:rolling eyes: Every time I think that we’ve exhausted the mine of Why the inability of a Democratic President to do anything is not a reflection upon him, somebody comes up with a new wrinkle.
In the last six weeks – the IRS story broke first on May 10 — those handful of stories have driven every other narrative out of the news headlines. That’s in spite of the Obama Administration’s attempts to shift the focus back to the ongoing immigration debate, jobs and the economy and the U.S.’ role in the world.
While you can debate the relative bad-ness of each of the stories for the White House, what’s not debatable is that everyone in the administration from President Obama on down has been driven by the news rather than driving it over these last weeks. That inability of even the President of the United States to push his preferred message on a given day/week/month points to a fundamental new reality of politics: The bully pulpit just ain’t what it used to be.
Amusingly, with the arguable (I suppose) exception of the NSA story, every story that Chris Cillizza mentioned is due to the Obama administration’s incompetence. A competent administration wouldn’t have succumbed to temptation and let the IRS run amok. A competent administration wouldn’t have bungled our reaction to Benghazi. A competent administration would have had somebody to wave off targeting the Associated Press. And so on, and so on… the point is this: your inability to get past a problem or problems resulting from your own incompetence does not in fact mean that at least nobody else can do better, either. Somebody very well could; it just won’t be you, because you’re an idiot.
Further discussion is, I think, unnecessary.
Moe Lane
How long before they bring up the old stupid idea of making the Presidency one six-year term instead of one or two four-year terms? Someone is sure to bring it up sometime soon.
I think the funniest bit of the whole thing is that the Democrats did it to themselves. It used to be an unspoken rule that Presidents only had two terms. But the possibility that it would be different this time kept the second term from being a lame duck one. Then, alas, F.D.R.. Now the rule is no longer unspoken, and Democrat presidents, used to ruling with raw force, are overwhelmed in the second term, when they are reduced to moral suasion……
The important thing is to realize how much golf and how many vacations there are between now and January, 2017.
I’m hoping for as many golf and vacations as possible. Anything to reduce even the remote possibility of him ‘accomplishing’ such legislative gifts as Obamacare should be embraced with fervor.