Anatomy of a failed Presidency

[Jo McDonald]

FAILED PRESIDENCY
The following is an interesting article, and I wonder how long Dr. Hunt can remain
at NIH once the powers that be get wind of this article.
Dr. Hunt is a social and cultural anthropologist.  He has had nearly 30 years experience
in planning, conducting, and managing research in the field of youth studies, and drug
and alcohol research.  Currently Dr. Hunt is a Senior Research Scientist at the Institute
for Scientific Analysis and the Principal Investigator on three National Institutes on
Health projects.  He is also a writer for American Thinker.
 
Another Failed Presidency
An article from American Thinker by Geoffrey P. Hunt

Barack Obama is on track to have the most spectacularly failed presidency since Woodrow
Wilson.  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.

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 Wall Street Journal put her finger on it:  He is
failing because he has no understanding of the American people, and may indeed loathe
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 American Thinker 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.

But, there is something 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?
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
this 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 with the majority of Americans. We admire those presidents
whose narratives not only touch our own, but who seem stronger, wiser, and smarter
than we are.  Presidents we admire are aspirational peers, even those whose politics
don't align exactly with our own: Teddy Roosevelt, FDR, Harry Truman, Ike, and Reagan.

But not this president. It's not so much that he's a phony, knows nothing about economics,
and 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.

In the meantime, while we've been struggling to take a measurement of this man, he's
dissed just about every one of us--financiers, energy producers, banks, insurance executives,
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."

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 two short years after that.
Yes, small presidents do fail, Barack Obama among them..  The coyotes howl but the wagon
train keeps rolling along.

Margaret Thatcher: "The trouble with Socialism is, sooner or later you run out of other
people's money."

"When you subsidize poverty and failure, you get more of both." - James Dale Davidson,
National Taxpayers Union

"The more corrupt the state, the more it legislates." – Tacitus

"A Liberal is a person who will give away everything he doesn't own." - Unknown  

[Varmit]

Jo, the problem is that this is so much bigger than the current adminstration.  Do you honestly think that they give a damn who you vote for?  Think about it.  Do you know of anyone who actually counts the votes?  I'm talking about average, ordinary, run of the mill citizens and not some gov't appointed agency?  And how much easier would it be to "sabatoge" the process than by making it all electronic?  How difficult would it be to implant a sub-program that, for example, for every vote mccain got obama gets 2 more? 

[Jo McDonald]

Well maybe THEY don't give a damn --- but I do!!!!
I try to see a little sunshine - not always darkness.  Guess that is where you and I differ.

[Varmit]

Jo, I didn't mean to come across "bitey" or anything like that.  Its not that I am always looking for darkness, its just right now, as a country, I think that is where we are at.  In order for us to move from the darkness we first have to know which path to take.  Trusting the powers that be and their processes and policies isn't the way.  The entire system needs to be re-done from the ground up.

[Jo McDonald]

I agree wholeheartedly, we are definitely between a rock and a hard place.  But I think that exercising each and every right that we have is very important and keeping a Can Do attitude is a must. 
  The ones in power are digging a grave for our country and they must be stopped,  Right now with all of their closed door shenanigans
trying to be made into law --- we are going to Hell in a hand basket.

  Sorry, Billy, I didn't mean to growl and bite back.