The Elvis Presley Movie Presidency

Why were Elvis Presley’s movies so lousy?

Because they were all the same. The scenery changed a lot; sometimes he’d be the son of a prostitute in New Orleans, or a bush pilot looking for work at the Seattle World’s Fair, or a busted race car driver in Las Vegas, or maybe a rich kid wannabe surfer in Hawaii. But Elvis always played himself, the plot usually involved him trying to win the affections of a female whose initial impression of him was less than positive, there were always songs which weren’t the greatest examples of his music (and didn’t exactly advance the cause of rock n’ roll) and the critics nearly always reached for the Maalox as soon as Elvis’ movies came out three times a year.

It’s hard not thinking about Clambake or It Happened At The World’s Fair or Girls! Girls! Girls! when you sit through another interminable Barack Obama speech.

All Barack Obama speeches are about one thing: Barack Obama. You can put him at the West Point commencement, like he is today, or you can place him at a science fair. Or you can send him to Indonesia, or the UN. You can give him an audience at a community college somewhere, or at some confab like the NAACP or the National Action Network. It won’t matter; the subject will be the same.

Barack Obama talks about Barack Obama. That’s all he talks about. Like Elvis, he plays himself and that’s it.

It’s emblematic of his entire presidency. Obama lives in his own little bubble, which occupies all of his time and energy and intellectual capital. Unfortunately, his job is not within that bubble – which is why even Democrats are now recognizing that his presidency is a rudderless, incompetent failure.

How many times has Obama claimed his initial knowledge of a new scandal involving his presidency came from reading the newspaper? And why is it somehow interesting or important to know when and how he found out about a scandal? It’s his job to know about – or better yet, prevent – the abuses and poor performances his administration is constantly rocked by.

Another piece of the Elvis-movie formula we see with Obama is a constant priority of politics over governance.

Yesterday, Daily Caller publisher Tucker Carlson did a guest spot on Fox News about the VA scandal and how the Obama administration will handle it, and Carlson said something precisely correct. In predicting that despite the magnitude of the abuse and the political disaster it should represent, the Obama regime is going to approach things exactly the same way as it always does, with the same results we always see. Namely, that the administration will do everything they can to cover the scandal up, they’ll continue promising more free stuff to their core constituency, and they’ll throw out some reason why this is all the Republicans’ fault.

And that formula will insure that the VA scandal doesn’t much affect the president’s popularity or prestige, because 40 percent of the voting public will never abandon him – either because of race, or his position on social and cultural issues, or because they’re dependent on government and he’s the personification of the government. He can do whatever he wants, and they won’t change their minds about him.

Elvis in Hawaii? Obama in Fast and Furious. Elvis in Seattle? The VA scandal. Elvis in New Orleans? Dead Americans in Benghazi. Elvis in Las Vegas? The IRS persecuting conservative groups. It’s all the same thing.

What’s frightening is that as terrible as those Elvis movies were, they consistently made money. Over time Elvis became played out, and he had to get out of the movie business and become a Vegas stage act – which worked pretty well for him until he ended up dead on a commode at Graceland with a pharmacy in his stomach.

Obama is beyond played out, but we still have three more years of watching his repetitive act over and over again. Before it’s done it might be us on that commode.

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