From Metaphor to Metastasis

In an article entitled Barack Obama must stop campaigning and start governing, the Telegraph (UK) takes note of this decidedly unbecoming shift in President Obama's rhetorical style. 

Essentially, however, Mr Obama won because of his persona – post-racial, healing, cool, articulate and inspirational. In a sense, therefore, his greatest achievement in life is being Barack Obama. Or the campaign version, at least.

Therein lies the problem. While campaigning could centre around soaring rhetoric, governing is altogether messier. It involves tough, unpopular choices and cutting deals with opponents. It requires doing things rather than talking about them, let alone just being.

There is nothing new in this criticism. Pundits mostly from the right-of-center have complained for months of Obama's permanent campaign. In doing so several have repeated the old saw about campaigning in poetry and governing in prose.  Now, though they don't use exactly that term, commentators are taking note of the substitution of metaphor with metastasis:  

Now, he is stumping for Democratic candidates in states he won last year but which are now in danger. ... And as he always does, Mr Obama blamed every economic woe on the Bush years, conveniently forgetting that Republicans are no longer in office and it's been his mess for nine months now.

The most widely accepted definition of "metastasis" is one that describes a pathological state, specifically the "transmission of pathogenic microorganisms or cancerous cells from an original site to one or more sites elsewhere in the body." In texts on rhetoric the term refers to the transference of "blame from one person to another". If this finger pointing and blame-gaming by the administration continues, it may become as a cancer on the body politic.