Answering Jonathan Alter’s Challenge

Commentary Magazine ^ | 8/26/2011 | Peter Wehner

[cruise_missile]

“Tell me again why Barack Obama has been such a bad president?” Jonathan Alter writes in his column.

Alter tells us he’s not talking here about Obama as a tactician and communicator, and he’s not interested in hearing ad hominem attacks or about people’s generalized “disappointment.” (Neither am I.) He wants to know on a substantive basis why Obama should be judged to have failed so far.

In Alter’s words, “Your mission, Jim [or anyone else for that matter], should you decide to accept it, is to be specific and rational, not vague and visceral.”

Consider the mission accepted.

In one sense, the answer to the Alter challenge is obvious: Obama has failed by his own standards. It’s the Obama administration, not the RNC, that said if his stimulus package was passed unemployment would not exceed 8 percent. It’s Obama who joked there weren’t as many “shovel-ready” jobs as he thought.

It’s Obama who promised to cut the deficit in half. It’s Obama who said if we passed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the health care cost curve would go down rather than up. It’s Obama who promised us recovery and prosperity, hope and change. What we’ve gotten instead is the opposite.

What makes Alter’s challenge particularly delicious is during the Bush years he spoke out about the importance of a “reality-based” presidency (as opposed to a “faith-based” one). “They [Republicans] could end up winning in November by distorting the argument,” Alter said in 2006. “But on credibility and the facts, they’ve lost.”

With Alter’s devotion to credibility and facts in mind, let’s take an empirical, reality-based look at economic life in America during the Age of Obama:

* Under Obama’s stewardship, we have lost 2.2 million jobs (and 900,000 full-time jobs in the last four months alone). He is now on track to have the worst jobs record of any president in the modern era.

[MrB]

Obama’s probably been trained in communist dialectics,
and therefore firmly believes the cost curve WILL bend down after it goes up.

As a matter of fact, its going up is proof that it will go down (in the mind of a communist).

[mojito]

And Wehner doesn't even touch on the foreign policy disasters.

[wayoverontheright]

I guess you can consider Obama a success if you abhor capitalism, or if you don’t like the US acting to protect its interests abroad.

[Patrick1]

Not much of a challenge. Like asking why the 1976 Tampa Bay Buccaneers were considered a bad football team.

[Old Teufel Hunden]

"He wants to know on a substantive basis why Obama should be judged to have failed so far."

Is he serious? I mean, really. Seriously?

Alter should team up with Paul Krugman and pray for that space alien attack to really "stimulate" the economy. These guys are nuts!!!!

[ClearCase_guy]

Have relations with the UK improved under Obama?
Relations with Israel?
Are fewer Americans dying in Afghanistan under Obama?
Have American forces been fighting in fewer Middle Eastern countries, or more than under Bush?
Has political discourse in the US gotten sweeter?
Have race relations improved?
The wealth gap between black and white -- gotten smaller, has it?
Is Congress less divided?
Has the dollar gotten stronger?

[Jim Scott]

Jonathan Alter gave Peter Wehner a great opportunity to make the case for why Obama has failed the country, miserably, as president. Mr. Wehner seized that opportunity and made excellent use of it by offering the long list of failures, often using Obama’s own promises and criticisms (of Bush) as proof positive that Obama has been a disaster for America. Next question, Jonathan?

[BubbaBasher]

Only one question needs to be asked. Are we freer?

[Publius6961]

Bookmark

[skeeter]

Alter's challenge illustrates the irreconcilable gulf in the worldviews of progressives and the rest of society.

Their perspective of things is to Lewis Caroll what conservatives' is to Funk & Wagnalls.

[Milton Miteybad]

* Under Obama’s stewardship, we have lost 2.2 million jobs (and 900,000 full-time jobs in the last four months alone). He is now on track to have the worst jobs record of any president in the modern era.

We should point out that Obama managed to borrow and spend $838 billion in "stimulus" in 2009 with the net result being a loss of 2.2 MM jobs to date.

We probably could have lost all those jobs by doing nothing, and while we would still be 2.2 MM jobs in the hole, it wouldn't have cost us $838 billion in borrowed money.

So, it could be accurately said of the failed 2009 "stimulus," which cost $838 billion, that Obama is the chief architect of the absolute worst economic policy in the nation's history. With his ill-conceived and poorly-executed 2009 "stimulus," this clown managed to borrow and spend roughly $381,000 per job lost. Clearly, a humiliating failure and an ignominious defeat for Jonathan Alter's champion, B. Hussein Obama. And further, as a result of this incontrovertibly massive failure in judgment by B. Hussein Obama, we must conclude that he is the most inept, ill-prepared and incompetent President since James Buchanan.

QED, Mr. Alter.

[nhwingut]

That’s a good one. Even for libtard standards.

Prove how the Oakland Raiders sucked.... And don’t get all generalized in “disappointment.” I don’t want to hear about their 1-15 record or last ranked defense. I want to know how they suck.

LOL!

[faucetman]

Is this guy living in a cave? C’mon Man! What a dumb assertion. “EVERYONE” (picture in your mind Gary Oldman in “The Professional” SCREAMING) knows Obama is a failure. Everyone knows the many, many reasons why. Why should anyone waste their time proving to you (the one person in the entire world) that doesn't know this.

[mylife]

It’s the economy Alter!

[Publius6961]

The one critical (and permanent) negative change that I don't see mentioned... (?Winning The Future?)

In 1990 we had 6 million Local State & Federal government workers; now (2010) we have 38 million.

Redistributing the wealth sure has a lot of overhead!

[Jeff Chandler]

Well, to start, the rise of the oceans have not begun to slow and our planet has not begun to heal.

[genghis]

define failure
he has made more people dependent on the government and that seems like it was his goal
hence successful.
he has made foreign policy more random and chaotic and our enemies seem to be thriving that also seems to be a goal.
so if he wanted me to pray for the return of jimmy carter he has succeeded.

[muir_redwoods]

He has impoverished an unknown number of future generations by spending money we don't have and probably can't raise to pay back.

He has frightened business interests into destructive inaction by threatening all sorts of taxes and financial regulations. The debt mentioned above imply onerous taxation is not far off.

He has shaken confidence in the political process by forcing through congress unwanted, unneeded and unexplained legislative initiatives such as health care and Dodd-Frank regulations.

Unemployment has risen disastrously under his watch despite his guarantee that, if he spent the stimulus, it would not go above 8%

His foreign policies have undercut international respect for the US, compromised our soldiers in war theaters and, for some reason, involved us in Libya.

He has not led the US in any context with any success.

He is, at best, although this is wholly undocumented, an academic very far out of his depth.

There is more but that's enough wreckage for a dozen administrations

[Newtoidaho]

Why is the Zero such a poor, failed president?

Hmm, is this some sort of trick question?