Onion Child

They call them onions—unbonded children with deeply disturbed personalities. The analogy is to an onion where you peel a layer off seeking to find the core. The layer comes off easily, only to reveal another layer. The children seem to be one thing, but when you break through the layer, whether it is attitude or behavior or emotion, you only discover that there is another layer which isn’t the core child at all. Layer after layer peels away, but before you find the core the onion is gone. Nothing of the essential child is there. It is a frightening concept and in large measure uncorrectable.

Today I was scanning the headlines on Drudge and came across a whole series:

My Muslim Faith

I Loved the Uniform

You Mean It Wouldn't Work?

I Was Just Joking

Of Course It Succeeded

It occurred to me that we are seeing the political equivalent of the onion child. Some of us have been suggesting, nay shouting from the roof-tops, that there is no “there” there. The man is all things to all people and in the process nothing to any of us. What will satisfy the crowd in front of him at the moment? Gov. Palin illustrated the point nicely last week with her comment regarding saying one thing in Scranton and another in San Francisco.

I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt on the Muslim faith comment. Freudian slip or verbal stumble, I really don’t think he’s vested in Islam. He’s had exposure, but I doubt that he embraces the Prophet. Who knows where he stands on Israel. That’s a layer I’ve peeled away.

But, do I think that he ever for one single instance in his life considered enlisting in the Army? Extremely doubtful. Would I buy that the reason he didn’t was that Vietnam was several years over and there simply wasn’t a good war for him to get involved in? How emphatically can I say no way? That is a layer that fell off without peeling. It simply rotted.

Did some rational economist or maybe just a third grade arithmetic teacher explain that rescinding the Bush tax cuts would cost jobs, depress the economy and reduce federal revenues further? Does this mean economic enlightenment or is it a loosened layer that wasn’t even close to the core belief that redistribution of wealth is his goal. What does he really plan to do on taxes? I mean besides taxing anyone who succeeds in America.

Has he finally grasped that a legal or Constitutional definition of life and the protections required from government are not theological issues but exactly what his desired pay grade is responsible for? Joking with throw-away lines in presidential debates is not a core strategy. Just another layer that looks like something but masks something else. Unable to come up with a core belief, he equivocates.

And, please, will anyone explain to me why his ego will not allow him to plainly and simply state that he was wrong and the military surge succeeded in achieving the military goals that were set for it? Can he not see that the success of the surge creates the necessary conditions to allow progress toward the political goals? Without it, no progress in that arena would be possible. All he would have to do is say that he wasn’t perfectly correct one time in his life. That would be some view of a core rather than just another layer.

But maybe the biggest peel job so far comes from the Jerusalem Post where they examine the truth behind the claims of jobs he might have done when he held the title:

Here's What I Could Have Done Had I Done Something

I’m thinking that in the next 56 days the layers will get thinner and the core will get smaller. By the first week of November I doubt that much onion will be left to probe.