By traditional standards, the 2012 presidential election should have hinged on who offered the best ideas for dealing with the nation's high unemployment and tepid economic growth – with most of the attention on the incumbent's fiscal stewardship.
It didn't work out that way.
Instead, President Obama and his team ran a relentlessly negative campaign, with the news media, to paraphrase Bob Dylan, going along for the ride. When Democrats did deign to discuss the economy, they essentially claimed Paul Ryan would roll your grandmother off a cliff in her wheelchair – and that Mitt Romney was such an unfeeling 1-percenter when he was in the private sector that his policies actually killed people.
It was a disheartening performance, not that the Republican challenger really noticed. Romney was so convinced Americans lacked faith in Obamanomics that he was content to offer repetitive and simplistic solutions – I'll will cut taxes and regulation, Romney vowed – while, by his own admission, writing off 47 percent of the electorate.
As this uninspiring campaign unfolded, the thought occurred to the dispassionate observer that Barack Obama and Mitt Romney shared a secret concerning the U.S economy: They didn't really know why it was ailing, or have a clue how to revive it. But they figured it would come back on its own – good times, as well as bad, being cyclical – and they just wanted to be in the Oval Office when the recovery arrived.
In that eventuality, each man could take credit for the rebound. Romney would have said that the budget sequester was a winner, relaxation of federal regulations had worked its magic, and lowering business taxes was proving to be a boon. For his part, Obama could be expected to say – and has, on occasion, already said – that the Democrats' 2009 stimulus worked, raising the taxes on high-income earners was paying off, and Obamacare was a winner.
But now, halfway through the fifth year of his presidency, it has dawned on Obama that his eight years in office might be characterized by a different picture – by 23 million able-bodied adults who can't find full-time employment, stagnant wages for those who can, a doubling of gasoline prices for everyone, 50 million Americans on food stamps, and budget deficits so unthinkably large that the federal debt is now a national security problem.
But whom should he blame? Oh, that's the easy part.
"With an endless parade of distractions, political posturing and phony scandals, Washington has taken its eye off the ball," the president said recently in the first of a series of campaign-style speeches. "Over the last six months, this gridlock has gotten worse. I didn't think that was possible."
Leaving aside the curious claim that widespread IRS abuses and administration untruths about the tragedy in Benghazi are illegitimate areas of inquiry, blaming "Washington" is not just a reflexive response by a politician with declining job approval ratings. It's part of an orchestrated attempt by the president and his image makers to evade accountability for the results of his governance.
Make no mistake, when Obama says "Washington," he doesn't mean himself, and he doesn't mean his fellow Democrats, even though they controlled both houses of Congress during his first two years in the White House. He means Republicans, Tea Party activists, fiscal conservatives and, of course, the Bush-era economy he inherited 5½ years ago.
That "gridlock" he so despises? Another term for that is divided government, which is what Americans gave themselves in 2010 when they turned 63 Democratic House seats Republican, giving control of the gavel to John Boehner instead of Nancy Pelosi. Obama and his minions take no responsibility for that, either.
In their telling, they've been passive bystanders – or outright victims – as the Grand Old Party allowed itself to be taken over by elements who don't want any Democratic president to succeed – especially this one. Obama implies on occasion that's because he's African-American, something some of his allies say outright. On other occasions, he says it's because the Republican Party has moved so far to the right that Ronald Reagan couldn't be nominated today.
But this is a president not content to lament the diminishment of the political center. Instead, he routinely questions the patriotism of the opposition party. Obama has said, many times, that Republicans are willing to sabotage the U.S. economy – presumably by resisting his spending proposals – in order to win elections. He updated the approach in a recent interview with the New York Times after being asked if his presidency will be remembered as one that ushered in the "new normal" of high unemployment and growing income inequality.
"I think if I'm arguing for entirely different policies, and Congress ends up pursuing policies that I think don't make sense, and we get a bad result," he replied, "it's hard to argue that'd be my legacy."
Asked in the same interview about the legality of his unilateral decision to delay implementation of Obamacare's employer mandate -- his own signature political achievement -- Obama responded this way: "If Congress thinks that what I've done is inappropriate or wrong in some fashion, they're free to make that case. But there's not an action that I take that you don't have some folks in Congress who say that I'm usurping my authority. Some of those folks think I usurp my authority by having the gall to win the presidency."
Get that? If you question the president's constitutional authority to refuse to abide by a statute he signed into law himself, you are a birther.
That might be news to some of those who first raised this issue, including Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin, a liberal Democrat who was voting to expand federal health care benefits when Barack Obama was in high school. But Harkin is collateral damage. So are the White House correspondents who recently asked presidential press secretary Jay Carney about the legality of the delay only to be told they are part of the Republican efforts "to undermine" the president.
One supposes that his current series of campaign-style speeches is the curtain-raiser for the 2014 midterm elections, in which the president will tell his fellow Americans that if they'd only send more Democrats to Washington, he could get Congress working again.
At least, I hope that's his goal. It would be more reassuring than thinking that we have a president who plans to spend four years positioning himself for a place in posterity that he basically sums up like this: "I tried, but Republicans in Congress were too mean to me."
It didn't work out that way.
It was a disheartening performance, not that the Republican challenger really noticed. Romney was so convinced Americans lacked faith in Obamanomics that he was content to offer repetitive and simplistic solutions – I'll will cut taxes and regulation, Romney vowed – while, by his own admission, writing off 47 percent of the electorate.
As this uninspiring campaign unfolded, the thought occurred to the dispassionate observer that Barack Obama and Mitt Romney shared a secret concerning the U.S economy: They didn't really know why it was ailing, or have a clue how to revive it. But they figured it would come back on its own – good times, as well as bad, being cyclical – and they just wanted to be in the Oval Office when the recovery arrived.
In that eventuality, each man could take credit for the rebound. Romney would have said that the budget sequester was a winner, relaxation of federal regulations had worked its magic, and lowering business taxes was proving to be a boon. For his part, Obama could be expected to say – and has, on occasion, already said – that the Democrats' 2009 stimulus worked, raising the taxes on high-income earners was paying off, and Obamacare was a winner.
But now, halfway through the fifth year of his presidency, it has dawned on Obama that his eight years in office might be characterized by a different picture – by 23 million able-bodied adults who can't find full-time employment, stagnant wages for those who can, a doubling of gasoline prices for everyone, 50 million Americans on food stamps, and budget deficits so unthinkably large that the federal debt is now a national security problem.
But whom should he blame? Oh, that's the easy part.
"With an endless parade of distractions, political posturing and phony scandals, Washington has taken its eye off the ball," the president said recently in the first of a series of campaign-style speeches. "Over the last six months, this gridlock has gotten worse. I didn't think that was possible."
Leaving aside the curious claim that widespread IRS abuses and administration untruths about the tragedy in Benghazi are illegitimate areas of inquiry, blaming "Washington" is not just a reflexive response by a politician with declining job approval ratings. It's part of an orchestrated attempt by the president and his image makers to evade accountability for the results of his governance.
Make no mistake, when Obama says "Washington," he doesn't mean himself, and he doesn't mean his fellow Democrats, even though they controlled both houses of Congress during his first two years in the White House. He means Republicans, Tea Party activists, fiscal conservatives and, of course, the Bush-era economy he inherited 5½ years ago.
That "gridlock" he so despises? Another term for that is divided government, which is what Americans gave themselves in 2010 when they turned 63 Democratic House seats Republican, giving control of the gavel to John Boehner instead of Nancy Pelosi. Obama and his minions take no responsibility for that, either.
In their telling, they've been passive bystanders – or outright victims – as the Grand Old Party allowed itself to be taken over by elements who don't want any Democratic president to succeed – especially this one. Obama implies on occasion that's because he's African-American, something some of his allies say outright. On other occasions, he says it's because the Republican Party has moved so far to the right that Ronald Reagan couldn't be nominated today.
But this is a president not content to lament the diminishment of the political center. Instead, he routinely questions the patriotism of the opposition party. Obama has said, many times, that Republicans are willing to sabotage the U.S. economy – presumably by resisting his spending proposals – in order to win elections. He updated the approach in a recent interview with the New York Times after being asked if his presidency will be remembered as one that ushered in the "new normal" of high unemployment and growing income inequality.
"I think if I'm arguing for entirely different policies, and Congress ends up pursuing policies that I think don't make sense, and we get a bad result," he replied, "it's hard to argue that'd be my legacy."
Asked in the same interview about the legality of his unilateral decision to delay implementation of Obamacare's employer mandate -- his own signature political achievement -- Obama responded this way: "If Congress thinks that what I've done is inappropriate or wrong in some fashion, they're free to make that case. But there's not an action that I take that you don't have some folks in Congress who say that I'm usurping my authority. Some of those folks think I usurp my authority by having the gall to win the presidency."
Get that? If you question the president's constitutional authority to refuse to abide by a statute he signed into law himself, you are a birther.
That might be news to some of those who first raised this issue, including Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin, a liberal Democrat who was voting to expand federal health care benefits when Barack Obama was in high school. But Harkin is collateral damage. So are the White House correspondents who recently asked presidential press secretary Jay Carney about the legality of the delay only to be told they are part of the Republican efforts "to undermine" the president.
One supposes that his current series of campaign-style speeches is the curtain-raiser for the 2014 midterm elections, in which the president will tell his fellow Americans that if they'd only send more Democrats to Washington, he could get Congress working again.
At least, I hope that's his goal. It would be more reassuring than thinking that we have a president who plans to spend four years positioning himself for a place in posterity that he basically sums up like this: "I tried, but Republicans in Congress were too mean to me."
Read more: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2013/08/05/the_name_of_obamas_game_is_blame_119494.html#ixzz2b78moqtX
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