The fading hoop-shooting image of the once cool Barack Obama

Are you among those stunned to wake up and realize today that nearly four years ago, America, the world’s greatest superpower, at a time of national crisis on several fronts, elected as president an inexperienced young man mainly because he was hip and cool? Does that not have the power to shock you?

Yes, that’s right. It happened after Democratic Party leaders trashed the seasoned, experienced Hillary Clinton, labeling her as too polarizing, to nominate the hip one who was amassing a fortune from Wall Street pockets while claiming his campaign was funded by small donors.

Now completing his first term, Barack Obama is on record as one of the most polarizing presidents in modern U.S. history.

Courtesy of worldgolfreport.blogspot.com

As the youthful Barack’s hoop-shooting image fades, Politico points out it’s being replaced with an image of golfing with John Boehner, and the once electrifying candidate is now mourning his loss of cool while hustling potential donors for a second term.

So the electorate yawns while incumbent Obama tries to rouse his disillusioned followers from 08, and Rep. Michele Bachmann and Mitt Romney take the lead in the Republican field.

But back to the Politico piece chronicling Obama’s lament of his loss of cool:

Barack Obama’s second presidential campaign seems destined to lack 2008’s gleam of insurgency — and nobody knows it better than Obama.

At a series of recent fundraisers, the president lamented his loss of cool, his transformation from fresh to familiar, from edgy to establishment.

“I’m sort of old news,” he told supporters at a New York fundraiser last week.

“I know that it’s not going to be exactly the same as when I was young and vibrant and new,” he mused. “And there was — posters everywhere, hope. The logo was really fresh. And let’s face it, it was cool to support me back then. At cocktail parties, you could sort of say, ‘Yeah, this Obama guy, you haven’t heard of him? Let me tell you about him.’”

Increasingly, Obama is confronting the difference between running as a relative unknown on the popular promise of hope and change and campaigning as a known commodity whose record reflects the inevitable compromises of governing in Washington.

“The old posters are all faded,” Obama told supporters at the opulent Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Washington last week. “People make fun of hope and change.”

 

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