The Waxen Wings Hath Melted

[FC]

Obama, the Mortal

 

By Charles Krauthammer

Friday, September 4, 2009

 

What happened to President Obama? His wax wings having melted, he is the man who fell to earth. What happened to bring his popularity down further than that of any new president in polling history save Gerald Ford (post-Nixon pardon)?

 

The conventional wisdom is that Obama made a tactical mistake by farming out his agenda to Congress and allowing himself to be pulled left by the doctrinaire liberals of the Democratic congressional leadership. But the idea of Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi pulling Obama left is quite ridiculous. Where do you think he came from, this friend of Chávista ex-terrorist William Ayers, of PLO apologist Rashid Khalidi, of racialist inciter Jeremiah Wright?

 

But forget the character witnesses. Just look at Obama's behavior as president, beginning with his first address to Congress. Unbidden, unforced and unpushed by the congressional leadership, Obama gave his most deeply felt vision of America, delivering the boldest social democratic manifesto ever issued by a U.S. president. In American politics, you can't get more left than that speech and still be on the playing field.

 

In a center-right country, that was problem enough. Obama then compounded it by vastly misreading his mandate. He assumed it was personal. This, after winning by a mere seven points in a year of true economic catastrophe, of an extraordinarily unpopular Republican incumbent, and of a politically weak and unsteady opponent. Nonetheless, Obama imagined that, as Fouad Ajami so brilliantly observed, he had won the kind of banana-republic plebiscite that grants caudillo-like authority to remake everything in one's own image.

 

Accordingly, Obama unveiled his plans for a grand makeover of the American system, animating that vision by enacting measure after measure that greatly enlarged state power, government spending and national debt. Not surprisingly, these measures engendered powerful popular skepticism that burst into tea-party town-hall resistance.

 

Obama's reaction to that resistance made things worse. Obama fancies himself tribune of the people, spokesman for the grass roots, harbinger of a new kind of politics from below that would upset the established lobbyist special-interest order of Washington. Yet faced with protests from a real grass-roots movement, his party and his supporters called it a mob -- misinformed, misled, irrational, angry, unhinged, bordering on racist. All this while the administration was cutting backroom deals with every manner of special interest -- from drug companies to auto unions to doctors -- in which favors worth billions were quietly and opaquely exchanged.

 

"Get out of the way" and "don't do a lot of talking," the great bipartisan scolded opponents whom he blamed for creating the "mess" from which he is merely trying to save us. If only they could see. So with boundless confidence in his own persuasiveness, Obama undertook a summer campaign to enlighten the masses by addressing substantive objections to his reforms.

 

Things got worse still. With answers so slippery and implausible and, well, fishy, he began jeopardizing the most fundamental asset of any new president -- trust. You can't say that the system is totally broken and in need of radical reconstruction, but nothing will change for you; that Medicare is bankrupting the country, but $500 billion in cuts will have no effect on care; that you will expand coverage while reducing deficits -- and not inspire incredulity and mistrust. When ordinary citizens understand they are being played for fools, they bristle.

 

After a disastrous summer -- mistaking his mandate, believing his press, centralizing power, governing left, disdaining citizens for (of all things) organizing -- Obama is in trouble.

 

Let's be clear: This is a fall, not a collapse. He's not been repudiated or even defeated. He will likely regroup and pass some version of health insurance reform that will restore some of his clout and popularity.

 

But what has occurred -- irreversibly -- is this: He's become ordinary. The spell is broken. The charismatic conjurer of 2008 has shed his magic. He's regressed to the mean, tellingly expressed in poll numbers hovering at 50 percent.

 

For a man who only recently bred a cult, ordinariness is a great burden, and for his acolytes, a crushing disappointment. Obama has become a politician like others. And like other flailing presidents, he will try to salvage a cherished reform -- and his own standing -- with yet another prime-time speech.

 

But for the first time since election night in Grant Park, he will appear in the most unfamiliar of guises -- mere mortal, a treacherous transformation to which a man of Obama's supreme self-regard may never adapt.

 

letters@charleskrauthammer.com

[Gothmog]

The only surprise here is the speed with which it happened. The growing financial troubles won't improve his image either ...

[Dr.Hess]

No suprise he threw Van Jones under the bus. Anyone that would throw grandma, his preacher of 20 years, anyone else under the bus wouldn't stand behind someone like Van Jones once the real Van Jones was exposed. How many more are out there? It is interesting in that this one went down only from internet and the new media. Times are changing. Keep the pressure on your elected congress critter.

[karlunity]

I agree, Mr. Johnson will still be paid but from another account.

But the important point as I see it, is that is is getting harder for a pol to hide behind race and that is a good thing.

 

The issue is not Mr.Obama, he is but, they hope, the radicals poster boy who got them the White House and some seats in Congress, what matters to the left is the "program" and the more the American people find out about the "program" the harder it is to pass because many in the Congress KNOW that supporting the "program" will cost them their seat in 2010.

While many of the hard core radicals are willing even eager for martyrdom most of the Dems in congress are not and the American people are putting a lot of heat on them.

In short as long as Mr. Obama is seen as useful the radical left will support him, but if he cannot deliver...

He would be far safer going to dinner at Newt's house than Nancy's.

 

Now IF Mr. Obama throws the radicals "under the bus' holds his own "night of the long knives" and becomes an American nationalist..and stranger things have happened in American political history, Nixon did go to China, Mr. Obama may become a good or even great president.

[ken98k]

Now IF Mr. Obama throws the radicals "under the bus' holds his own "night of the long knives" and becomes an American nationalist..and stranger things have happened in American political history, Nixon did go to China, Mr. Obama may become a good or even great president.

 

Now wouldn't that be something! Needless to say, I'm not holding my breath for that to happen.