To: FReepers; everyone; All
Posted on 11/13/2011 3:06:39 PM PST by Victor
A year out from the election finds President Obama in parlous political circumstances. The poor economy he inherited has been very slow to recover, with unemployment stuck above 9% and long-term unemployment at record post-war levels. The housing sector, where most people’s personal wealth is concentrated, remains mired in deep recession.
Although the President had overwhelming majorities in both houses of Congress in his first two years, he has only two major legislative achievements to his credit: the stimulus bill and Obamacare. But the first is widely perceived as both a total failure — the administration said it would keep unemployment under 8% — and motivated more by politics than economics. Its $800 billion was directed towards public service union members and liberal causes, such as “green energy,” rather than economic recovery.
Meanwhile, Obamacare remains deeply unpopular with the general public and is headed for the Supreme Court, which could well find its key provision unconstitutional next summer, just as the election gets into high gear.
Budget deficits have soared during the Obama years, with three trillion-dollar-plus deficits in a row. This has caused the national debt to swell to a level that, relative to GDP, has not been seen since the end of World War II. For the first time ever, the United States has lost its AAA credit rating, a deep embarrassment for the country and thus the administration.
Not surprisingly under these circumstances, the President’s approval ratings have been in sharp decline, with some of his key supporting groups — such as the youth vote — abandoning him. No recent President has been re-elected with unemployment above 7.8%, and that was in 1984, when unemployment was falling rapidly as a major economic boom accelerated.
Few Presidents in modern times have had as weak a hand to play as they sought re-election. Even fewer have won re-election with such a hand.
How did this come about? How did the man who three years ago won a higher percentage of both the popular and electoral vote than any Democratic presidential candidate since Lyndon Johnson’s landslide almost 50 years ago find himself fighting uphill odds to keep the White House?
The answer to that lies in the peculiar circumstances of the 2008 election and in the personality of Barack Obama.
In 2008, the American electorate was thoroughly fed up with both the Bush administration and the Republican Party, which had lost its majorities in Congress in 2006 for the first time in 12 years. The Republican field of presidential candidates in 2008 was a relatively weak one, with the eventual winner, Sen. John McCain of Arizona, widely perceived as too old for a job that clearly called for a new approach to meet new problems.
Obama, in contrast, seemed like a breath of fresh air. He was only 47 years old, personable, articulate and the first African-American to be a candidate for a major-party nomination with a serious chance of winning. His biggest opposition was Sen. Hillary Clinton, the first woman candidate with a serious chance of winning. But she was already well known to the American people, having been First Lady for eight years, and necessarily carried a lot of baggage from her husband’s administration.
Obama, in contrast, was a blank slate. He had only served a few years in the Illinois State Senate, where his record was thin (he voted “present” a number of times rather than take a stand on an issue), and less than a single term in the U.S. Senate, where his record was even thinner. This allowed people to project on to Obama what they wanted to see, an immense advantage in politics.
The Obama campaign used it to the fullest. He cultivated an image of a new kind of president, one who would cut through the old Washington merry-go-round of partisan bickering and special-interest pandering. He would be post-partisan, a President who would throw the special-interest moneychangers out of the temple of the nation’s capital. This tapped into the public’s obvious yearning for serious change in how Washington worked.
Perhaps his biggest advantage in the 2008 election was that the mainstream media, to put it bluntly, fell in love with Obama. This media infatuation was so obvious that, as the Democratic primary contest still raged, “Saturday Night Live” satirized it with a mock debate. The first question put to “Obama” was, “Are you comfortable? Would you like a pillow?” Evan Thomas of Newsweek called Obama “a sort of god.” Chris Matthews of MSNBC admitted that Obama caused a tingle to run up his leg.
And, for the first time ever, the presidential election was conducted in the midst of a full-blown financial crisis, in which Obama came across as cool and collected while McCain seemed to flounder and look a bit foolish.
But running for President and being President are two entirely separate matters. Once in the White House a new Obama emerged, one quite different from the post-partisan, special-interest-bashing candidate. What appeared instead was a hyper-partisan liberal ideologue who attended to his special interests, such as labor unions, as assiduously as any other Washington politician.
An arrogance and rigidity that had not been seen in the candidate became increasingly evident in the President. In the State of the Union speech in January 2010, he publicly criticized the Supreme Court — many of whose members were sitting in front of him — for one of its decisions, an unprecedented action.
He made little if any attempt to reach across the aisle for Republican support. (“I won the election” he bluntly told Rep. Paul Ryan as the latter tried to negotiate regarding Obamacare.) As a result both his major pieces of legislation passed with hardly any Republican votes in either house, and partisan rancor deepened dramatically.
A groundswell of opposition to the Obama administration’s big spending ways also quickly emerged and became known as the Tea Party. But Obama largely ignored it.
Republican candidates did very well in the off-year election of 2009, winning the governorships in both New Jersey and Virginia with control-the-spending campaigns. A Republican even won the special election to fill the Senate seat of Democratic icon Ted Kennedy in deep-blue Massachusetts in January, 2010, despite Obama’s campaigning for the Democratic candidate.
Still, Obama made few if any political adjustments. Then in November, 2010, a tidal wave election gave decisive control of the House back to the Republicans and added seven Senate seats to their column, while Republicans won races for governor and state legislative seats across the country.
When President Bill Clinton took a shellacking in the 1994 midterm election, he quickly tacked to the center and easily won re-election in 1996. Obama admitted he had taken a shellacking — he even used the word — but seemed no more willing to change his ways than before. His latest plan to stimulate the economy is little different than his first one two-and-a-half years ago and has no chance of being enacted. He has made only grudging attempts to negotiate with the Republicans who now control the House.
Presidents have a great ability to recover politically. And luck may turn Obama’s way. The economy may begin a more robust recovery. The Republicans may nominate another weak candidate. The Supreme Court may uphold Obamacare (or avoid making a decision before the election).
But, as in personal life, the faster one falls in love politically, the faster one is likely to fall out of love. And once gone, sudden love is rarely rekindled. Candidate Obama was like a handsome, attentive suitor. President Obama is like a husband who insists on having his way.
That is Barack Obama’s biggest problem as he seeks re-election.
There is hope.....
No kidding!! I doubt that he was actually the man that the Democrats voted for! Now lately, I might have to change my mind since it seems that the Marxists and Socialists seem to have risen to the top of the Democratic pile.
Liberals are a thing of the past!
Well, mainly because news reporters like you lied, and lied, and covered up, and ignored all the facts about this Communist Muslim illegal alien whom you helped to put into the White House.
That’s because he’s not a man in any sense of the word.
How anybody could have missed it is beyond me.
Obama is most definitely the man they voted for. They simply did not really LISTEN to him.
Nonsense. Those who wanted to see could see clearly what he is.
This is just an attempt to exculpate himself from the guilt of having helped elect 0. “We didn’t know! He was a blank slate - how could we know what he was?” Yeah, right.
Exactly. He’s the man I heard running for office.
Bfl.
This article is a start. But Mr. Gordon doesn’t cover half of the reasons he won. The MSM didn’t just “fall in love with Obama.” They were complicit in covering up his radical communist past and agenda, his relationships with known terrorists and communists, his racial animosity, his voting record, his dubious parentage, his handlers, his mysterious admittance to premier educational institutions, his lack of financial resources to pay for his education, his complete lack of any real-world work experience, his growing up in marxist-dominated Indonesia, and his lack of Constitutionally required NBC eligibility to run for office. And the “full-blown financial crisis” didn’t just magically happen. It was most likely caused by his patrons to get him elected.
He's a fictitious character created by Barry Soetoro.
The Forrest Gump Effect.
50% of Americans are average intelligence or above and 50% are average and below.
Democrats got a majority of the below average.
The meat-heads who voted for him got exactly what they deserved. I would not be sympathetic if every person who voted for the dumba** lost their job and their house. Screw them.
This article is an excellent summation of the entire Obama phenomenon up until now.
I saw this a few places today but this is the first time I’ve read it.
Thanks for posting this. John Steele Gordon really nails it to the wall.
One of the most shocking things I REMEMBER hearing him say had to do with the price of electricity SKYROCKETING (due to his plans). The press ignored it. No one questioned it among the press or among those who voted for him.
Yes, he is!
“Let they who have eyes see.”
The voters are responsible for ignoring his history and his writing, combined with the writings he intentionally withheld.
PS- good on Gordon for recounting that SNL skit. It was very funny and spot on.
WRONG, Mr. J Steele Gordon. He is EXACTLY what he said he was. A radical leftist, with a strong penchant for Marxist Socialism. Just because you were not paying attention to his themes, please don’t include us in your self-medicating idolatry of “The One”.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.