- Barack Obama is on track to have the most spectacularly
failed presidency since Woodrow Wilson.
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- 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 .
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- George HW Bush didn't fail as much as he was perceived
to have been too much of a patrician while being uncomfortable with his
more conservative allies; yet Bush Sr is still 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 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 Democrat party.
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- 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 WSJ put her finger on it - he is failing because
he has no understanding of the American people and may indeed loath 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 AT 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.
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- There is something else 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?
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- 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 his 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 to the majority
of Americans. We admire those presidents whose narrative not only touches
our own but who seem stronger, wiser and smarter than we are. Presidents
we admire are inspirational peers, even those whose politics don't align
exactly with our own. Teddy Roosevelt, FDR, Harry Truman, Ike, Reagan.
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- 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.
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- In the meantime while we've been struggling to take a
measurement of this man, he's dissed just about every one of us -- financial
people, energy producers, banks, insurance companies, 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."
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- 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 in
two more short years after that.
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