As the boy president occupied the White House on January 20, 2009 it was predictable that his presidency would last a year, at most, because the things he promised and the things he stood for were so uniquely un-American.
Looking back over his year in office, any reasonably precocious fourth grader could make a cogent argument in opposition to nearly everything he’s done. In fact, his policies have been so extreme and so far outside the mainstream that he was destined to achieve the most spectacular fall from grace of any American president in history. It was easy to see him serving out the final three years of his term as a virtual exile in the White House… afraid to venture out among any but the most rabid partisans.
Seeing his most ambitious initiative, healthcare reform, die in the flames of the Massachusetts Massacre, Obama made a hastily-planned “sortie” to Ohio for yet another Bush-bashing, self-aggrandizing stump speech on job creation. It was vintage Obama… full of left wing hyperbole and planted questions from the Kool-Ade drinkers in the hand-picked audience.
But, there were just two things wrong with it: 1) Almost everything he said was either wrong or an outright lie, and 2) He is so overexposed that no one in the television audience really wanted to see him.
Thursday, February 18, 2010
Friday, February 12, 2010
This Is How Obama's Presidency Fails
This is how a presidency fails. It doesn't happen all at once even if future historians may single out this particular defeat or that particular calamity as an administration comes apart. The defeats and disappointments, like milestones on a steep incline, seem to come closer and closer together as momentum increases and the downward rush accelerates. Only in retrospect does the failure come to seem inevitable.
At the time, it seems the dismal trend could be reversed with just one lucky break, one signal accomplishment. Nothing is fated. And yet day by day, month after month, as the time to arrest the fall grows a little shorter every day, the administration just goes through the same motions with the same lack of effect, asking the same questions over and over again:
How turn things around?
Things happen fast in administrations, sometimes even before the politicians realize they're happening. Denial is the first stage in the process of failure, and the longer it lasts, the more probable the failure. "All that's happened," the president assured his party as the aftershocks of its defeat in Massachusetts continued to reverberate, "is that we've gone from the largest Senate majority in a generation to the second-largest Senate majority in a generation." Big deal. Pay it no mind.
It must be a mighty scary one for the president to sound so unconcerned. Yes, it was just one Senate seat lost. But it was in Massachusetts — Massachusetts! The bluest of blue states, where Ted Kennedy's seat had had a RESERVED sign on it for 46 friggin' years. Can the president be oblivious to such a portent of elections to come? What country is he living in? Were his party's impressive losses in the Virginia and New Jersey gubernatorial races just minor details, too? Incidental little skirmishes to be brushed aside? Like failing to occupy Little Roundtop on the first day of Gettysburg?
Please. There's a difference between trying to keep up party morale and a leader's doing it so unconvincingly that he only adds to the sense of an impending rout. Where can the magic have gone?
The more this president talks, the less convincing he sounds. Addressing the remaining Democrats in the Senate, still mighty in numbers but no longer in spirit, he spoke of taking a "non-ideological" course. This from a president who's long talked like an ideologue when he needed to, specifically of the populist variety. He'd just denounced "fat-cat bankers" with their "massive profits and obscene bonuses." Now, he's discovered, "We can't be demonizing every bank out there."
Having just proposed a broad array of new taxes on businesses large and small, the president told his fellow Democrats, "We've got to be the party of business, small business and large business." Which is it going to be — another crusade against malefactors of great wealth or a pro-business stance this time around?
Both, apparently, depending on the time and place and the country's mood at the moment. The contradictions in his speeches pile up. The only thing sure about Barack Obama now is his dwindling credibility. It sounds like what he really needs to do is Stop. Sit down somewhere quiet, close the door and just think. Instead, he keeps parroting campaign slogans, even if they don't quite fit together.
A president so personally popular still has a lot of room for error. Even some of his harshest critics, those who dote on his every stumble, cannot be hoping he will fail, not if they think about it, for his failure would to a great extent be the country's. Yet it becomes harder and harder to deny that he is flailing if not failing, as if he were trying to get some traction, find some purchase, but can't. Despite all he says, out of both sides of his mouth, the natives grow restless.
It happened to Jimmy Carter in a single term. There is a tide in the affairs of man. There is a momentum to failure, and unless it is stopped, decisively, and the whole cascade of defeats reversed, defeat builds on defeat. If nothing succeeds like success in this country, nothing fails like failure.
In the meantime, the smoother the president's presentations, the emptier his policies seem. The economic recovery is still fighting to regain its wind. The president's foreign policy doesn't seem like a policy at all but a series of disconnected gestures. And the greater the gaps between his words and actions, the more his political standard twists slowly in the wind. Here was last week's rationale for the historic deficits he's building into the government's budget for years to come:
"Just as it would be a terrible mistake to borrow against our children's future to pay our way today, it would be equally wrong to neglect their future by failing to invest in areas that will determine our economic success in this new century."
So which is it going to be? Save or spend? Both, of course. The president used to be able to make indecision sound practical, reasoned, above ideology, even eloquent. Now it just sounds false. How long before it sounds increasingly desperate?
What's the president to do? Make a clear choice. The way Franklin Roosevelt let the American people know that Dr. New Deal had been replaced by Dr. Win-the-War. The way George W. Bush, at the lowest ebb of American fortunes in Iraq, took hold of his own administration and shook it hard, exchanging one secretary of defense for another, switching commanding generals and strategies, and ordering a Surge instead of continuing the same old failed policies.
Mr. President, make some hard choices and let the American people know what they are. If they turn out to be the wrong ones, no doubt you'll pay the political price. But if you continue to waver, you'll pay the price anyway. At least you will have stood for something clear, the way Harry Truman did even as his popularity plummeted. Mr. Truman knew history would extend past the next election, and trusted it to vindicate him. Show that you do, too, by marking out a clear course.
Mr. President, if you're going to shift into reverse, do it openly. If you're determined to stay the course, full speed ahead and damn the torpedoes, then do that. But, please, don't pretend you can do both at the same time. Indecisiveness is a kind of guaranteed defeat itself. Act. And make it clear you're acting. And in which direction you're heading.
This president hasn't heeded such counsel before, and why should he? He's the great politician. Didn't he just win a presidential election less than two years ago, though now it seems the distant past? Why should he do anything different from what he's been doing? Because, like the rest of the country, despite all his protestations and empty cheer, he's got to feel his hold on the American people slipping, along with his power to shape events. It's time for the captain of our good ship to master the river's current, not just drift with it. The great rushing sound from just around the bend is that of a crashing waterfall.
At the time, it seems the dismal trend could be reversed with just one lucky break, one signal accomplishment. Nothing is fated. And yet day by day, month after month, as the time to arrest the fall grows a little shorter every day, the administration just goes through the same motions with the same lack of effect, asking the same questions over and over again:
How turn things around?
Things happen fast in administrations, sometimes even before the politicians realize they're happening. Denial is the first stage in the process of failure, and the longer it lasts, the more probable the failure. "All that's happened," the president assured his party as the aftershocks of its defeat in Massachusetts continued to reverberate, "is that we've gone from the largest Senate majority in a generation to the second-largest Senate majority in a generation." Big deal. Pay it no mind.
It must be a mighty scary one for the president to sound so unconcerned. Yes, it was just one Senate seat lost. But it was in Massachusetts — Massachusetts! The bluest of blue states, where Ted Kennedy's seat had had a RESERVED sign on it for 46 friggin' years. Can the president be oblivious to such a portent of elections to come? What country is he living in? Were his party's impressive losses in the Virginia and New Jersey gubernatorial races just minor details, too? Incidental little skirmishes to be brushed aside? Like failing to occupy Little Roundtop on the first day of Gettysburg?
Please. There's a difference between trying to keep up party morale and a leader's doing it so unconvincingly that he only adds to the sense of an impending rout. Where can the magic have gone?
The more this president talks, the less convincing he sounds. Addressing the remaining Democrats in the Senate, still mighty in numbers but no longer in spirit, he spoke of taking a "non-ideological" course. This from a president who's long talked like an ideologue when he needed to, specifically of the populist variety. He'd just denounced "fat-cat bankers" with their "massive profits and obscene bonuses." Now, he's discovered, "We can't be demonizing every bank out there."
Having just proposed a broad array of new taxes on businesses large and small, the president told his fellow Democrats, "We've got to be the party of business, small business and large business." Which is it going to be — another crusade against malefactors of great wealth or a pro-business stance this time around?
Both, apparently, depending on the time and place and the country's mood at the moment. The contradictions in his speeches pile up. The only thing sure about Barack Obama now is his dwindling credibility. It sounds like what he really needs to do is Stop. Sit down somewhere quiet, close the door and just think. Instead, he keeps parroting campaign slogans, even if they don't quite fit together.
A president so personally popular still has a lot of room for error. Even some of his harshest critics, those who dote on his every stumble, cannot be hoping he will fail, not if they think about it, for his failure would to a great extent be the country's. Yet it becomes harder and harder to deny that he is flailing if not failing, as if he were trying to get some traction, find some purchase, but can't. Despite all he says, out of both sides of his mouth, the natives grow restless.
It happened to Jimmy Carter in a single term. There is a tide in the affairs of man. There is a momentum to failure, and unless it is stopped, decisively, and the whole cascade of defeats reversed, defeat builds on defeat. If nothing succeeds like success in this country, nothing fails like failure.
In the meantime, the smoother the president's presentations, the emptier his policies seem. The economic recovery is still fighting to regain its wind. The president's foreign policy doesn't seem like a policy at all but a series of disconnected gestures. And the greater the gaps between his words and actions, the more his political standard twists slowly in the wind. Here was last week's rationale for the historic deficits he's building into the government's budget for years to come:
"Just as it would be a terrible mistake to borrow against our children's future to pay our way today, it would be equally wrong to neglect their future by failing to invest in areas that will determine our economic success in this new century."
So which is it going to be? Save or spend? Both, of course. The president used to be able to make indecision sound practical, reasoned, above ideology, even eloquent. Now it just sounds false. How long before it sounds increasingly desperate?
What's the president to do? Make a clear choice. The way Franklin Roosevelt let the American people know that Dr. New Deal had been replaced by Dr. Win-the-War. The way George W. Bush, at the lowest ebb of American fortunes in Iraq, took hold of his own administration and shook it hard, exchanging one secretary of defense for another, switching commanding generals and strategies, and ordering a Surge instead of continuing the same old failed policies.
Mr. President, make some hard choices and let the American people know what they are. If they turn out to be the wrong ones, no doubt you'll pay the political price. But if you continue to waver, you'll pay the price anyway. At least you will have stood for something clear, the way Harry Truman did even as his popularity plummeted. Mr. Truman knew history would extend past the next election, and trusted it to vindicate him. Show that you do, too, by marking out a clear course.
Mr. President, if you're going to shift into reverse, do it openly. If you're determined to stay the course, full speed ahead and damn the torpedoes, then do that. But, please, don't pretend you can do both at the same time. Indecisiveness is a kind of guaranteed defeat itself. Act. And make it clear you're acting. And in which direction you're heading.
This president hasn't heeded such counsel before, and why should he? He's the great politician. Didn't he just win a presidential election less than two years ago, though now it seems the distant past? Why should he do anything different from what he's been doing? Because, like the rest of the country, despite all his protestations and empty cheer, he's got to feel his hold on the American people slipping, along with his power to shape events. It's time for the captain of our good ship to master the river's current, not just drift with it. The great rushing sound from just around the bend is that of a crashing waterfall.
Thursday, February 11, 2010
Obama Is Playing Poker With This Healthcare Summit!
During a surprise visit to the White House briefing room on Tuesday afternoon, President Obama noted that "the public has soured on the process" that has produced separate-but-close Senate and House versions of health care reform legislation. And this souring, he said, "actually contaminates how Americans view the substance of the bills." Consequently, the president added, the bipartisan health care reform summit the White House is convening on Feb. 25 will move things along by showing the folks back home "that there is complete transparency and all of these issues have been adequately vetted and adequately debated." REALLY?
Is that really what people want? More gabbing about health care -- and more squawking about which side is truly trying to be bipartisan? It's hard to see how another confab about health care reform is going to improve the approval ratings of "the process." There certainly won't be a grand bipartisan deal struck at this session. In fact, as Obama was talking to White House reporters, the office of Rep. Eric Cantor, the Republican House whip, was firing off a press release deriding the summit as "a dog and pony show to trumpet failed bills that, in fact, the Democrats can't even pass." (Technical point, Mr. Whip: The bills did pass. But they have yet to be reconciled. That's the rub.) Amazing, if you ask me.
Still, Cantor said the GOPers would show up at the summit -- in order to express their opposition to the Obama-backed bills. And the Republican Party has attacked the event as "political theater" designed to push Obama's "government takeover of health care."
Obama and the White House obviously realize that this get-together will not un-sour the process. So why do it? WHY DO IT? The obvious answer, to me, is this: The president is playing poker.
During his days as a 22-month state senator in Illinois, Obama participated in a regular game with Democratic and Republican legislators and even some lobbyists. He was known as a cautious and focused player. He'd often fold if his hand was weak. But that meant that he often succeeded the rare times he bluffed.
Now he's bluffing.
Obama and his crew can't expect any real legislative gains to emanate from this summit. And they show no signs of looking to seriously recast the Democratic bills on the basis of the GOP input the president is courteously requesting. Obama and his aides must be hoping to win the sideshow battle over that ever-pressing question, who's really bipartisan? After all, he is inviting the opposition to present their ideas -- which will make him look accommodating. But he will note, as he did on Tuesday, that the existing Democratic bills did incorporate a few Republican proposals and that the GOPers have tried to put up a concrete wall regarding the legislation he favors. The goal: to use a bipartisan gathering to highlight GOP obstructionism.
Such gamesmanship, whether it works or not, won't cause Americans to lose their distaste of the process. But the White House probably calculates this is Obama's last shot to act like a gentlemen before he and the Democrats nail the Republicans by using a legislative procedure known as reconciliation (which only requires a majority vote, by the way!) in order to pass revisions to the health care reform measures already approved that will allow the legislation to land on the president's desk for his signature.
This bluff is also filling time for Obama. Right now, parliamentarian experts for the House and Senate Democrats are attempting to figure out how this reconciliation strategy could work. (Trust me, it's complicated.) So not much else is happening -- especially with Snowpocalypse I and II hitting Washington the week before a week-long congressional recess.
As the Obama White House has observed in the past, when there's a lull in that sour legislative process, the foes of the president's health care overhaul get a good opportunity to fire away at it.
So the summit is a two-fer for the White House: a forum in which Obama can attempt to WIN the bipartisan sweepstakes and a useful distraction.
The key phrase is "going forward." At some point, Obama will probably have to jettison the process PR and nudge -- or force -- action in Congress. The health care summit can buy him some time, while House and Senate Dems craft their endgame. Yet he could soon run out of bluff.
Then he'll just have to play the cards he has.
Is that really what people want? More gabbing about health care -- and more squawking about which side is truly trying to be bipartisan? It's hard to see how another confab about health care reform is going to improve the approval ratings of "the process." There certainly won't be a grand bipartisan deal struck at this session. In fact, as Obama was talking to White House reporters, the office of Rep. Eric Cantor, the Republican House whip, was firing off a press release deriding the summit as "a dog and pony show to trumpet failed bills that, in fact, the Democrats can't even pass." (Technical point, Mr. Whip: The bills did pass. But they have yet to be reconciled. That's the rub.) Amazing, if you ask me.
Still, Cantor said the GOPers would show up at the summit -- in order to express their opposition to the Obama-backed bills. And the Republican Party has attacked the event as "political theater" designed to push Obama's "government takeover of health care."
Obama and the White House obviously realize that this get-together will not un-sour the process. So why do it? WHY DO IT? The obvious answer, to me, is this: The president is playing poker.
During his days as a 22-month state senator in Illinois, Obama participated in a regular game with Democratic and Republican legislators and even some lobbyists. He was known as a cautious and focused player. He'd often fold if his hand was weak. But that meant that he often succeeded the rare times he bluffed.
Now he's bluffing.
Obama and his crew can't expect any real legislative gains to emanate from this summit. And they show no signs of looking to seriously recast the Democratic bills on the basis of the GOP input the president is courteously requesting. Obama and his aides must be hoping to win the sideshow battle over that ever-pressing question, who's really bipartisan? After all, he is inviting the opposition to present their ideas -- which will make him look accommodating. But he will note, as he did on Tuesday, that the existing Democratic bills did incorporate a few Republican proposals and that the GOPers have tried to put up a concrete wall regarding the legislation he favors. The goal: to use a bipartisan gathering to highlight GOP obstructionism.
Such gamesmanship, whether it works or not, won't cause Americans to lose their distaste of the process. But the White House probably calculates this is Obama's last shot to act like a gentlemen before he and the Democrats nail the Republicans by using a legislative procedure known as reconciliation (which only requires a majority vote, by the way!) in order to pass revisions to the health care reform measures already approved that will allow the legislation to land on the president's desk for his signature.
This bluff is also filling time for Obama. Right now, parliamentarian experts for the House and Senate Democrats are attempting to figure out how this reconciliation strategy could work. (Trust me, it's complicated.) So not much else is happening -- especially with Snowpocalypse I and II hitting Washington the week before a week-long congressional recess.
As the Obama White House has observed in the past, when there's a lull in that sour legislative process, the foes of the president's health care overhaul get a good opportunity to fire away at it.
So the summit is a two-fer for the White House: a forum in which Obama can attempt to WIN the bipartisan sweepstakes and a useful distraction.
The key phrase is "going forward." At some point, Obama will probably have to jettison the process PR and nudge -- or force -- action in Congress. The health care summit can buy him some time, while House and Senate Dems craft their endgame. Yet he could soon run out of bluff.
Then he'll just have to play the cards he has.
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