Jennifer Rubin provides a keen insight:
…Every president faces a rough patch or two, but Obama’s may be a bit more troubling than most. A presidency that rests on a cult of personality rather than the power of ideas is particularly vulnerable when the personality proves to be less attractive.
Moreover, Obama has not expended political capital on anything meaningful. He did not, as Ronald Reagan did, suffer a drop in the polls by doing the hard work of wringing inflation from the economy. He didn’t enrage liberals by refusing to retreat from an unpopular war or risk the ire of the conservative base to pass a largely successful Medicare Part D, as did George W. Bush. Obama lost his popularity with only a failed stimulus plan to show for it. He has not worked to sow the seeds of policy initiatives which will bear fruit later on. He has frittered away his high standing on government boondoggles.
It would be a mistake to conclude Obama is permanently hobbled. His large congressional majorities may well deliver some type of health care reform for which he can claim credit. And the economy will eventually rebound. But what has been lost is that “opportunity” which Rahm Emanuel bragged about to use both the recession and Obama’s personal popularity to enact a fundamental shift in our government.
Whether due to political overreach or to sagging employment, the chance to remake America to suit Obama’s liberal vision is quickly slipping from the president’s grasp. And you don’t get opportunities like that very often.
I expect Obama to recover – not because he’s any good, but because liberalism has invested too much in Obama. A full court press of the leftwing propaganda machine will re-burnish Obama. At least a bit, that is.
Obama’s failure – far more than the failure of Carter in the 70’s – would involve liberalism from top to bottom. Liberalism dodged away from Carter – claiming he failed because he wasn’t liberal enough. Well, Obama is as liberal as all but the kookiest of the kook left could desire. If Obama doesn’t work, then liberalism doesn’t work, and there’s an end on it. The story that Hillary’s troops remain campaign ready indicates that at least some DLC-type Democrats are realizing that they might have to run hard and fast away from liberalism in order to preserve the Democrat party, if Obama really comes crashing down.
The majority of the American people were duped in November – fed a steady diet of outright lies about President Bush, the majority wanted a clean break. Well, they got it – but it wasn’t the clean break as advertised. We were supposed to get a center-governing, moderately liberal near-genius who would bring us all together in order to conquer the many problems America has at home and abroad. Hope and change. The trouble is that we got dishonest, uber-liberal neophyte who is busily dividing us from each other, coddling our enemies and insulting our friends as we ignore our real problems to tackle secondary issues like health care, or fairy-tale issues like global warming. People are beginning to realize they’ve been had.
We don’t get “do-overs”. We’re stuck with Obama until at least January 20th, 2013. It will be a very hard lesson – as Mencken once opined, people get the government they deserve, and they usually get it good and hard. Consider Obama the political two-by-four to whack us upside the head and hopefully pound some sense in to us. If we learn this lesson, we’ll never have to deal with the likes of Obama, again.
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