In the past few weeks, Democrats and their allies in the mainstream media have begun to question their assumption that Barack Obama, this most “remarkable man” would end the acrimonious politics which defined the last years of the previous century and the first years of the current one.  Excavating and building, in his words, “upon those shared understandings that pull us together as Americans“, he would craft a “new kind of politics.”

Maybe some are finally beginning to realize that the divine image they had of the Chicago Democrat (like the demonic one they had of his predecessor) was based not on his actual accomplishments, but their own eager imagination.  If this guy were such an agent of change, why hadn’t he done anything to reform the notorious political machine in his Illinois hometown?

In his second book, Barack Obama acknowledged that he served “as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views.”  And project they did.  So, bewitched were they by his rhetoric, that they gave short shrift to his record as Drew Westen acknowledged in Sunday’s New York Times:

Those of us who were bewitched by his eloquence on the campaign trail chose to ignore some disquieting aspects of his biography: that he had accomplished very little before he ran for president, having never run a business or a state; that he had a singularly unremarkable career as a law professor, publishing nothing in 12 years at the University of Chicago other than an autobiography . . . .

Via Powerline.

If he does indeed have those qualities about which lefties once waxed eloquent, he has the chance now to show them.  Instead of engaging in pointed partisan attacks on his opponents and fixing his sights on next year’s presidential contest, he should focus on the task at hand, working to effect real reform and craft a budget compromise that can pass a Republican House and Democratic Senate. (more…)

Only in the nation’s capital does president enjoy an approval rating above 60%. In Maryland, the state with a high percentage of residents who work in Washington, D.C., 59% approve of the president’s job.

Seems that while Americans who pay to keep the government running are becoming increasingly disenchanted with President Obama while the governing class is quite satisfied with his performance in office.

Don’t think this was the kind of change Americans voted for in 2008.

Via James Pethokoukis at Reuters.com:

From Goldman Sachs today: We have lowered our forecast for US real GDP growth further and now expect real GDP to grow just 2%-2½% through the end of 2012. Our forecast for annual average GDP growth has fallen to 1.7% in 2011 (from 1.8%) and to 2.1% in 2012 (from 3.0%). Since this pace is slightly below the US economy’s potential, we now expect the unemployment rate to be at 9¼% by the end of 2012, slightly above the current level.

2. Even our new forecast is subject to meaningful downside risk. We now see a one-in-three risk of renewed recession, mostly concentrated in the next 6-9 months. There are three specific issues that concern us. First, a worsening of the European financial crisis, and a failure of European policymakers to respond adequately, could lead to a further tightening of financial conditions and credit availability, which would worsen the economic outlook globally. Second, our forecast assumes that the payroll tax cut—currently scheduled to expire at the end of 2011—is extended for another year, but if that failed to happen the fiscal drag in early 2012 would increase significantly. Third, increases in the US unemployment rate have historically had a tendency to feed on themselves, and this could happen again.

Pethokoukis makes this comparison to the 1980 & 1984 elections:

The consensus used to be that President Obama might be OK if the jobless rate fell below 8 percent by Election Day.  That seems increasingly unlikely. The economy is, at best, in slow-growth mode, just churning and churning, creating few jobs.  Comparisons to President Reagan’s 1984 “Morning in America” campaign are looking ever-more ridiculous.  Under Reagan’s tax-cut driven recovery, unemployment fell from 10.8 percent in December 1982 to 7.2 percent by Election Day as the economy grew 4.5 percent in 1983 and 7.2 percent in 1984. In fact,  Jimmy Carter’s 1980 campaign might be the better comparison. The unemployment rate jumped from 6.0 percent in December 1979 to 7.5 percent on Election Day 1980 as the economy shrank 0.3 percent.

All I know is that outside of the 4% unemployment rate of the DC Beltway, it is more like Mourning In America under the Obama regime.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

On Tuesday, I linked the closing question of Stephen Green’s insightful post on the Obama administration, but the beginning of that post also merits your attention (as does the middle).  He used Steve McCann’ thoughtful piece at American Thinker, linking the president’s behavior in the debt ceiling debate to his overall failure of leadership, as his jumping-off point.

McCann contends that

Barack Obama’s only interest in the debt ceiling debate was to raise the borrowing limit sufficiently to get by the next election, and as a cudgel to denigrate the Republicans. His concern was not for the American people and the impact of overwhelming national debt, nor an impending and inevitable credit downgrade. Rather, he was determined that raising the debt ceiling would not become an issue during the presidential campaign. . . .

The destruction wrought by the nearly $5.5 Trillion (more than a third of the total debt of a nation 222 years old) he will have added to the nation’s balance sheet by the end of his term was immaterial, thus no detailed plan was forthcoming from the White House, and no lie or accusation aimed at the opposition was too absurd to tell.

The Democrat has, McCann observes, “abdicated all responsibility to the Congress, in particular the House of Representatives, which has little choice but to assume a role they are not structured to do: lead the country as best they can until November 2012.”  Indeed, Obama been doing that since the dawn of his administration where he let congressional Democrats draft the “stimulus” as they would later write the health care overhaul.

Seems the election of a Republican House threw a wrench into his plans of governance.   (more…)

I’d always wondered if, in 2008, Barack Obama and his political team were not as smart politically as they were lucky.  He got one fundamental thing right as he launched his campaign now more than four years ago; people wanted “change.”  And he had an organization.

In short, he had the right theme at the right time with the right organization.  But, his campaign seemed to flounder when faced with a tough offensive, the Hillary campaign when she found her second wind in the late primaries and the bounce the McCain campaign got with the Palin pick (until the media helped destroyed that accomplished Alaska reformer).

Even conservatives wanted “change.”  Conservative pundits, bloggers and activists, while (generally) genuinely liking George W. Bush and grateful for his leadership in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 as well as for his determination to win the war in Iraq, regretted that that good man didn’t do enough to hold the line on federal spending, that he failed to use his political capital to eliminate unnecessary federal programs — and to deregulate our economy.

Obama seized that mantra of change (that even conservatives hoped for) and won, even drawing in even the votes of some disgruntled conservatives and libertarians.

Now, Peggy Noonan observes that the Democrat is not good at politics*, “and he isn’t good at politics because he doesn’t really get people.”  People don’t really love him, she claims.  He’s better at tearing down than building up:

The fact is, he’s good at dismantling. He’s good at critiquing. He’s good at not being the last guy, the one you didn’t like. But he’s not good at building, creating, calling into being. He was good at summoning hope, but he’s not good at directing it and turning it into something concrete that answers a broad public desire. (more…)

Just eight days before the default deadline, the president has finally endorsed a plan to raise the debt limit, signing on to “debt-ceiling proposal by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid that would cut federal deficits by $2.7 trillion and increase the federal borrowing limit through 2012.”

House Speaker John Boehner, however, finds that the plan is “full of gimmicks” and “fails to change” the federal “spending structure” nor does it “deal with entitlements.” Now that both sides have plans, will the president blame Republicans for intransigence if they fail to support it? House Republicans have already compromised, with leading members of the GOP caucus denouncing his latest plan.

It seems that for this president compromise means agreeing with him.

Will the president tonight lash out at Republicans for failing to walk in lock-step with him (and call that failure “intransigence”) or will he commend them for putting forward several plans to raise the debt limit while cutting spending?  His recent history of public statements on the debt crisis suggests the former.  As Peter Wehner wrote about the Democrat’s most recent such statement:

It’s been clear to some of us for a while that Barack Obama is a man of uncommon self-admiration, quite thin-skinned, and increasingly consumed by his grievances. Obama has masked these traits pretty well so far, but on Friday his mask slipped more than it ever has.

Via Instapundit.

Will the president focus on the good will efforts of individuals on both sides of the political aisle to solve the debt crisis or will he make it appear that he is the only adult in the room (and thus show he is anything but)?

With the president now in full campaign mode, he appears a little more energetic than he has in his past few months in office. Perhaps, it’s that he prefers campaign mode to governing, more comfortable attending fundraisers with adoring fans than laboring at compromises with principled, political adversaries. But, that craft of compromising happens to be part of his job description, particularly since Republicans won a majority in the House of Representatives last fall.

Indeed, except for the speech-giving part of that job, Obama doesn’t seem much to care for his job, but he sure likes the title. At the fundraisers in which he delights, he can more readily speak in broad generalities, offering his amorphous vision of change (while often attacking his ideological adversaries, misrepresenting the nature of their criticism and distorting their policies) and exult in the adoration of his wealthy supporters.

The bromides he offers in his speeches call to mind Peter Sellers’s last (iconic) role, Chauncey Gardiner, in 1979 movie Being There. “As you may remember,” Michael Barone writes,

Gardiner is a clueless gardener who is mistaken for a Washington eminence and becomes a presidential adviser. Asked if you can stimulate growth through temporary incentives, Gardiner says, “As long as the roots are not severed, all is well and all will be well in the garden.” “First comes the spring and summer,” he explains, “but then we have fall and winter. And then we get spring and summer again.” The president is awed as Gardiner sums up, “There will be growth in the spring.”

As that fictional president was awed by Gardiner’s bromides, so are Obama’s supporters awed by his. But, unlike Gardiner who did not seek to offer his empty rhetoric to powerful people, Obama does seek audiences for his well-delivered, but vague vision of change.

The president doe delight in the opportunities his job affords to give speeches, but otherwise seems put upon when forced to take on the real responsibilities of his job, like put forward a plan to reform Medicare when its trustees warn of the popular program’s coming insolvency or provide an alternative budget, given that not a single Senator voted for his (even though the Senate contains 51 members of his political party and two independents who caucus with said party). (more…)

Obama: My family would be fine with just 1 term.

A truly great movie about the greatness of basketball legend Michael Jordan would focus not on his success with the Chicago Bulls, but his failure with the Birmingham Barons and the Scottsdale Scorpions, two minor league baseball teams. The man whom no one could touch (metaphorically speaking) on the basketball court was bested by all too many on a baseball diamond.

The theme of the story would simple:   just because you excel in one field of endeavor doesn’t mean you will excel in other fields.  A great athlete in one sport is oftentimes, at best, mediocre in another.

And so it is, to a certain extent with Newt Gingrich in politics.  A man who had a vision of Republican congressional majority and the political know-how to realize that vision, stumbles badly when competing for the White House.  Reflecting on the implosion of Gingrich’s political team, Michael Barone recalls the Georgian’s successes:

He foresaw that Republicans could win congressional races in the small-town South and worked hard to prove it, losing first in the Watergate year and then in 1976 when Jimmy Carter swept Georgia before he beat a conservative Democrat in 1978.

I remember that starting in 1984 he was predicting that Republicans could win a majority in the House. He was wrong then, but he was right in 1994 and he was right about the reasons all along. He saw that Republicans would win most Southern seats and that talented young Democrats elected in the Vietnam/Watergate years would in time retire or be defeated.

He coached politically clueless Republican candidates with the high tech of the day — hours of Newt on audiotape — and bucked the Bush 41 White House and House Republican leader in opposing a tax increase in 1990.

Read the whole thing.  In the 1980s, Gingrich foresaw a GOP majority when most people took it for granted that Democrats would run the House as the had for the past thirty years.  He changed the face — and the attitude — of congressional Republicans.  It seems he was better in devising legislative strategy than he is in running a presidential campaign. (more…)

Kenny Rogers offers some words of wisdom to Newt Gingrich (& Anthony Weiner):

Asking “Who goes first — Anthony Weiner or Newt Gingrich?“, Jennifer Rubin explains:

Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-N.Y.) is reportedly “dug in,” refusing to resign despite the growing list of Democrats calling for his ouster. . . .  Meanwhile, Newt Gingrich’s senior staff and his Iowa crew have quit. En masse. . . .

Gingrich insists he is staying in the race. He’s all about the issues you see, just like when he was House speaker. His organizational skills, lack of discipline and leadership deficiencies have always been his undoing.

But why, at least for now, do these two hang on?

They should listen to Mr. Rogers.  You gotta know when to fold.

While tidying my apartment last night, I chanced upon this night I had scribbled last year during my cross-country drive:

The Obama I fear most as a Republican is the one I, as an American most want to see.

I believe I was recalling some of the stirring speeches the Democrat offered early in his bid for the White House.

Had the president turned out to be the unifier he claimed to be, that new kind of politician, his boosters billed him to be, instead of focusing on such items on the liberal wish-list as greater state involvement in heath care, he would have spent 2009 and 2010 focusing on the economy, not just by promoting big-government schemes, but by listening to Republicans and incorporating their pro-growth ideas into his policy proposals.

He, like Bill Clinton in 1995 and 1996, would have veered to the center, helped unite the country and delayed, if not destroyed, anay chance for a conservative revival.  My party would have been the weaker, but our nation would have been the stronger.

Two new polls out, one which liberals believe slants Republican, another which tilts Democratic suggest that the president’s party may not be going into the 2012 election in as solid a position as a recent Huffington Post love letter to the Obama campaign suggests.  It seems the White House is trying to create the impression that the incumbent is unbeatable in next fall’s election.  And some media outlets eagerly repeat this talking point as if it were actual fact and not political spin.

Yet, the polls tell a different story.

Rasmussen finds that more Americans consider themselves than consider themselves Democrats:

Now, 35.6% of American Adults consider themselves to be Republicans, up from 34.8% in April. . . . The number calling themselves Democrats increased slightly from 33.5% in April to 34.0% last month.

A day earlier, the pollster found “that in a hypothetical 2012 presidential matchup, a generic Republican candidate earns support from 45% of Likely U.S. Voters” against 43% for President Obama.  Given the tendency of undecided voters to break agains the incumbent, that’s a really bad number for the president.

In the latest CNN poll a survey which notoriously skews left, the pollster found that while the president enjoys a 54% approval rating, he’s underwater on his handling of all but three issues, including the economy where 58% disapprove, the federal budget deficit where 64% disapprove and Medicare where 53% disapprove.  Given his party’s demagoguing the Ryan reforms, it’s interesting that in a poll which favors the Democrats, only 44% approve of the way he’s handling the popular government program. (more…)

. . the much-vaunted (in the MSM) “No Labels’ movement?

Seems that way. (h/t - Instapundit)

John Williams, over at Shadow Stats, compiles economic data for inflation and unemployment the way it used to be calculated pre-1990. Based on that data, the CPI inflation rate is over 10%, and the unemployment rate is over 15% (see charts). The Misery Index is the sum of the current inflation rate and the unemployment rate. If it were to be calculated using the older methods, the Index would now be over 25, a record high. It surpasses the old index high of 21.98, which occurred in June 1980, when Jimmy Carter was president. Most believe the height of the Index along with the Iranian hostage crisis is what caused Carter to lose his re-election bid.

Verrrry interesting. But I still stick to my steak dinner bet with Little Miss Atilla that come Jan 20, 2013 it will be Barack Obama taking the Oath again.

P.S. – Employment rates among African Americans is the worst ever.  They told me if I voted for McCain that there’d be discrimination against minorities from The White House — they were right!

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

In a poll “conducted after the death of Osama bin Laden“, Gallup found that

Given a choice between Barack Obama and an unnamed Republican, 43% of registered voters say they are more likely to vote for Obama and 40% are more likely to vote for the Republican. This is essentially unchanged from April and February, when voters’ preferences were evenly split.”

“Imagine,” Jennifer Rubin quips, linking the poll, “if a really exciting Republican decided to run.”

What is interesting is that while only 43% would vote to reelect a man who won the White House with just shy of 53% of the popular vote,

Gallup Daily tracking documented a six-point increase in Obama’s overall job approval rating in three-day rolling averages before and after the May 1 announcement, from 46% to 52%. His approval rating has since stayed above 50%.

So, we see a near 10-point gap between his job approval and his re-elect number.  Perhaps the higher approval reflects Americans expressing their momentary satisfaction with the president’s recent accomplishment.   Or it may well indicate something else that for whatever reason, people wish to tell the pollster they approve of the president, but don’t want to see him reelected.

In an AP poll in which, as Jim Geraghty notes, “46 percent identify as Democrat or leaning Democrat, 29 percent identify as Republican or leaning Republican . . . [,] George W. Bush is at 50 percent approval, 49 percent disapproval“.

Wonder what those numbers would look like if we used Gallup’s recent numbers which show near perfect parity between the parties:

In 2010, 45% of Americans identified as Democrats or said they were independent but leaned toward the Democratic Party, while 44% identified as Republicans or said they were independent but leaned Republican. The 1-point Democratic advantage is the party’s smallest since 2003, when the parties were even, and represents a sharp decline from the record 12-point Democratic advantage in 2008.

So, AP used party ID gap even higher, let me repeat, even higher than Democrats’ record advantage and still found W had 50% approval.

UPDATE:  ”Imagine,” NiceDeb quips, “how Bush would do in a fairly sampled poll.“

I’m on the west coast on business and last night at about 8pm Pacific time, I was getting frantic texts from home: “Obama will be giving a major national security speech from the solemnness of The White House at 10:30pm. Very weird, especially for this President who prefers cheering audiences as much as his TelePrompTer.

And then came the words I had longed to hear for nearly 10 years: Osama bin Laden is dead.

I began to cry as I thought of the thousands incinerated, slaughtered, and fell to their deaths on Sept. 11, 2001.

My heart goes to the family of our close friend — Joe Ferguson — who died when Flight 77 slammed into the side of the Pentagon that bright blue September morning. I hope they will have some sense of closure. The War isn’t over, but the AQ Commander In Chief has been defeated in battle.

My hearty thanks goes to our intelligence and defense communities. A big thanks to President Obama, CIA Director Panetta and SecDef Robert Gates for what appears to be a rare coordinated intel/military ops that worked flawlessly.

Finally, nothing can express my grief and sadness toward the families of 9/11 victims and to those families who gave our nation their sons and daughters in the first round of the Global War on Islamic Terror.

GOD BLESS AMERICA!!!!!!!!

“Higher gas prices, severe storms and belt-tightening at the Pentagon,” AP Economics writer Jeannine Aversa contends, “slowed the economy in the first three months of the year.”  She forget to mention increased federal regulation, regulatory uncertainty and moratoria on energy exploration.  And the high corporate tax rate.

New economic data, Neil Irwin reports in the Washington Post, “show the recovery is so weak that it doesn’t take much to knock it off its stride“:

The 1.8 percent pace of increase in gross domestic product in the first quarter, according to a Commerce Department report Thursday, is down from a 3.1 percent gain in the final months of 2010. It is also lower than the level of growth that, over time, would be expected to drive down joblessness. The U.S. economy needs to grow about 2.5 percent annually to keep unemployment steady given continual growth in the labor force and in worker efficiency; even stronger GDP growth is needed to bring unemployment down.

Via Jennifer Rubin who also noted that “inflation also shows a marked change“.  We may officially be out of the recession, but Gallup reports that “Twenty-nine percent said the economy is in a depression and 26 percent said it is in a recession, with another 16 percent saying it is ‘slowing down’.”  (Via Instapundit.)

This ain’t, as Philip Klein details, Ronald Reagan’s recovery:

. . . first quarter GDP grew at a mere 1.8 percent clip. While the number is an advance estimate and could change, it’s not going to get near the 5.1 percent growth in the comparable quarter during Reagan’s first term (i.e. Q1 1983). And while growth is expected to pick up in the second quarter, it won’t get anywhere near the 9.3 percent rate of 1983′s second quarter. . . .

Yet it’s also important to note that Reagan was also fighting a battle on multiple fronts. He took office after a year of 13.5 percent inflation in 1980, and by 1984 it dropped to 4.3 percent. On the flip side, Obama took over at a time of low inflation, and we’re now starting to see prices rise, especially on food and gas, which Americans tend to notice.

Perhaps the Obama recovery is so anemic is because “the government,” as Irwin reports, “is straining for ways to jump-start the economy.”  Government is not going to jump-start this economy.  But, there is one thing it can do to bring it back: get out of the way.

UPDATE: The editors of the Washington Examiner show just why Barack Obama in no Ronald Reagan: (more…)

Perhaps the most amusing thing about the whole spectacle of Donald Trump’s media tour is not the businessman’s pretensions for the presidency but the manner in which he has manipulated the mainstream media. Just look at how he stands up to former Bill Clinton aide George Stephanopoulos:

Which one dominates the discussion?   How many other political candidates — or potential ones — stand up to such journalists, challenging their interrogators’ bsessions. Or their bias.

That said, much as I admire Trump for his defiance of the media, I am concerned that his current turn on the public stage is more about showmanship than leadership.  He has garnered a lot of attention, but he hasn’t even begun to the move the debate on the critical issues facing our country and its leaders.

That said, for daring to stand up to the media — or perhaps for asking questions about the president they would ask if said politician had an (R) after his name, he has earned their skepticism and their scorn.  Looking up from the elliptical trainer on Friday, I chanced upon yet another episode of CNN’s Continuing Investigation into Donald Trump.

And I began to wonder:  had that network, nigh on four years ago,  initiated such inquiries into the presidential aspirations of a certain junior Senator from Illinois as they have this month launched into a self-promoting, media savvy real estate mogul with larger ambitions?

According to the “Gallup Daily tracking three-day average,

41% of Americans approving of the job Barack Obama is doing as president. That ties his low as president, which he registered three times previously — twice in August 2010 and once in October 2010.

The current 41% approval rating from April 12-14 polling includes interviews conducted before and after Obama announced his plan for deficit reduction on Wednesday. It also comes in the same week Congress is voting on the 2011 budget deal reached last Friday. The deal did not seem to have an immediate effect on the way Americans viewed Obama, given his 44% approval rating in the three days prior to the agreement and his 46% rating in the initial days after the agreement.

The president has also lost considerable support among independents, only 35% of whom approve of him, “nine points off his average from independents this year.”

Perhaps they’re turning because the speech because most people expected a conciliatory gesture after Paul Ryan, chairman of the House Budget Committee, introduced a serious plan to rein in federal spending.  They may well have been expecting that he the president would acknowledge Ryan’s efforts, praise him on his commitment to reducing the deficits and then offered his plan, explaining why it was the better alternative.

Ryan himself certainly expected the speech would be “a call for common ground on deficit reduction”, but found instead as Allahpundit puts it, “that it was a campaign stemwinder aimed at ambushing him and the GOP.”  Obama, the blogger opines further, “elected as a healing force of post-partisan pragmatism, is willing to turn into Godzilla when there’s an electoral opportunity in front of him.”

Peggy Noonan, once supportive of Obama, thought the speech showed that the president to be an out-of-touch executive: (more…)