I believe it’s been a week, maybe more, since I even checked this blog.  I did not get to the post I wanted to write on JFK, contrasting that smart Democrat’s record with the media coverage of his murder and his legacy.  I had a few notes for posts on Obamacare and honesty and one on Obamacare and prediction. Reading something this morning in the Daily Caller reminded me of a piece I had read yesterday in Commentary, articulating an idea which gets at the meaning of Obama’s reelection last year.

Peter Wehner wrote:

In their fascinating behind-the-scenes book on the 2012 election, Double Down, Mark Halperin and John Heilemann write that the campaign’s research showed “that there was a deep well of sympathy for Obama among voters.” In focus groups after the first debate, they write, “people offered excuse after excuse for his horrific presentation. In Florida, one woman said, almost protectively, ‘I just bet you he wasn’t feeling well.’”

That deep well of sympathy–that willingness to give the president the benefit of the doubt and the attachment and connection voters felt for Mr. Obama–has been crucial to his success for his entire political life. He has always been viewed as a likeable and decent man, even when his campaign employed fairly ruthless tactics. But the days of broad public faith and trust in this president appear to be over. And no wonder.

I think this is why the image of Obama responding to Hurricane Sandy was so beneficial to the incumbent.  People do want to like him.  And in the coverage of the storm and his response, that Democrat looked very much like the man they wanted to like.

It remains to be see whether the disaster of the Obamacare roll-out and the realization (despite his many promises) that many Americans who liked their health care plans couldn’t keep them will erase the goodwill many Americas feel for the incumbent.  That said we on the right should not lose sight of the fact that as Halperin and Heilemann put it, many Americans do have a “deep well of sympathy for Obama”.

——

*And the question now becomes whether we should change the tense on this verb from present to past.

NB:   (more…)

UPDATE: Jonah Goldberg explains:

Watching President Obama’s press conference Thursday, I almost started humming the old ditty “The Farmer in the Dell” because all I could think was: “The cheese stands alone.”

The president did his level best to explain that he was as in the dark as anybody about the problems with his signature legislation.

He explained that he was not “informed directly” that the Healthcare.gov website was about as ready to run as a three-legged horse at the Preakness Stakes. Apparently, the old saw that the “buck stops” with the president never took into account the possibility that the buck could get lost in interoffice mail.

From Jake Meyer in Bruce’s Twitter stream:

It can’t be a human right if it requires someone else’s labor. That’s theft, not freedom.

And, from Rep. Steve Stockman:

About 110,000 people contract chlamydia each month, more than signed up for Obamacare. Obamacare is less popular than chlamydia.

UPDATE: And America’s Communist era arrives thusly:

JONATHAN GRUBER, M.I.T.: …We currently have a highly discriminatory system where if you’re sick, if you’ve been sick or [if] you’re going to get sick, you cannot get health insurance.

The only way to end that discriminatory system is to bring everyone into the system and pay one fair price. That means that the genetic winners, the lottery winners who’ve been paying an artificially low price because of this discrimination now will have to pay more in return.

Gruber’s argument can (and will) be used to re-distribute anything. Literally anything. Because it’s founded on the idea that everything is generated, owned and consumed communally.

Steve Jobs of Apple, for example, was just a “genetic lottery winner” – right? He should have been forced to “pay in return” for his gene-crime of being unusually driven and talented, right? So that others could consume whatever wealth he created?

Health, and all other forms of wealth or success, never have to do with a person’s individual choices or efforts, right?

UPDATE: As long as we’re thinking like Communists, I just noticed something odd about how Obamacare ranges its plans from worst (Bronze) to best (Platinum). Isn’t it…um…kind of racist?

(the color of Bronze)	(the color of Platinum)

Obama Broke Super PAC Pledge During Campaign

Kudos to the Huffington Post for catching on.

Why do ghosts wear clothes?

When die you, forever look you like the outfit you died in.

Each of us is born with certain gifts. What determines our success in life oftentimes is how we develop those gifts to serve the needs of the world in which we live.

Barack Obama has a mellifluous speaking voice. And he can, on occasion, deliver an inspiring speech. His keynote address to the 2004 Democratic National Convention catapulted the charismatic Chicago politician to national fame. Had he not delivered that speech he would not have been in a position to run for — and win — the White House four years later.

And now, as president, he seems think that he can address the nation’s problems through such speeches. During the month of September, as a government shutdown loomed, instead of reaching out to — and meeting with — congressional leaders, he delivered a number of campaign-style speeches.  And now as his health care overhaul faces myriad glitches, he’s doing it again, as Reason’s Peter Suderman reports:

Three weeks after the deeply troubled launch of Obamacare’s health insurance exchanges, President Obama gave a speech responding to some of the problems that have plagued the government-run online enrollment system. The most revealing thing about it was what he didn’t say.

Obama was somewhat more blunt than he has been about the system’s failures. “There’s no sugarcoating it. The website has been too slow. People have getting stuck during the application process. And I think it’s fair to say that nobody’s more frustrated by that than I am,” he said. “There’s no excuse for the problems.”

No excuse—and no explanation either. Obama acknowledged some problems with the site. But he didn’t say why they happened, when they would be resolved, or what the administration’s specific plan was to get things working.

Read the whole thing.  H/t:  Powerline picks.  So convinced is the president with his rhetorical prowess that he doesn’t need explain, he just needs to talk.

No wonder, Allahpundit sees the speech as a means to buy ”time for website repairs and trying to combat ominous polls like this, which show the public’s perceptions of Healthcare.gov bleeding over into their perceptions of the ObamaCare program generally.”

A speech may buy the president time, but it won’t fix the program’s flaws  – nor will it contain its costs.

“Gaius Gracchus proposed a grain law. The people were delighted with it because it provided an abundance of food without work. The good men, however, fought against it because they thought the masses would be attracted away from hard work and toward idleness, and they saw that the state treasury would be exhausted.”
- Marcus Tullius Cicero

“Politicians get up and promise you all sorts of free stuff. They say, I’ll give you more and more stuff, and you won’t have to pay for it…My own view is that we have to tell people the truth, and we’re going to have to demand sacrifice of the American people. The idea of borrowing a trillion dollars more than we take in [each year] is not just bad economics, it’s immoral. I’m not going to do it, and I’m not going to promise what can’t be delivered.” – Mitt Romney

“We had a chance, in 2012, to elect as president a man who built his entire career and fortune on turning around financially troubled enterprises. But the voters rejected him because Obama claimed he was going to give women cancer and outlaw tampons. That is when I knew our country was f—ed.”
- V the K

Just caught CNN at the gym and noticed that in the crawl at the bottom of the screen, the “news network” reported that Wendy Davis announced she was running for Texas Governor.  In the crawl, they reminded us that Miss Davis had filibustered the state’s “controversial” abortion bill.

Do wonder if when another Texas politician filibustered recently to express his opposition to Obamacare if the network dubbed that unpopular program as “controversial.”

And I would dare say a greater percentage of Americans oppose Obamacare than Texans who oppose the bill to which Miss Davis objected.

FROM THE COMMENTS:  rtm answers the title question in the affirmative.

Yes, CNN has called Obamacare controversial:

“With so many politicians fighting over this controversial legislation, the details about how to sign up may have gotten a little lost.”

http://www.cnn.com/2013/09/26/health/obamacare-open-enrollment/index.html

But do wonder if the network  ever did so in the crawl?

We’ve often heard it said the the Rasmussen poll skews Republican, but their latest shows the Democratic president with a higher level of approval than any other recent survey:

Not since May has any survey showed him with over 50% approval.

. . . why does he prefer to harangue Republicans than to meet with them?

In his petulant press statement today, he said was willing to have conversation with the GOP, but, well, when was the last time he sat down to do just that?

He showed considerable cheek in insisting that a budget be passed on time, given how tardy he was in releasing his.

UP-UP-UPDATE (added on 09.28.13 @ 2:24 GP Blog time):  This time even CNN seems to be catching on, CNN: Obama’s Been on Phone More With Iran than Speaker of the House

RELATED: Obama avoids shutdown talk as deadline looms (Article posted before Obama’s statement today, references some of his, well, intemperate language.)

UPDATE:  How Drudge covers the president’s statement:

UP-UPDATE: From Jonathan Strong at the Corner:

Brendan Buck, a spokesman for Speaker John Boehner, responded to President Obama’s remarks just now, saying

The House will take action that reflects the fundamental fact that Americans don’t want a government shutdown and they don’t want the train wreck that is Obamacare. Grandstanding from the president, who refuses to even be a part of the process, won’t bring Congress any closer to a resolution.

A GOP aide noted Obama has not called the Speaker all week.

Emphasis added.

No, I don’t like Texas Senator Ted Cruz’s plan to filibuster the House resolution to keep the government open. I would like to see the Senate vote of the legislation, forcing Democratic Senators to choose between their party’s priorities (an increasingly unpopular law) and their constituents’ concerns (the growing cost of healthcare and their diminishing options caused by said legislation).

I wish that the government could defund Obamacare, but, as Thomas Sowell and Tom Coburn have pointed out, it’s not going to happen.

Still, for all the Texas Senator’s posturing, he has done something the legacy media fail to do–bring the unpopular health care law into the news. It does seem our broadcast media are downplaying (or outright ignoring) the problems with the president’s signature achievement.

Like John Hinderaker,

I am not crazy about Cruz’s plan to block cloture on the House resolution, but I applaud his speech. Obamacare is unpopular, and Republicans should pound away at it non-stop. Within the last few hours, reports have surfaced that House Republicans may attach a one-year delay in Obamacare’s individual mandate to the Senate’s “clean” continuing resolution. Obamacare may also feature in upcoming debates over raising the debt ceiling.

Via Instapundit.  If the compromise continuing resolution forces the Democrats to sign on to anything scaling back Obamacare, that may be due in part to Cruz’s grandstanding.

RELATED:  Glenn notes the different coverage the media accords to filibusters by Texas politicians:

UPDATE: Well, maybe our friends in the legacy media will continue to ignore the issue. As Jim Geraghty reports, they are making Cruz the issue and not Obamacare’s implementation: (more…)

Last night, recalling that New York City voters were going to the polls yesterday to pick their parties’ nominees for various local offices, I went to Drudge to learn the results. He linked this piece, providing the actual tallies.

In the Democratic primary, the latest totals show Bill de Blasio with a huge lead over all of his rivals, likely with a high enough percentage of the vote (40%) to avoid a runoff. He won more than eight times as many votes as former Congressman Anthony Weiner who appeared to have received (at least in national reports) the greatest amount of news coverage.

Instead of heralding de Blasio’s solid showing, AOL highlighted Mr. Weiner:

The “news” media today.

Quite frequently it seems that if there is any principle guiding President Obama’s foreign policy, it is the desire not to do what  his predecessor did.  He and his national security advisors and officials, in public at least, have acted as if Mr. Bush’s foreign policy were an absolute disaster, needing, in their view, a “reset” in relations with Russia and requiring them to distinguish their policies from his.

They would exercise “smart power,” a term which implies that Bush’s team acted without consideration for the consequences of its actions.  Yet, much as Democrats  faulted that team for a supposed “go-it-alone” foreign policy, George W. Bush and his top national security advisors did take time to cultivate relationships with a great variety of world leaders.  And when they failed, the problem wasn’t entirely (and sometimes not even remotely) related to their efforts, but due instead the posturing of other nations.

In short, Obama and his team critiqued Bush’s foreign policy not as it was, but as it was depicted in the editorial pages of left-leaning newspapers and in their own party’s talking points.  Despite France and Germany’s refusal to join the coalition to liberate Iraq, Bush and his team did succeed in building a coalition of forty nations to enforce United Nations resolutions and to hold that then-rogue nation to account for violating the terms of the 1991 cease-fire ending the Gulf War.

Obama and his team may have “reset” relations with Russian and operated under the assumption that they were using “smart power,” but they have failed to build the kind of coalition in response to events in Syria than Bush’s team built in response to Iraq’s violation of international agreements.  And President Obama is now blaming the international community for his failure to muster a coalition to act against the Syrian regime:

Obama said Wednesday that “my credibility is not on the line — the international community’s credibility is on the line.” (more…)

When I first heard that President Obama was asking Congress to vote on a resolution authorizing him to act against Syria, I thought he was doing the right thing, but then the more I considered the issue, the weaker I realized the move was. And the more political.

My gut sense is that Obama really doesn’t want to take action against the Syrian regime.

And perhaps he is hoping that this move will further divide Republicans. And a Republican Party at war with itself can’t do a good job taking the fight during in the 2014 election cycle.

And should a coalition of libertarian Republicans, partisans who put bucking Obama ahead of the national interest and dovish Democrats opposed to any flexing of American muscle manage to defeat the (unnecessary) legislative authorization, Obama will blame not his fellow Democratic, but the opposition Republicans for denying him the ability to act.

My advice to Speaker Boehner would be to ask all House Republicans to make statements similar to this one: “I don’t think the president needs our approval to act. (President Bill Clinton didn’t ask for congressional authorization before initiating airstrikes against Yugoslavia on behalf of Kosovo.) But, the president has asked for our permission. We are voting for the resolution to show we recognize his responsibility in the matter; we hope he will act in the best interest of the country.”

This at least would make it more challenging for Obama to blame Republicans. And the explanation would help prevent this from becoming a precedent, potentially hamstringing future presidents.

Obama could have delivered a speech similar to that Secretary Kerry gave.  And with that, authorized our armed forces to attack Syrian airbases.  Or he could have explained why it was not in our national interest to act.  Instead, he has advertised his indecision on the matter.  Never a good strategy for a leader.

ADDENDUM:  A test of Obama’s sincerity on the matter will be how aggressively he lobbies Congress on behalf of this resolution.  If he doesn’t actively lobby legislators to pass the bill, then he shouldn’t blame them for its failure.  (Bear in mind my word choice; “shouldn’t” doesn’t mean “won’t.”)

RELATED:  Shortly after posting this piece, I caught a related editorial in the Washington Times: (more…)

. . . is liberal prejudice, their assumption that opposition to the president and his policies is based on race. And this assumption grows out of ignorance, a basic unfamiliarity with Republican ideas and conservative arguments.

The Pentagon Has Lost Its Leverage with Egypt. Now What?

A brief refresher on the meaning of “smart power.”

Been a crazy, odd past few weeks. Apologies for not blogging.

This just showed up on my Facebook:

Has the group ever called on a liberal blogger — or public figure — to apologize for mocking the accomplished immediate past governor of Alaska?

You know the answer because the Mayor of San Diego, accused by multiple women of sexual harassment is a Democrat. If he were a Republican, as Jim Geraghty observes in today’s Morning Jolt, available by subscription:

he would already be at least as well-known as Todd Akin, with his face on the cover of Time magazine under the headline: “PARTY OF CREEPS: WHY THE GOP’S PROBLEMS WITH WOMEN KEEP GETTING WORSE.”

UPDATE: George Will gets it:

I will not dwell on the fact, although it is a fact, that if these two men, Filner in San Diego and Wiener here, were Republicans, this would be part of a lot of somber sociology in the media about the Republican War on Women. . . . I will skip that.

Watch the video at the link.  (Via Instapundit.)

Some of us are broken.  We were given both envy and high principles.  We can’t even contemplate bringing others down to level things, but instead we work madly to increase our status.  (No, it’s not how I think about it, but it’s probably what’s going on in the back of the monkey brain.)  Most of humanity however is functional.  Give them enough to eat, and a place to live, and no matter how unvaried the diet and how small/terrible the place, most people will stay put.

In today’s Morning Jolt, Jim Geraghty asks a question getting at the nature of media bias in contemporary American society, Why Are the News Networks Serving Us Round-the-Clock Coverage of the Zimmerman Trial?

Yesterday morning, I tuned in to Daily Rundown . . . and found most of the show’s opening was consumed by George Zimmerman trial discussion, and soon pre-empted by live trial coverage. I had been scheduled to appear on The Lead with Jake Tapper as part of their roundtable today . . . and was told Monday evening that they’re likely to be pre-empted by live trial coverage this afternoon.

Egypt’s got a widespread, increasingly violent uprising — Turkey and Brazil, too, the death toll in Syria just hit six figures, the Obamacare implementation train wreck continues, and we get nonstop coverage of every witless witness in this case.

Also available via subscription.  (Read the whole thing.  He offers some great thoughts toward the end.)

Wondeer if the decision of the networks to play up the racial aspects of this trial is related to why the editors at Yahoo! decided to include the graphic they did in featuring the headlined article on their home page today: