The Teleprompter Presidency

The number of people who claim to have witnessed historic moments is always inflated, but I was seated shoulder to shoulder recently with someone who actually had a very good seat in Chicago's Grant Park last November on the night Barack Hussein Obama claimed victory in the race for the White House.

To my left, as we shivered inside an enormous, mega-air conditioned ballroom at McCormick Place on Wednesday was none other than one of Obama's former teleprompter operators from Campaign 2008. Youthful guy. Maybe mid-30s. Pleasant. And extremely competent.

Of course, never lacking sarcastic jabs, I wanted so badly to point a finger into his shoulder blade and shout, "Oh, so youuuu'rrrreee the one!"

Alas, we didn't talk politics. We were working a live event, he as the prompter guy, I as the script writer in the wings, waiting for someone to request a late edit. One of us is a skilled technician, the other determines the tone and tenor of the content. The relationship is entirely symbiotic.

Before the event started, he happened to share a photo, summoned from a laptop, with another member of the crew. And there it was, Obama standing amid a crowd of handlers, backstage at a campaign stop, while hovering over his beloved prompter operator.

Putting aside the chilling reality that Obama used well-crafted words loaded into prompters (by writers sensitive to radical left wing messages softened by clever tone and tenor) to mislead 53% of the voting populace as it sloshed back gallon upon gallon of Hope-n-Change Kool-Aid, I was fascinated by Prompter Guy's observations from deep inside Obama 2008.

Basically, he told his fellow union member (all of these event production people tend to be, perhaps under coercion, union labor) that prompter gigs have exposed him to numerous powerful and famous speakers. Prompter Guy said Obama easily is one of the five most intellectually gifted people he has encountered in his lifetime. He explained that the former junior Senator has a capacity to grasp complex subjects very quickly and thoroughly.

I was not surprised, frankly. Some of the most diabolical people across human history have been born with, and have brashly abused, gifted intellects. I won't name any examples because, well, you know, that's hate speech.

But this point is extremely important. This intellectual superiority, this coolness, a certain other worldliness, takes us precisely to what concerns so many millions of Americans who will never come within 100 miles of the man. Essentially, B. Hussein Obama was born to be the Socialist's President. He is the ideal conduit because he has been a willing vessel his whole life, filled from his most formative days with contempt for free market capitalism, individual self-reliance, Constitutional sanctity, and the exceptionalism that defines this country to its core. And he is a genius when it comes to repackaging Socialism as something everyone can embrace, making it sound like ... change, hope, a better America. Roll it up, Mr. Prompter.

Dorothy Rabinowitz, writing in The Wall Street Journal, just flat out said it. While Obama comprehends the complex social constructs of Socialism, and is stringently adherent to the raw brutality of Saul Alinsky's "Rules for Radicals", Rabinowitz observes that "despite a great election victory, Mr. Obama, it becomes ever clearer, knows little about Americans. He knows the crowds—he is at home with those. He is a stranger to the country's heart and character."

And former President Bush strategist Karl Rove echoed a similar sentiment today in a Journal opinion column. "What worked in the Obama campaign," he writes, making reference to those glorious days when rhetoric rolled on the prompter screen and out of Obama's well trained mouth, "will often backfire on the Obama presidency. But old habits are hard to leave on the trail."

They are especially hard to foresake when there are always willing accomplices who will sit in the chilly shadows, producing the words and rolling them up on the magic prompter.