Aimless Obama
walks alone
By Michael
Goodwin [h/t David]
President Obama
has become a lone wolf, a stranger to his own government.
The reports are
not good, disturbing even. I have heard basically the same story four times in
the last 10 days, and the people doing the talking are in New York and
Washington and are spread across the political spectrum.
The gist is
this: President Obama has become a lone wolf, a stranger to his own government.
He talks mostly, and sometimes only, to friend and adviser Valerie Jarrett and
to David Axelrod, his political strategist.
Everybody else,
including members of his Cabinet, have little face time with him except for
brief meetings that serve as photo ops. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham
Clinton and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner both have complained, according to
people who have talked to them, that they are shut out of important
decisions.
The president’s
workdays are said to end early, often at 4 p.m. He usually has dinner in the
family residence with his wife and daughters, then retreats to a private office.
One person said he takes a stack of briefing books. Others aren’t sure what he
does.
If the reports
are accurate, and I believe they are, they paint a picture of an isolated man
trapped in a collapsing presidency. While there is no indication Obama is
walking the halls of the White House late at night, talking to the portraits of
former presidents, as Richard Nixon did during Watergate, the reports help
explain his odd public remarks.
Obama conceded
in one television interview recently that Americans are not “better off than
they were four years ago” and said in another that the nation had “gotten a
little soft.” Both smacked of a man who feels discouraged and alienated and
sparked comparisons to Jimmy Carter, never a good sign.
Blaming the
country is political heresy, of course, yet Obama is running out of scapegoats.
His allies rarely make affirmative arguments on his behalf anymore, limiting
themselves to making excuses for his failure. He and they attack Republicans,
George W. Bush, European leaders and Chinese currency manipulation -- and that
was just last week.
The blame game
isn’t much of a defense for Solyndra and “Fast and Furious,” the emerging twin
scandals that paint a picture of incompetence at best.
Obama himself is
spending his public time pushing a $450 billion “jobs” bill -- really another
stimulus in disguise -- that even Senate Democrats won’t support. He grimly
flogged it repeatedly at his Thursday press conference, even though snowballs in
hell have a better chance of survival.
If he cracked a
single smile at the hour-plus event, I missed it. He seems happy only on the
campaign trail, where the adoration of the crowd lifts his spirits.
When it comes to
getting America back on track to economic growth, he is running on vapors. Yet
he shows no inclination to adopt any ideas other than his own Big Government
grab. His itch for higher taxes verges on a fetish.
Harvey Golub,
former chairman of American Express, called the “jobs” bill an incoherent mess.
Writing in The Wall Street Journal, he said that among other flaws, the bill
includes an unheard of retroactive tax hike on the holders of municipal
bonds.
“Many of us have
suspected that economic illiterates were setting the economic policy of this
administration,” Golub wrote, adding that the bill “reveals a depth of
cluelessness that boggles the mind.”
The public
increasingly shares the sentiment. A new Quinnipiac polls finds that 55 percent
now disapprove of Obama’s job performance, with only 41 percent approving. A
mere 29 percent say the economy will improve if the president gets four more
years.
The election,
unfortunately, is nearly 13 months away.
The way Obama’s
behaving, by then we’ll all be talking to portraits of past presidents, asking
why this one turned out to be such a flop.
They doth
protest too much
Even as
desperate Pander-crats, including the president, continue to baby-talk the Wall
Street hooligans, some of whom have violently attacked police, Mayor Bloomberg
gets the point and tone just right.
“What they’re
trying to do is take the jobs away from people working in this city,” the mayor
told radio man John Gambling Friday. “And some of the labor unions, the
municipal unions that are participating, their salaries come from the taxes paid
by the people they are trying to vilify.”
Sanity also
comes from readers. Sheri Rosen said she works downtown, at 111 Broadway, and is
sick of the filth and mayhem.
“We work very
hard every day for not that much money,” she writes. “We don’t camp out at a
park and act like animals by urinating and stealing milk from the coffee vendors
that are also trying to make a living.”
She blasted
Council Speaker Christine Quinn and Comptroller John Liu for supporting the
demonstrators, saying, “True New Yorkers who work hard for their money won’t
forget this on Election Day.”
Reader Harold
Theurer sees another angle. Noting the passing of Steve Jobs, he wonders how
many protesters carrying Apple products understand how those gadgets came to
exist.
“What started
out as two men in a garage with ideas and passion would have been nothing more
than two guys in a garage with ideas and passion had it not been for an IPO on
Dec. 12, 1980, when Apple went public at $22 per share,” he writes.
“Big Bad Wall
Street raised $101 million for Mr. Jobs to expand his ideas, create jobs and
change the landscape of technology. The next time any of the Wall Street
occupiers makes an iTune purchase, it can be traced back to some Big Bad
Banker’s belief in Mr. Jobs and his company.”
Class
dismissed.
‘Apolitical’
Doublespeak
Future
historians looking for the tenor of our era could do worse than rummage through
New York Times editorials. They’ll find an archive of incredibly bad ideas and
exhibits of the liberal mindset that claims only conservatives have
politics.
Take a recent
piece on ObamaCare. After noting that the Supreme Court is likely to decide the
issue next year, the Times says, “The court must not let politics influence its
decision.” Then it goes on to demand the court support the law, saying the
individual mandate and “and all other provisions . . . are constitutional and
should be upheld.”
