I think he was paraphrasing Juvenal's famous line "Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?" (Who will police the police themselves?). But whereas Obama was suggesting that the paradox might be pointless and unending, Juvenal was making a different, moral point — not the silliness of nagging critics wanting to watch the watchmen, but the dilemma in a corrupt age of finding any moral censor one can trust. I think Obama is one of the first public figures I can remember who used the sentiment in exactly the opposite way it was intended — that we are too hypercritical of, rather than too trusting in, our guardians.
I'm sure Obama would rather that we were more trusting in him. If everyone took everything he said at face value, then we would all be supporting him.
Also for such a "technically sophisticated campaign"... how come Obama didn't do Hugh Hewitt's suggestion.
"I'm not asking Barack Obama to vet the vetters. I'm just asking him to Google them."
Go ahead google Jim Johnson and Eric Holder. Now why didn't Obama do this? Or did he?
Bill Bennett on the "Uncouth McCain" video
Do they really want to tell a man who turned down early release and spent five and a half years in a POW camp that he is insensitive to the desires of returning home? Do they really want to tell a man whose father and grandfather are military heroes that the most important thing is returning home? Do they really want to tell a man whose own son has signed up and fought in Iraq about the importance of coming back home?
Sure they do. Facts are less important than feelings. And it "feels" like McCain is a war-lovin' loon.
And it's likely a coincidence that this smear about McCain was released the day Obama had to dump another associate of his.
I mean Obama has to distance himself from so many people that it's not like you need to coordinate things.
We'll finish with some thoughts by Peter Wehner
Throwing Johnson under the same bus that rolled over the Reverend Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. and Trinity Church may be politically necessary. Yet the damage, I think, is real because of an accretion effect.
It can’t be said often enough: the conceit of the Obama campaign is that its candidate is the antithesis of politics as it has been practiced for decades, if not for centuries. He is, we are told, the agent of change, the great turner of the page, a man unstained by politics and who will alter the way it has been practiced. He is bi-partisan and post-partisan and beyond political labeling. He will not unfairly portray the views of his opponent or engage in petty distractions. According to his wife Michelle, he will heal the broken souls of America. And according to Obama himself, he will begin to heal the planet.
The bar has been set enormously high – and it has been set there by Obama, his wife, and his campaign.
If voters begin to believe that the Obama Phenomenon is really an Obama Myth – that he is just another conventional politician, but in this instance one who emerged out of the largely polluted waters of Chicago politics – then Obama is reduced to being a one-term senator with very few achievements in his life that commend him to be president.
Emphasis mine. This is Obama's biggest problem. As Wehner states they raised the bar high, so high that even being a "conventional politician" will undo him.
As Rand says
The man's good at giving speeches, but he doesn't seem to be able to identify or hire good staff. Do we really even want him picking cabinet members, let alone running the country?
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