Three Harsh Assessments of the Failed Presidency of Barack Obama

Michael Barone, Obama Will Leave Democrats in Shambles:

Bill Clinton was credited with competence and acceptable ideology, which made his party competitive in the early 2000s and well-positioned to take advantage of George W. Bush's perceived incompetence (Iraq, Katrina) in 2006 and 2008.

President Obama's ideology --expanded government, Obamacare -- has been less widely acceptable and his reputation for competence is currently in tatters. He was able to eke out re-election with a reduced percentage by good organization. But he leaves his party in trouble.

Yes, Hillary Clinton leads in polls for 2016. But her numbers have been sagging. And other Democrats poll worse against not-very-well-known Republican alternatives than I can remember any party’s potential candidates polling in the last half-century.

Predicting 2016 when 2014 isn't over is risky. But it looks like President Obama has left his party in worse shape than any president since Woodrow Wilson nearly a century ago.

Ben Domenech is very pungent here: This Was An Election About a Failed Presidency.

He quotes this Politico piece that has some people worried about Obama's alleged "first class temperament:"

Barack Obama is antsy. His aides can see it when he alights from Air Force One from the all-too-occasional campaign trips he has taken this fall. There's a sigh, an unhappy-camper body language when he finds himself back in the depressing slipstream of Ebola confabs and national-security-crisis-of-the-day meetings. The vibe, according to people in his orbit, is not so much of being checked out as of being fed up.

"[I] do like campaigning. ... It's fun," Obama said on Thursday, speaking wistfully at a rally for Democratic gubernatorial candidate Mike Michaud in Maine....

Obama, for so long the man with the bright future, has hated being relegated to a sidelined pariah in the midterms--even if it is the inevitable lot of a second-termer with approval ratings hovering in the low 40s--according to a dozen current and former Obama advisers we spoke with in recent days. He both resents the narrative that he's basically irrelevant and doesn't much relish the fact that many of his longest-serving staffers, the remnant core of his once-buzzing and brash White House, are strapping themselves to ejector seats. More than anything, Obama's loathing for Washington, an attitude that reads as ennui to outsiders, has hardened into a sullen resignation at being trapped in a broken system he failed to change, advisers told us.

So he's depressed, bored with his job, angry, and bitter. He finds national security briefings and briefings on containing Ebola "depressing."

Wonderful.

Domenech writes:

For all the talk that this midterm election was about nothing, 2014 really was just about one thing: Barack Obama's failure to live up to his presidency's promise in almost every domestic and foreign policy arena. The incredible revisionism at the heart of the media coverage we should expect to see from now to the end of this presidency and beyond is that Obama even tried to deliver on the change he promised, to fix the brokenness of a nation and a political and economic scene. Looking back, Obama's delusion is readily apparent: he apparently believed not that he could change Washington, but that his mere presence would change Washington --that the fact of his election would roll back the waters and reveal a fundamental sea change in American history, such that the nation’s politics and culture would have no choice but to change in response.

...

The stunning part is the nature of this naivete. It is not that it is the high-minded academic view of a cloistered college professor -- it's the naovete of a dim-witted screenwriter, an acceptance of an beau ideal of the American presidency that is most recognizable as an invention of Aaron Sorkin, not a reflection of history. The president who walks into the room, says "I am the Lord your God", and wins the argument.

Only in the world of Andrew Shepard or Jed Bartlet does the president demolish his adversaries and win major political battles merely by reading his lines.

Michael Goodwin of the New York Post, Obama Always Pointing the Finger of Blame at Someone Else:

We are witnessing the total collapse of a bad idea. Obamaism, a quasi-socialist commitment to a more powerful government at home and an abdication of American leadership around the world, is being exposed as a historic calamity. It is fueling domestic fear and global disorder and may well lead to a world war.

If there is a smidgen of a silver lining, it is that the unraveling, complete with Obama’s shameless attempts to duck responsibility, is playing out on the eve of the midterm elections. Fortunately, voters seem ready to respond by giving Republicans control of both houses of Congress.

I second that emotion, and not just because Obama is a failure. For all his narcissism, he didn't make this mess alone.

He was aided and abetted by every Democrat in Congress. They marched in lockstep with his cockamamie policies, from ObamaCare to open borders. They protected corrupt leaders in numerous federal agencies, from the IRS to the General Services Administration. They stymied efforts to find the truth about Benghazi and the Fast and Furious gunrunning debacle....

With painfully few exceptions, Democrats put their loyalty to him above their duty to America.

And now they must be punished. All of them.

Normally, I am not a partisan advocate. I am a registered Democrat, though I vote as an independent.

Not this year. This is a national emergency and the only responsible action is to vote Republican for every federal office.

Sparing even a favorite Democrat or two could allow Obama to spin defeat as a minor loss. Most worrisome, if Dems keep the Senate, the election will further entrench a corrupt government and further erode America's strength and influence.

That is not a chance worth taking. Six years is enough. Collective punishment is the appropriate answer.

Well said!

posted by Ace at 02:18 PM

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