There's a very long post to be written about the erosion of the public sphere - cultural, journalistic, academic, and democratic - under the Obama administration. The populist rush to embrace Obama - driven by rhetoric of "unity" - is one side of the coin. The other side has all of the concrete steps that the new President is using to consolidate power. It didn't take long for both of these dynamics to emerge. Right after the election Bookworm Room was already pointing out that Obama's cult of personality can't really be built on charm - because , a lot of times, he's kind of a jerk. His approach to persuasion is a lot more vulgar - pressuring politicians to do "the people's will" as embodied, of course, by him. The Razor's post highlighted how Obama's strutting "I won" was only half-right. It was the seething Deaniacs who actually catapulted to power, something Obama isn't exactly loathe to manipulate. In the meantime, per The Provocateur, Obama is circumventing oversight by appointing czars and envoys that answer directly to him. All of which is great unless you believe in a republican form of representative government that eschews direct democracy and is built on careful deliberation. If you believe that then Obama's tactics are borderline dangerous.

As for his foreign policy: Right Truth wrote about how the President's Al Arabiya interview was part of his overall approach to the Middle East - which, per Joshua Pundit, also includes bringing the Muslim Brotherhood into the White House. Al Arabiya is considered by public diplomacy experts to be one of the "moderate" Muslim broadcasting outlets, a place where US influence on the Saudi family has created a different kind of station than, say, Al Jazeera. Soccer Dad's post begs to differ:

But given the opinion pieces that appeared on the front page of Al-Arabiya's website, can it really be said that the Muslim world is using a language of respect?... Apparently then President Obama believes that there is a disconnect between people who espouse extreme ideas and who act on them. So the vicious op-eds are something he need not concern himself with. The problem is that the broader Muslim world is accepting of this hatred. It would have been appropriate for President Obama to speak out against it. Instead, by his silence, he effectively validates it.

My own post addressed the shameless dishonesty of NJDC Press Secretary Aaron Keyak. His HuffPo screed exemplified the obnoxious rhetorical tics of the ostensibly reality-based left: take reasoned arugments blatantly out of context, sneer at them for being simplisitic, and thereby give self-styled sophisticates an excuse to believe what they already want to believe. I'm going to wait till tomorrow to tell you about his response. But take my word for it - it's awesome.

Also filed under the left's "just say stuff" approach to public discourse: the Colossus of Rhodey's postmortem on their promises for a post-racial age and Cheat Seeking Missile's takedown of their increasingly incoherent claims about Iraq. And The Glittering Eye wonders why we can't have a constructive discussion about economic policy. Pinning these tools down on what exactly they're promising - and what exactly they're answering - is the policy equivalent of trying to figure out whether Tom Hanks actually apologized for his anti-Mormon bigotry. Which - per Rhymes With Right - he obviously didn't.

References and previously after the jump...