Posted on 06/08/2014 8:12:08 PM PDT by neverdem
It wasnt supposed to be like this.
Less than two years after voters gave President Barack Obama a strong mandate for a second term, the White House is struggling against perceptions that it is losing its grip.
At home, the bungled rollout of the Obamacare website and the shocking revelations about an entrenched culture of incompetence and fraud in the VA have undercut faith in the Presidents managerial competency.
Abroad, a surging Russia, an aggressive China, a war torn Middle East and a resurgent terror network are putting his foreign policy credentials to the test. With the GOP hoping to seize control of the Senate in Novembers midterm elections, and the inevitable decline in presidential power that occurs as second term presidents move toward lame-duck status, Obama risks being sidelined and marginalized for the remaining two years of his term.
Last weeks tempest over the Bergdahl exchange seemed to roll all the Presidents troubles together into a single storm. The decision to free five Taliban fighters from Guantanamo in exchange for an American soldier with a complicated past energized the Presidents opponents, befuddled and angered important Congressional allies, and renewed questions about the political instincts of the President and his closest aides. The White House apparently thought that the release would be a moment of national unity and celebration and arranged for Sgt. Bergdahls parents to meet Obama in a highly publicized Rose Garden ceremony that now looks like a huge political blunder.
Its been a long and bumpy road to this point. Few American presidents came into office viewed with so much optimism and hope. Obama was swept and re-swept into office with a clear expectation that being smart or at least not being stupid would be enough to mend fences around the globe and at home. Things arent so cheery now, and not being George W. Bush may not, it appears, be sufficient.
Obama is not, however, prepared to pick up his toys and go home. Stymied in Congress, where a coalition of Republicans and red state Democrats have effectively blocked his major initiatives in both the House and the Senate, the President is determined to use his executive powers to carve out a legacy whether Congress likes it or not. The new EPA regulations to cut CO2 levels from power generators and his decision to sidestep Congress on the release of five Taliban prisoners at Guantanamo in exchange for Sergeant Bergdahl show a White House anything but resigned to the prospect of presidential decline.
In both foreign and domestic affairs, Obama has plenty of executive authority to use. Moreover, the signature accomplishment of his first term, the ACA health care law, is potentially the most significant piece of domestic legislation since the 1960s and was written to give the executive branch the power to redesign much of the American health system as the Presidents appointees in the federal bureaucracy set about implementing the law. The Dodd-Frank Act, intended to stabilize Wall Street and prevent another 2008 style financial crisis, gave the executive branch broad authority to re-regulate the financial sector.
Why, then, does a feisty President with more power than any of his peacetime predecessors, one who is determined to use those powers to the max, look so much a victim of events he cant control?
It isnt for lack of ambition; Obama aspires to be a transformational leader at home and abroad. The ACA attempts to redesign an industry that accounts for 17.2 % of GDP. The EPAs new regulations cover 66% of the countrys energy production. Overseas, hes picked goals like getting a global climate treaty, destroying Al-Qaeda, democratizing the Arab world, eliminating nuclear weapons and achieving détente with Iran.
These are big goals; achieving them would give Obama a significant place in the history books. But theres a catch; large and complex projects are hard to carry out, and the President seems to consistently underestimate the difficulties in turning compelling visions into practical programs. As a result, he now finds himself haunted by goals and expectations he set for himself, caught in a gap between promise and performance that has proved unexpectedly hard to close.
The implementation of the ACA was problematic in ways that go far beyond the famously awful website. While a substantial number of people have gotten access to health insurance thanks to the law, the implementation challenges remain epic and the public still isnt fully behind the new system. Many of the laws provisions have already been suspended, amended, and reinterpreted so many times that it is now probable the President will leave office without being able to roll the whole law out as projected. Even government accountants have given up figuring out what the law means or how it will work: this week, the CBO stated that it was henceforth impossible to score Obamacare.
Meanwhile, the problems at the Veterans Administration problems candidate Obama vowed to fix back in 2008 erupted last month in a scandal that 79% of Americans blame at least in part on Obamas management. A shock poll in The Washington Post showed 48% of Americans now think that President George W. Bush was better at getting things done than his replacement-compared with 42% who think the opposite.
Meanwhile, Presidents Obamas repeated calls for gun control legislation and immigration reform have fallen flat.
Overseas, the gap between promise and accomplishment is, if anything, more daunting. Early in his first term Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in a decision that struck even his most ardent admirers as premature; there isnt much talk today of a repeat visit to Oslo.
Not since the end of the Cold War has an American president faced this much disorder and trouble in the world. The reset with Russia ended with the attack on Crimea. The Arab Spring has foundered in chaos, dictatorship and war. The Presidents declaration that Assad must go has proved as hollow as his demand that Syria cease chemical warfare attacks on its citizens. Al-Qaeda and related jihadist groups are active and growing from West Africa through Central Asia; in some ways the terror threat today is greater than ever before. The war in Afghanistan, a war that candidate Obama vowed to win, is sputtering inconclusively toward a less than stellar close. An increasingly feisty China is challenging the United States and its allies, and North Korea grinds grimly ahead with its nuclear program.
Once again, the President seems to have underestimated how much effort would be required to achieve the goals he set out. He clearly underestimated the difficulties of building a stable and businesslike relationship with Russia and was shocked and surprised at Putins attack on Ukraine. He underestimated the difficulty of getting the Israelis and Palestinians to reach a peace agreement, overestimated the strength of the democratic forces in Egypt, and seems not to have fully understood the difficulties in winning the Afghan war until after he committed American troops to a surge. His administration has also seriously underestimated Chinas readiness to oppose American policy in the Pacific; the South and East China seas are becoming more dangerous and more militarized by the day.
With 30 months to go, Obama still may have a chance to regain control of both the domestic and international agendas, but to do that hes going to have to change his approach. He needs to focus on the nitty-gritty, day-to-day business of governing; six years into his administration, the public is fed up with promises and hungry for concrete accomplishments.
President Obama needs to show that he knows how to get things done, or increasingly the world will move on as if he wasnt there.
Mead is the James Clarke Chace Professor of Foreign Policy and the Humanities at Bard College, and edits the American Interest Online. Follow him on Twitter @WRMEAD
The guy is a trip.
How did he get elected on popular support that 78%/95% of the populous were against homo marriage and within 6 years he has it instituted across the land and has popular support for it?
This guy is a trip
That I wish I was not on.
Do you believe in mass hallucination? Svengalis? Charismatics?
bkmk
5 Al Queda hardcore for a deserter.
Give Obama a parade /s
He did get us bin ladens head, but oh no... no one ever saw the evidence.
DNesh DSouza is currently in jail.
Coincidence?
I think not.
Don’t forget Americorp and Gerald Walpin.
no, Dinesh is not in jail, facing a possible sentence, but he was on Howie Carr this week.
He is and has been a political target of Zero’s, he will likely face a prison sentence but now that his trial is over, his “voice” is stronger once again.
My mistake, but he is being targeted.
That should frighten us all.
Is Barak Obama a Manchurian Marxist or merely a narcissist on the make?
Every patriotic American should hope that the essential Barack Obama is, as the author suggests, a narcissistic redo of Bill Clinton because the alternative means that we have leftist ideologue in the most powerful position in the world whose motives border on treason. There is a third possibility, namely the Barak Obama is merely what he shows the world that he is, a left of center liberal with conventional notions that big government is needed to solve big problems.
In arguing for the Bill Clinton model, the author argues entirely by analogy. Argument by analogy may be persuasive but it is not cogent. To count up the parallels between the two biographies and conclude that they are both narcissists and will govern according to the same mold because they come from broken homes or because of their wives are lawyers is just fatuous. The argument has to be, they are this kind of men because they came from this kind of broken home and because they are this kind of men they will govern this way. Their broken homes make them narcissists and, because they are narcissist, they will govern as opportunists.
The problem with this kind of argument by analogy is that it is simply unscientific. Many men come from broken homes, endure similar biographies as these two, and do not become narcissists. Take a look at Winston Churchill's background, it would psychologically scar anybody, it might have made him solipsistic, but he did not govern that way. Abraham Lincoln's youth of deprivation and isolation, not to mention his relationship with his father, would lead one to suppose he should be counted a narcissist. But he was not and he certainly did not govern that way. Each man is rightly revered for his courage against all odds-hardly the characteristic of a narcissist.
This business of psychoanalyzing politicians is treacherous. When done by analogy it is entirely unpersuasive. It smacks of Rush Limbaugh's satirizing the numerology of Louis Farrakhan. I think it is is far more productive to get out of these swamps and look at what the subject actually does and says.
Here is where this business gets Kafka-like. If Barak Obama truly is narcissistic, it is pointless to look at anything he says because he is by definition a consummate liar and a deft manipulator. Certainly no one would dispute the truth of that as it applies to Bill Clinton; not even leftist Joe Klein who caught it early on when he wrote, anonymously, Primary Colors which is a paen of grudging admiration for the master manipulator even as he manipulated the author. A narcissist who denies his narcissism is merely playing out his neurosis.
The law has a presumption which might be of use here. When a party makes an admission against his own interest that admission is thought to be reliable. So if Barak Obama tells us that he is not a socialist, the denial is not worth much and would not be worth much even if he were not a narcissist. But when Barak Obama tells Joe the Plummer in an unguarded moment that the nation's wealth should be redistributed, that is an admission against his interest in appearing to be centrist and it is highly credible. Likewise his admission that higher taxes do not increase revenues but are nevertheless desirable because they redistribute wealth, should be regarded as very revealing.
Of course the safest method of analysis is to ignore what the candidates say on their own behalf and look at what the hell they do. Obama's biography betrays at every turn that he is a Manchurian Marxist. His profound associations have been with communists from his mentor Frank Marshall Davis to William Ayres. He made another admission against interest in his biography when he admitted that he associated with Marxists on campus. His associations include long and intimate attachment to the Black Liberation Theology preacher, Rev. Wright. This is simply a black face on Marxism.
His record in the Illinois Senate and in the United States Senate as an extreme leftist confirms his biography. Since entering the Oval Office I know of nothing that I can think of domestically that President Barak Obama has done which is not consistent with the thesis that he is a Marxist. His record on foreign affairs is more mixed and less conclusive but I think that if one regards his apparent moves to the right in, for example, Afghanistan as moves to protect his own existing power rather than ideological shifts to the right, the Marxist model still fits. In other words, American impotence abroad is one thing if one is a leftist seeking power and quite another thing if one is a leftist already in power.
I think the real question is how committed a Marxist is Barak Obama? Is he so rabid an acolyte of the Saul Alinsky School that he will actively contrive a crisis to seize ultimate power? Or will he will he merely govern on the left but seize an opportunity only if circumstances serendipitously offer?
In other words, so long as we continue as we are I think our representative democracy will survive Obama. My fear is that we will have a profound financial crash with huge unemployment numbers; or we will experience a wave of the Weimar Republic like inflation which destroys virtually every institution; or we sustain a severe or series of severe terrorist strikes; or there is an atomic attack somewhere in the world; or the Iranians or some other crazies, possibly possessed of the bomb, possibly in league with Russia and/or Venezuela, manage to shut off the world supply of oil; or there are assassinations in America.
An event like one of these could be the occasion for Obama to seize ultimate power. I believe he is psychologically prepared to do so but I cannot be sure. If he were to do so, the grab would be rationalized as a move to save the country and an opportunity to finally put the country right. I believe he is psychologically ready to do so because he is a leftist and a God player and an acolyte of Saul Alinsky. This is what the Frankfurt School and the Alinsky School have been striving for without respite for decades.
It is hard to believe that if Obama is offered the ultimate prize that he would walk away like Cincinnatus or Washington.
“It wasnt supposed to be like this.”
____________________________________
Like what? Obama has gotten everything he wanted...and more!
We all know this guy is a Communist sympathizer that was raised a rich white boy.
He is truly a chameleon and turning the worm from the inside.
If you knew what I know about how democrats operate in courthouses when they hold office or positions, at election precincts and in their own conventions you would understand they’ve simply brought their local thug like behavior to a national level and you would never trust a democrat controlled election result again. They’ll lie, cheat & steal to win, total scum. I’d be surprised if he actually even got 20% of the vote in reality but we’ll never know as we now live in a banana republic controlled by mafia-esque charlatans. These are the same people who assured us character isn’t important in a president. The only character traits they appreciate are defects of character.
Absolutely! Never kid yourself about the enemy
I have seen it from the beginning and have suffered for opening my yap in public,
Obama is not a stupid man, despite popular opinion here.
He is formidable foe.
Time to us go a bit dark ourselves and give the old boy a dose.
Yep, they’re an ugly and evil lot. You know the enemy well.
The notion that Obama has no legacy and that he has been a disaster is one of the best tactics we have left at the moment, but this guy legions in the MSM are still strong.
Last thing we need in this world is for Obama to hang around like a bad penny for the rest of our lives.
He might be getting smaller and smaller but he is getting more powerful by the moment and there is nothing stopping him.
First and Last - but hes only half black anyway so there’s the loophole His mother was a white communist campus slut.
He is formidable foe.
I absolutely agree with you. We on FreeRepublic who have insisted on dismissing Obama as a Jimmy Carter incompetent have done the conservative movement a disservice. The man is not incompetent, he is a radical ideologue possessed of a power of persuasion typical of narcissists and an unremitting commitment to his egotistical view of his role in the world and the idea that he has not just special role but a special truth.
By painting Obama as an incompetent, we in effect excuse his Machiavellian actions. It diverts the people from confronting the truth and the danger which he represents to the nation.
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