Barack Obama obviously has not learned from Bill Clinton.
As the last Democrat to occupy the Oval Office (before Mr. Obama) was facing reelection, the Arkansas native remained above the fray. To be sure, the Democratic National Committee did run outside the major media markets attacking the the team of Dole-Gingrich; Mr. Clinton went about the business of governing. He worked with the Republican Congress to enact welfare reform. Yet, even before we entered the election year itself, the incumbent Democrat plunged into the campaign.
Perhaps, instead of being so combative, Mr. Obama would serve himself better by being presidential, not trying to go around the legislature, but by sitting down with congressional leaders and trying to work out compromises. Instead of making Congress the enemy, he would treat legislative leaders as his negotiating partners. And then, if he couldn’t reach compromises to his liking, he could attack them.
It seems, however, that the attacks have preceded (or supplanted) efforts at cooperation. “Based on what the president and his advisers have said and done in recent weeks,” Yuval Levin writes on the Corner at the National Review, the incumbent seems set on
. . . creating populist confrontations with Congress and then complaining that Washington is broken because Republicans won’t let the president have his way. That’s a strategy that tells the public that the current situation in Washington is untenable and change is needed. Is that not an odd way for a Democratic incumbent president (whose party also controls the Senate) to run against a Republican outsider? It first of all exacerbates the public’s mistrust of government, which tends to reinforce Republican policy proposals (since those generally aim to take power away from government) but to undermine Democratic ones (which generally aim to give more power to government). It also implies that President Obama is having trouble doing his job, which can’t be a great re-election theme.
Indeed. Levin looks at the paucity of the president’s proposals and asks “why does the president want to be re-elected? . . . What does he want to do with a second term? More of the same?”
Read the whole thing.
A community agitator is not geared for positive leadership. A community agitator’s whole sense of purpose is to rile up the masses to overthrow the existing order.
Obama can not fundamentally transform himself from agitator to inspiring leader. The role of inspiring leader takes on risk, the role of agitator does just fine voting “present.”
What’s not to understand? He is emulating the successful Harry Reid model from 2010:
– He’ll fire up his base with anti-capitalist rhetoric and anti-Democratic moves like “recess” appointments of radicals to key administration positions.
– He will demonize his opponent in a scorched Earth campaign supported by his fluffers in the MFM. This campaign won’t make Independents and Republicans vote for him, but will discourage and demoralize them, so they won’t turn out in numbers while his base will.
It is fair to point out that part of the reason this strategy worked for Reid is because Sharron Angle ran a terrible campaign and was abandoned by the party establishment. But we have no way of knowing if it would have worked against one of the Republican establishment candidates just as effectively.
It will be “…all Bush-43’s fault”, Obama “…inherited a mess”, and lots of business-bashing. No new real proposals and no reasons why Obama DESERVES a 2nd-term….just that he entitled to it.
Another key element of the Obama 2012 Campaign.. blatant, unapologetic lying.
even before we entered the election year itself, the incumbent Democrat plunged into the campaign?¨ I thought he started campaigning on January 20th of 2009.
President Obama basically has no re-election strategy, but he is using his community organizing techniques on a national level; when done this tends to backfire.
BHO identifies with the OCCUPY hippies.
No positive agenda, just complaints and attacks. Freeloaders, living rent free….
Gene: The Occupy leader in my city is a small business owner with several employees. Turned a profit in his first year. He’s just tired of corporatist policies that shift opportunities for people like him off to Asia and the like.
Also, he’s a trained investor who has seen the spoils of what moron Wall St. has done in the past several decades. He drives an expensive German car and he has no debt. Guess who ISN’T losing his job or income?
Yeah, that dirty freeloading hippie. I will bet you money that the home he owns is worth more per square foot than yours.
And it has granite countertops! (That he earned.) (I mean, of course, he had to renovate the kitchen. He doesn’t live in suburban trash.) But no, sir, it’s simply that he’s of a generation that didn’t drink the Reagan swill and had an opportunity to study these things for himself. When he looks at the “golden age of Reaganism” (which I define as the hilarious downfall of Lehman Bros, approximately), he sees an emperor, and he sees no clothes.
But go on bein’ bitter, dude. You probably got guns, god and religion to hold onto.
😉
Oh, that’s no surprise, Evan; the vast majority of OWS Obama Party activists and leaders are trust fund babies who live in mansions.
Your “leader” and others like him are merely typifying the usual tenets of OWS, which are as follows:
1) The methods by which we made our money are immoral, so no one else should ever be allowed to use them
2) We believe in forced redistribution of wealth from other people to us, but have no intention of redistributing our own.
Your leader is nothing atypical. He knows OWSers like yourself aren’t driven by actual grievances or privation, but mere irrational envy and jealousy that other people have more than you do and whatever other flavor of the protesting month (in your case, hating Republicans and religious beliefs). So he whips you up with talk of how awful other people are, how Wall Street is run by Christians and Republicans, how all of his competitors are evil and should be punished…….and then sits back and counts his profits on his granite countertops or the dashboard of his Mercedes.
He hasn’t innovated, produced a better product, or worked harder; he’s simply created a new twist on the old Chicago/Obama mob tactic of playing someone to torch your competitor’s store.
It’s crony capitalism on the local level. It’s no different than Barack Obama paying websites like Truth Wins Out to rant about evil Republicans and Wall Street and demand higher taxes while he sits back and collects stolen money from fellow Obama Party members who exempt themselves from paying. All Obama and your OWS leader need to do in your case is play on your hatred and envy of Republicans, Christians, and the like, and you’ll do what they want you to do while ignoring what they do.
Why should they bother being consistent in their principles when it’s so clear that their base, like you, don’t care what they do as long as you have an excuse to attack Republicans, anyone wealthier than you, and Christians?
Obama doesn’t know how to govern; all he knows how to do is campaign. And he’s very good at that. Perhaps he simply wants to stick to doing the only thing he can do well, in the hope that the country will forget he has no clue what to do with the office after he’s won the election.
@ #8:
I suspect that if you gave Evan a million chances, he could not begin to explain what in the world this sentence means.
The back story is that a small time entrepreneur with a few employees attached to his push cart has been enabled to drive a major, heavy duty status symbol with granite countertops and it farts Channel No. 5. Somehow, “corporatist policies” are forcing people like him (but not him) to shift to Asia. And the like (of Asia) meaning whatever that means. Uruguay?
Evan, I am led to believe from your comments elsewhere that you are a student of economics. So, I know you understand that in the United States we have a minimum wage, employer contributions to Social Security, workman’s compensation insurance, myriad EPA and OSHA requirements to be met, all manner of discrimination laws to be avoided and accounted for, and so forth. Other countries have “cheap” labor and few regulations to increase the cost of production. Furthermore, other countries can subsidize the labor costs as a very cheap way of encouraging low income employment rather than to shell out big money for welfare. (Think: China.) [Suppose you have a “useless, dowry-expense crushing girl child in India. Which is better: kill her or sell her off to prostitution or farm her out to near slave labor?]
Somehow, your robber baron friend has a found a niche business and beaten the economic realities of the times. Good on him. And, I would assume that he is a liberal, since he is your friend. But what I do not understand is your message.
Obama had two years of a lock on Congress and the White House to clean up “corporatist policies” and send this economy sailing into the future. Instead, he borrowed more money than all the Presidents from Washington through Clinton combined in just one term and threw a back crushing Obamacare scheme into the mix for good measure.
So, please, oh enlightened economics one, return to educate this wayward flock of boldly ignorant fools. Some of us can actually still learn.
We sit at your feet, oh masterful one. Enlighten us. Please, dear God, enlighten us.
Um, Evan, Lehman Brothers fell nearly two full decades after Reagan left office and as a result of policies ramped up approximately two years after his successor left office.