Obama, the Mortal

[alienlovechild 75]

What happened to President Obama? His wax wings having melted, he is the man who fell to earth. What happened to bring his popularity down further than that of any new president in polling history save Gerald Ford (post-Nixon pardon)?

The conventional wisdom is that Obama made a tactical mistake by farming out his agenda to Congress and allowing himself to be pulled left by the doctrinaire liberals of the Democratic congressional leadership. But the idea of Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi pulling Obama left is quite ridiculous. Where do you think he came from, this friend of Chávista ex-terrorist William Ayers, of PLO apologist Rashid Khalidi, of racialist inciter Jeremiah Wright?

But forget the character witnesses. Just look at Obama's behavior as president, beginning with his first address to Congress. Unbidden, unforced and unpushed by the congressional leadership, Obama gave his most deeply felt vision of America, delivering the boldest social democratic manifesto ever issued by a U.S. president. In American politics, you can't get more left than that speech and still be on the playing field.

In a center-right country, that was problem enough. Obama then compounded it by vastly misreading his mandate. He assumed it was personal. This, after winning by a mere seven points in a year of true economic catastrophe, of an extraordinarily unpopular Republican incumbent, and of a politically weak and unsteady opponent. Nonetheless, Obama imagined that, as Fouad Ajami so brilliantly observed, he had won the kind of banana-republic plebiscite that grants caudillo-like authority to remake everything in one's own image.

Accordingly, Obama unveiled his plans for a grand makeover of the American system, animating that vision by enacting measure after measure that greatly enlarged state power, government spending and national debt. Not surprisingly, these measures engendered powerful popular skepticism that burst into tea-party town-hall resistance.

Obama's reaction to that resistance made things worse. Obama fancies himself tribune of the people, spokesman for the grass roots, harbinger of a new kind of politics from below that would upset the established lobbyist special-interest order of Washington. Yet faced with protests from a real grass-roots movement, his party and his supporters called it a mob -- misinformed, misled, irrational, angry, unhinged, bordering on racist. All this while the administration was cutting backroom deals with every manner of special interest -- from drug companies to auto unions to doctors -- in which favors worth billions were quietly and opaquely exchanged.

Things got worse still. With answers so slippery and implausible and, well, fishy, he began jeopardizing the most fundamental asset of any new president -- trust. You can't say that the system is totally broken and in need of radical reconstruction, but nothing will change for you; that Medicare is bankrupting the country, but $500 billion in cuts will have no effect on care; that you will expand coverage while reducing deficits -- and not inspire incredulity and mistrust. When ordinary citizens understand they are being played for fools, they bristle.

Let's be clear: This is a fall, not a collapse. He's not been repudiated or even defeated. He will likely regroup and pass some version of health insurance reform that will restore some of his clout and popularity.

But what has occurred -- irreversibly -- is this: He's become ordinary. The spell is broken. The charismatic conjurer of 2008 has shed his magic. He's regressed to the mean, tellingly expressed in poll numbers hovering at 50 percent.

For a man who only recently bred a cult, ordinariness is a great burden, and for his acolytes, a crushing disappointment. Obama has become a politician like others. And like other flailing presidents, he will try to salvage a cherished reform -- and his own standing -- with yet another prime-time speech.

But for the first time since election night in Grant Park, he will appear in the most unfamiliar of guises -- mere mortal, a treacherous transformation to which a man of Obama's supreme self-regard may never adapt.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...0302859_pf.html

[Mags 112]

PLEASE MAKE IT STOP!

[I AM NOT THAT GUY 5,715]

PLEASE MAKE IT STOP!

poll

[thepizzadude 26]

Say it isn't so........oh noes!

[Mr. Big Dog 10,747]

What happened to bring his popularity down further than that of any new president in polling history save Gerald Ford (post-Nixon pardon)?

I don't know - the fact that he inherited the worst economy since FDR, perhaps?

[alienlovechild 75]

I don't know - the fact that he inherited the worst economy since FDR, perhaps?

And made it worse by most economic measures. The deficit rose and the unemployment as it hit record levels under a Democratic Congress and President. Obama is running out of people to blame but not money to spend.

It seems odd now but voters really expected Obama to be a moderate and be able to craft policies for economic growth. Even if he inherited problems, if he can't do better than this, he needs to go by 2012.

[Mr. Big Dog 10,747]

I don't know - the fact that he inherited the worst economy since FDR, perhaps?

And made it worse by most economic measures. The deficit rose and the unemployment as it hit record levels under a Democratic Congress and President. Obama is running out of people to blame but not money to spend.

It seems odd now but voters really expected Obama to be a moderate and be able to craft policies for economic growth. Even if he inherited problems, if he can't do better than this, he needs to go by 2012.

He did? How?

[GabiandVi 34]

I'm beginning to think it is all more simple than most people think. I keep going back to what my Left-of-Left Scottish/Kiwi friend living in China said during the early days of the campaign. He SHOCKED me when he said he could not support Obama. (Forget that he is not an American and cannot vote, and actually does not like America very much. Most non-Americans I know were very quick to weigh in and some actually felt they should have the right to vote in our election.)

He said that Obama did not have any experience that would prepare him to be in "the most powerful position in the world," and he predicted Obama would fail through his arrogance, a natural characteristic of his youth.

He supported Clinton, but if it came down to Obama vs. McCain, he said he might have to support McCain. (I moved before it came to that and I never asked him how he felt after it actually came to that.) This guy was an unapologetic communist. I sort of doubt he would have actually voted for McCain if he had the chance to vote, but I keep remembering what he said.

[alienlovechild 75]

Most non-Americans I know were very quick to weigh in and some actually felt they should have the right to vote in our election.

That's what I've seen and heard over the years. They see the U.S. through the eyes of their own countries experience. The real fools are the ones who've never been to the U.S. but claim to know more about America than any American. Those that have been to America have a more realistic image of the good and bad things about this country.

[cdneh 3,112]

What happened to bring his popularity down further than that of any new president in polling history save Gerald Ford (post-Nixon pardon)?

I don't know - the fact that he inherited the worst economy since FDR, perhaps?

No. He has done a lot on his own to create the mess he is in. He spends like a drunken sailor, and it's done no good.

[Mr. Big Dog 10,747]

What happened to bring his popularity down further than that of any new president in polling history save Gerald Ford (post-Nixon pardon)?

I don't know - the fact that he inherited the worst economy since FDR, perhaps?

No. He has done a lot on his own to create the mess he is in. He spends like a drunken sailor, and it's done no good.

He does? I thought Congress passed the spending bills. That aside, it hasn't done any good? What would the economy and the job market look like today without the stimulus package? What financial institutions would still be around today? You got specifics on that scenario? Please share.

[spookyturtle 9,466]

PLEASE MAKE IT STOP!

Ban them.

[Ban Hammer 13,643]

What happened to bring his popularity down further than that of any new president in polling history save Gerald Ford (post-Nixon pardon)?

I don't know - the fact that he inherited the worst economy since FDR, perhaps?

No. He has done a lot on his own to create the mess he is in. He spends like a drunken sailor, and it's done no good.

He does? I thought Congress passed the spending bills. That aside, it hasn't done any good? What would the economy and the job market look like today without the stimulus package? What financial institutions would still be around today? You got specifics on that scenario? Please share.

oh so now it's not the president's fault. whereas before everything was bush's fault because he was the president.

[I AM NOT THAT GUY 5,715]

What happened to bring his popularity down further than that of any new president in polling history save Gerald Ford (post-Nixon pardon)?

I don't know - the fact that he inherited the worst economy since FDR, perhaps?

No. He has done a lot on his own to create the mess he is in. He spends like a drunken sailor, and it's done no good.

He does? I thought Congress passed the spending bills. That aside, it hasn't done any good? What would the economy and the job market look like today without the stimulus package? What financial institutions would still be around today? You got specifics on that scenario? Please share.

oh so now it's not the president's fault. whereas before everything was bush's fault because he was the president.

Timing is everything.

[Mr. Big Dog 10,747]

What happened to bring his popularity down further than that of any new president in polling history save Gerald Ford (post-Nixon pardon)?

I don't know - the fact that he inherited the worst economy since FDR, perhaps?

No. He has done a lot on his own to create the mess he is in. He spends like a drunken sailor, and it's done no good.

He does? I thought Congress passed the spending bills. That aside, it hasn't done any good? What would the economy and the job market look like today without the stimulus package? What financial institutions would still be around today? You got specifics on that scenario? Please share.

oh so now it's not the president's fault. whereas before everything was bush's fault because he was the president.

I'm still waiting to hear what exactly Obama did to make the economy worse than what he inherited. Remember that he inherited an economy that was about to fall off a cliff. It hasn't. So, what is it that he did that made the economy worse? And what should have been done to make it better?

Edited September 6, 2009 by Mr. Big Dog