Below is a video of the Charlie Rose show the night after the election. Rose’s guests are Newsweek’s Editor Jon Meacham and Editor-at-Large Evan Thomas. The video is further evidence, or justification if you will, that what got this man elected as our next President and Commander in Chief was more a charade or illusion than what we know. And where the media is concerned, Rush Limbaugh characterizes it this way . . .

[t]his is just indication all they knew that they didn’t report about Obama and his associations and his alliances and how Obama was playing the game.

At 2:30 (two minutes, 30 seconds) into the video, Evan Thomas honestly puts the whole Obama campaign into its proper perspective, one day after the election, by going to the roots of community organizing and its founder, Saul Alinsky. From the transcript, Thomas says . . .

Saul Alinsky is, uh, really was a model from this, er, famous community organizer in Chicago, and this whole idea that Alinsky had that it’s not gonna work if you offend large groups of people. You know, we think of community organizers as having their fist out and, you know? Ah, no, no, no, no, no. You have to win over the majority by being peaceful and nonthreatening. Saul Alinsky used the word “nonthreatening.” This is key to Obama. There’s no militancy involved. This is very important and — and his chief strategist, Axelrod, really understood this. Especially if you’re running a black guy for president, you cannot threaten the whites.

At 6:15 into the video, the discussion goes into the ‘creepiness’ of Obama’s performance . . .

• MEACHAM: He’s very elusive, Obama, which is fascinating for a man who’s written two memoirs. At Grant Park he walks out with the family, and then they go away.
• ROSE: Mmm. Mmm-hmm.
• MEACHAM: Biden’s back, you know, locked in the bar or something.
• ROSE: (haughty chuckle)
• MEACHAM: You know, they don’t let him out. And have you ever seen a victory speech where there was no one else on stage?
• ROSE: Mmm.
• MEACHAM: No adoring wife, no cute kid. He is the messenger.
• THOMAS: There is a slightly creepy cult of personality about all this. I mean, he’s such an admirable —
• ROSE: Slightly. Creepy. Cult of personality.
• THOMAS: Yes.
• ROSE: What’s slightly creepy about it?
• THOMAS: It — it — it just makes me a little uneasy that he’s so singular. He’s clearly managing his own spectacle. He’s a deeply manipulative guy.

At 8:30 into the video, Meacham recounts Obama’s writing in the Audacity of Hope, where he begins to set the stage. At around 9:30 into the video, Rose and his guests begin to get that tingly feeling in their legs in describing Obama’s ascension to greatness, ‘watching us watch him.’

In their continued adoration of Barack, Evan Thomas says, around 10:30 into the video, that Obama says in his book, ‘I’m not sure I am Barack Obama.’ Meaning, according to Rose, that Obama knows that he has created a persona that he thinks the American people want, then questions whether he fits the image he has created on the ‘projection screen’ of American opinion. From the transcript . . .

• ROSE: Watching him last night in that speech, he finishes —
• MEACHAM: Yeah.
• ROSE: — and he sort of — it’s almost like he then ascends to look at the circumstance.
• MEACHAM: He watches us watching him.
• THOMAS: Watching him!
• ROSE: Exactly!
• THOMAS: He does —
• MEACHAM: It’s amazing.
• ROSE: It is amazing.
• THOMAS: He writes about this metaphor being a screen upon which Americans will project. He said they want of Barack Obama; I’m not sure I am Barack Obama.
• ROSE: Mmm.
• THOMAS: He has the self-awareness to know that this creature he’s designed isn’t necessarily a real person, and he’s self-aware enough —
• ROSE: Ahhhhhh.

Listen as Jon Meacham explains that Barack’s ‘whole life is a narrative’ at 15:10 into the video.

The video then turns to a discussion as to whether the United States is still a ‘center-right’ country. What is illustrative here is that Europe is used as the measure of whether or not it is. Whether he will be able to ‘expand the power of the state.’ We know how popular Obama was, and is, to Europeans. They are, in a political sense, soul brothers.

Evan Thomas says that after the economy tanked in mid September, Obama was ‘risk averse, he was laying back in the weeds.’ But that’s alright because as Rose then proclaims, ‘we’re in an age of Obama right now.’ Where were these geniuses a few months ago? Oh right, they were carrying the water for him. They were ‘in an age of Obama.’

Rose ends the segment with this question, ‘Who will be the principle opposition? Where will the voice of the opposition come from?’ Jon Meacham suggests that it will be Gov. Sarah Palin. He and Thomas then proceed to trash Gov. Palin with their anonymous sources from within the McCain campaign over the clothing issue. Real presidential stuff you know. And befitting of Newsweek.

Update 1/23/2013: For reasons known only to the Charlie Rose Show, this video from Nov. 5, 2008, “A conversation with Jon Meacham & Evan Thomas” is no longer playable. Here is the link to it, http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/9341 Is it now a media cover-up?

Watch twenty minute video segment here.

In discussing Obama’s victory at 11:30 in the video, Meacham makes an incorrect statement that shall be corrected here. He says that Obama got the majority vote which had not been done since George H.W. Bush twenty years ago. In 1988 Bush 41 got 53.4% of the vote. Actually, George W. Bush got 50.7% in 2004. Obama ended up with 52.6%.

related links: Charlie Rose – Jon Meacham, Evan Thomas | Newsweek Liberals Call Our First Black President a Creepy Creature | Tom Brokaw, There’s A Lot About Obama We Don’t Know | The Real Barack Obama