring and summer again.” The president is awed as Gardiner sums up, “There will be growth in the spring.”

Kind of reminds you of Obama’s approach to the federal budget, doesn’t it?

And as some of you may also remember (at least if you’re DISCRIMINATIONS veterans with very good memories), you’ve seen that comparison before — first here (April 2008, quoting the comparison from an email to a friend in February), and then here (June 2008), here (December 2008), here (March 2009), and here (August 2009). Most of them returned to or embroidered these themes from the first “here” above:

Here’s how I put the question in an email to a good friend back in February:

What a fascinating show future president Obama is putting on! It will be even more fascinating to discover whether he is:

a) Jimmy Stewart, in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington;

b) Robert Redford, in The Candidate;

c) Peter Sellers (Chauncey Gardiner), in Being There; or

d) Laurence Harvey, in The Manchurian Candidate.

It will also be interesting to see whether, in the remaining primaries, Hillary goes after his record (raising capital gains to 39.5%, a close mentor/minister who praises Farrakhan and calls Israel “a racist state,” etc.) or leaves that to the Republicans. So far, the only thing Clinton Inc. has accused him of is being black (a half truth?).

Obama “presents” himself as Jimmy Stewart, and is “perceived” that way by his adoring and credulous fans.

I could see that appeal after his maiden speech at the 2004 Democratic convention (“There’s not a black America and white America and Latino America and Asian America; there’s the United States of America,” etc.) Later, for the first part of the primary campaign, he seemed more like a cross between Redford and Sellers, a balloon floating on good looks, good “presentation,” and the hot air of “hope” and “change.”

More recently, however, my “perception” of him has soured a good bit, and not only because he’s become the Wright man for the job or because of his bitter, clinging rhetorical errors (pronounced “Ayers”). Or perhaps those errors are merely indicative of what strikes me as even more ominous: the gaping chasm between how he “presents” himself — the bi-racial, post-partisan healer — and what there is of an actual record in his present and past, that of a hard left ideologue.

I don’t want to argue this here, but consider: When has Obama ever bucked his party on a matter of substance? He has taken firm positions on two issues, doing away with Bush’s tax cuts and raising the capital gains tax to 39.5%; and pulling out of Iraq as quickly as he can get the troops packed and loaded on transports. Entirely aside from the merits of these positions, since a good half the country is firmly opposed to tax increases, and a significant number of people regard unconditional retreat as a national security disaster, how would attempting to achieve either one of these goals move us beyond or above the bitter partisanship of the past decades? How would either inviting Rev. Wright to the White House, or pointedly refusing to invite him, contribute to bi-racial good feeling?

I wouldn’t yet say that Obama is The Manchurian Candidate, but on the other hand I don’t think it’s paranoid or out of order to pay more attention to “where he’s coming from,” Manchuria or not.

In fact, now that he’s been president for two years, he does seem more like Laurence Harvey than Peter Sellers, even if he was born here.