Posted on 11/19/2009 8:24:03 AM PST by domeika
Barack Obama is on track to have the most spectacularly failed presidency since Woodrow Wilson.
In the modern era, we've seen several failed presidencies--led by Jimmy Carter and LBJ. Failed presidents have one strong common trait-- they are repudiated, in the vernacular, spat out. Of course, LBJ wisely took the exit ramp early, avoiding a shove into oncoming traffic by his own party. Richard Nixon indeed resigned in disgrace, yet his reputation as a statesman has been partially restored by his triumphant overture to China.
George Bush Jr didn't fail so much as he was perceived to have been too much of a patrician while being uncomfortable with his more conservative allies. Yet George Bush Sr is still perceived as a man of uncommon decency, loyal to the enduring American character of rugged self-determination, free markets, and generosity. George W will eventually be treated more kindly by historians as one whose potential was squashed by his own compromise of conservative principles, in some ways repeating the mistakes of his father, while ignoring many lessons in executive leadership he should have learned at Harvard Business School. Of course George W could never quite overcome being dogged from the outset by half of the nation convinced he was electorally illegitimate -- thus aiding the resurgence of the liberal wing of the Democratic Party.
But, Barack Obama is failing. Failing big. Failing fast. And failing everywhere: foreign policy, domestic initiatives, and most importantly, in forging connections with the American people. The incomparable Dorothy Rabinowitz in the Wall Street Journal put her finger on it: He is failing because he has no understanding of the American people, and may indeed loathe them. Fred Barnes of the Weekly Standard says he is failing because he has lost control of his message, and is overexposed. Clarice Feldman of American Thinker produced a dispositive commentary showing that Obama is failing because fundamentally he is neither smart nor articulate; his intellectual dishonesty is conspicuous by its audacity and lack of shame.
But, there is something more seriously wrong: How could a new president riding in on a wave of unprecedented promise and goodwill have forfeited his tenure and become a lame duck in six months? His poll ratings are in free fall. In generic balloting, the Republicans have now seized a five point advantage. This truly is unbelievable. What's going on?
No narrative. Obama doesn't have a narrative. No, not a narrative about himself. He has a self-narrative, much of it fabricated, cleverly disguised or written by someone else. But this self-narrative is isolated and doesn't connect with us. He doesn't have an American narrative that draws upon the rest of us. All successful presidents have a narrative about the American character that intersects with their own where they display a command of history and reveal an authenticity at the core of their personality that resonates in a positive endearing way with the majority of Americans. We admire those presidents whose narratives not only touch our own, but who seem stronger, wiser, and smarter than we are. Presidents we admire are aspirational peers, even those whose politics don't align exactly with our own: Teddy Roosevelt, FDR, Harry Truman, Ike, Reagan.
But not this president. It's not so much that he's a phony, knows nothing about economics, is historically illiterate, and woefully small minded for the size of the task-- all contributory of course. It's that he's not one of us. And whatever he is, his profile is fuzzy and devoid of content, like a cardboard cutout made from delaminated corrugated paper. Moreover, he doesn't command our respect and is unable to appeal to our own common sense. His notions of right and wrong are repugnant and how things work just don't add up. They are not existential. His descriptions of the world we live in don't make sense and don't correspond with our experience.
In the meantime, while we've been struggling to take a measurement of this man, he's dissed just about every one of us--financiers, energy producers, banks, insurance executives, police officers, doctors, nurses, hospital administrators, post office workers, and anybody else who has a non-green job. Expect Obama to lament at his last press conference in 2012: "For those of you I offended, I apologize. For those of you who were not offended, you just didn't give me enough time; if only I'd had a second term, I could have offended you too."
Mercifully, the Founders at the Constitutional Convention in 1787 devised a useful remedy for such a desperate state--staggered terms for both houses of the legislature and the executive. An equally abominable Congress can get voted out next year. With a new Congress, there's always hope of legislative gridlock until we vote for president again two short years after that.
Yes, small presidents do fail, Barack Obama among them. The coyotes howl but the wagon train keeps rolling along.
The author is a jerk.
This is not a failure in the eyes of the liberal.
The installed a puppet via lying and Acorn cheating to enact their radical agenda.
Only the American people will have been punished.
Has Obama ever actually been to work in the Oval Office or is it all about traveling the word and having Wednesday night wine parties on our Dime?
“It’s not so much that he’s a phony, knows nothing about economics, is historically illiterate, and woefully small minded for the size of the task— all contributory of course. It’s that he’s not one of us.....”
Anyone in the whack left is not one of us....
The author is STILL a jerk.
Perfect.
May?
Perhaps he is in fact a natural-born citizen, born in Hawaii.
He certainly wasn't raised an American.
If only we could find some generic Republicans to run...
Great opinion piece that is based on reality. The problem with the article is that the leftists will exclaim that it is a racist piece—which it really isn’t. “Not like us” refers to our souls, not our outside bodies. I’ve been watching the WWII HD program on the History channel this week. I realized while reading this article that the Blacks of WWII are also not like Nobama. They are proud Americans, proud to be a part of the war to overcome the worst tyranny man had ever seen. I’m proud of their service. Nobama doesn’t hold a candle to these great men and those of the Korean, Vietnam, Iraqi, and Afghanistan wars, white or black or any other race.
Think he/she meant “Sr.”
A typical elitist loathing the 'unwashed masses'.
Loathe away, Fearless Leader, because we loathe you and your elitist cronies just as much.
Beautiful.
“the most spectacularly failed presidency since Woodrow Wilson”. I don’t know if he was all that much of a failure, he did bring segregation to the military that made blacks second class citizens, he brought us the income tax, he took senators from state appointment and made them directly elected politicians and he gave us Prohibition. I think that he was very successful at starting to tear down what our founding father stood for. He did alot to get us where we are today.
Correction—I think he/she means something like “George Bush, the Senior”. That would be accurate
You betcha!
Yes, yes, yes! This is the key to the Obama Presidency.
He is portrayed as, and his arrogance concurs, the “Successful Black American”. In reality he is a cardboard cutout because there is no tradition, history, struggle, experience, vision or soul.
He is flat, and one-dimensional, and that is opposite from the American Experience.
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find only things evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelogus
Best line in the article.
Wit all due respect to Dorothy Rabinowitz I've been saying that since he first burst on the scene. Whether he's a naturaal born citizen or not, obama is NOT an authentic American. You can't attend islamic school in Indonesia and understand what it means to be an American. You learn that slowly...from birth. When you learn to sing the National Anthem and God Bless America and She's a Grand Old Flag and all the other patriotic standards we learned as kids. You learn it as you learn about the sacrifices made by those who have gone before us...especially the sacrifices of our founders. You learn it by standing every morning and holding your hand over your heart as you repeat the Pledge of Allegience, when your dad tells you stories about the 'war', when your family comes together to celebrate Thanksgiving, when you make your first Pine Wood Derby car in Cub Scouts....and on and on and on.
My childhood and all of my live since has taught me to love America. I love our history and heritage and am willing to die for her. I know obama can't say the same.
Hussein is NOT failing. He is accomplishing precisely what he and his string-pullers set themselves to do...destroy the financial and economic structure of the United States and enslave the American people. Failing? Don’t be ridiculous. He is succeeding SPECTACULARLY! And it is up to actual Americans to STOP him. The question of course is WILL THEY DO IT??!!
Barrack Hussain Oboma
mmmmm,mmmmm,mmmmm
Failing big. Failing fast.
mmmmm,mmmm,mmmm
Nonsense.
he's dissed just about every one of us--financiers, energy producers, banks, insurance executives, police officers, doctors, nurses, hospital administrators, post office workers, and anybody else who has a non-green job
Don't forget the athletes in the Special Olymics.
LBJ and George Bush Jr?
Please, no more presidents from Texas....The last one had a legacy that left us with street level Communist from Chicago.
He isn’t a failure as long as the slug fills the slot
and we can’t replace him. (At least that is what the Democrats would say.)
He has no authentic history as an American. Go to Dixon Illinois. Reagan is everywhere. Go to the Little White House in Warm Springs, GA... He’s everywhere includeing the wheel chair where he died and his twin sized bed.
Where is this guy from? Hawaii? Please. No one remembers him. No one talks about any landmarks of his.
We don’t even know which hospital delivered him.
Free fall is starting.
I guess his vast experience as a "Community Organizer" just didn't prepare him.
Add to that he's foreigner who hates America and doesn't understand us, a marxist, and a narcissist, you've got a recipe for failure.
When 0bama Fails, Freedom Prevails!
Moreover, he doesn't command our respect and is unable to appeal to our own common sense. His notions of right and wrong are repugnant and how things work just don't add up. They are not existential. His descriptions of the world we live in don't make sense and don't correspond with our experience.
Obama does not understand the world because he is a committed Marxist. He does not share our experience as Americans, he is not an authentic American, but, much worse, he does not see the world in a rational way because his epistemology is alien.
Obama has moved from the world of the Academy, Chicago politics, and African-American grievance politics into the broader world and that which was accepted in these three milieu simply does not work in the broader world. The Academy, Chicago politics, and the African-American "community" do not operate in the world of commonsense but in three bubbles with their own language and eschatology. Obama is quite intelligent, in fact he was intelligent enough to master the language of all three of these societies.
In these three worlds success is not determined by actual accomplishment but by language. In these three societies gamesmanship prevails.
But the real world is full of realities and it is not a place of simply shaping reality with language. In the real world reality shapes the language. Obama has not accepted that reality and until he does, and until he is willing to depart from his Marxism, he will continue to fail.
I pray daily for the complete & utter collapse of this socialist-fascist-commie muzlim pig usurper 0bozo & his entire administration, including the entire dumboRAT party. I hope & pray they all fail miserably. Perhaps out of the ruins we can regain & restore our formerly, once great USA. We need to throw out the GOP Rinos and get solid, conservative, patriotic Americans in as senators & congressmen. We need term limits, no more than 4 terms for congressmen and 2 terms for senators, to ensure they don't destroy America again. And of course we gotta throw 0bozo out of office as soon as possible, hopefully through impeachment as a fraud & a traitor.
Failure or not, isn’t it fairly likely that there will be more schools and other public facilities named or re-named for Obama? He is here to stay, one way or another, forever, as a part of America. My hope is that his greatest accomplishment will be ironic - provoking a new conservative wave of Americans shouting for Freedom which overwhelms the best-laid plans of Statists and reclaims the country for generations to come.
The link doesn’t work.
Amen.
It’s the rest of us who will need help.
A typical elitist loathing the ‘unwashed masses’.
Indeed.
Obama is a reflection of what the media,academia,Hollywood and the far left actually think about us in middle America.
While these elitist loathe the ‘unwashed masses’ they also loathe and are preventing the black folk and other so-called protected groups from truly reaching their potential.
Teddy Roosevelt once called Woodrow Wilson a "Byzantine logothete." That may be unfair to Byzantine logothetes.
Doesn't happen in USA anymore either, ask any school teacher, they probably never heard those songs either.
“Barack Obama is on track to have the most spectacularly failed presidency since Woodrow Wilson.” I’m afraid Geoffery is clueless ... the current affirmative action sob-in-chief is accomplishing his commie wet dreams beyond his wildest imagination! His ascendency to the oval office will end the we-the-people Republic and usher in the union predominance, ACORN run election process, with green movement dictatorship, the democrat party intended when they nominated this bastard for his blackness to insure democrat party total control over the government.
Doesn't happen in USA anymore, ask any school teacher, they probably never heard those songs either.
Someone should post “Obama Teleprompter Malfunctions at Family Dinner” from the Onion. It’s hilarious.
http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/08/another_failed_presidency.html
Right on observation. Obama is like an import to the US who can play the game but whose real home is elsewhere. He is more the fashionable citizen of the world than anything home spun. The Marxism and radicals he grew up with takes him outside of the ordinary orbit though he is a good actor and his words bare similarity to Hamlet’s speech of “words, words, words.” Actually the Hamlet/Obama comparison is very interesting: both charming and disingenuous, both have problems with the father figure, both overly preoccupied with the self (perhaps narcissistic), both boyish (think of Rush’s appellation of man child), bookish (university men) and idealistic. And as is true with tragedy there is a character flaw — some say it is Hamlet’s inability to act — which leads to destruction. SNL would agree that this is also Obama’s flaw. Most recent is his indecision on Afghanistan. Other critics would argue that Obama has acted too much and is taking the US down the road to socialism. Therefore some will argue it is his idealism. Whatever it is destruction seems to loom ahead. And this destruction takes the form that Obama’s home is elsewhere and he wants to take the US there.
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