Thursday, January 28, 2010

20:20 HINDSIGHT

From the December 2006 archives of Enjoy Every Sandwich, skippystalin’s erstwhile blog:
There has been a giant to-do over Senator Obama for the last several months. Most serious political observers feel that he is the one candidate who can actually challenge Hillary Clinton’s almost unbreakable grip on the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination.

As you may have guessed, I’m not a serious political observer...

...Obama would be out of his mind to run for president right now. He’s never held executive office anywhere and has only been in the United States Senate for two years. No one that thinly credentialed has ever been elected president before. I think voters are incredibly dumb, but even I don't think they’re that dumb. And I think the senator knows that, too.

However, Obama is whip-smart, charismatic and has all the media juice a politician can hope for right now.
I had stumbled upon this three-year-old item a couple of days ago, and aside from being worth a chuckle or two, it struck me as being amazingly insightful... but in the perverse way older observations always seem when we bother to go back and exhume them. Skippy got it wrong, of course... but he got it so beautifully wrong.

“I think voters are incredibly dumb, but even I don't think they’re that dumb.”

Are you fucking kidding, Skippy? This country - the country I love, the country of my birth - has an almost infinite reservoir of dumbitude. Doubt it? Two words: Reality Television.

I can’t fault Skippy, however. Most of us are pretty fearless about writing material of a predictive nature because we know there's little chance of someone going back, digging it up, and calling “Bullshit!” on us. Nevertheless, the opportunities are there if you don’t mind a little shovelwork.

Hindsight, unlike foresight, is almost always 20:20. Alas, you cannot drive down the superhighway of life by looking in the rearview mirror: The vision may be clearer than it is through the windshield, but it does not help you avoid the obstacles in your path.

And, no, I did not watch the State of the Union address last night. Why do you ask?

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