WHEN Barack Obama took office last year he was compared to Superman, even joking at a dinner that he had been “born on Krypton and sent here … to save the planet Earth”. Last January he appeared on the cover of Spider-Man.
Now, with his legislative agenda in tatters, the president has moved from comic-strip hero to comparisons to one of the great flawed figures of American literature. Ten days ago Charlie Cook, a leading election analyst, compared Obama and his battle to push through healthcare reform to Captain Ahab and his suicidal hunt for the great white whale.
Obama has gone from hero to zero in a years time
Despite poll after poll showing that Americans’ main priority is jobs, the president has focused on reforming the US healthcare system and extending coverage to the 40m citizens with no insurance.
“I think choosing to take a Captain Ahab-like approach to healthcare — I’m going to push for this even in the worst downturn since the Great Depression — is roughly comparable to Bush’s decision to go to war [in Iraq],” Cook told Politico. “It basically destroyed the first year of a presidency.”
Obama made a last-ditch attempt last week to secure opposition support through a seven-hour summit shown live on television. Although he was admired for his unflappable handling of 40 legislators, no progress was made as Republicans called for a clean sheet. “Boy, that didn’t work,” wrote Peggy Noonan, the veteran Republican commentator, in Friday’s Wall Street Journal.
Read More: By Christina Lamb, Times Online
Tags: Barack Obama, Hero, Jimmy Carter, ZeroPresident Barack Obama is starting to look like the second coming of Jimmy Carter. If he’s going to avoid that fate, the president had better take radical action — and fast.
Poor Jimmy Carter, always used in the same sentence as Obama
That means doing more than offering belated talk about jobs, or waging ineffectual on-again, off-again bank warfare. What, after all, is the point of bashing Wall Street only to then blow bonus kisses to JPMorgan Chase & Co. chief Jamie Dimon and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. head Lloyd Blankfein?
Obama needs to ditch his professorial, community-organizer mien and start cracking some heads. Unless, that is, he is intent on paving the way for a Palin presidency in 2013.
Supporters are crying out for Obama to pull out of his tailspin. In an article in Politico, Douglas Wilder, the nation’s first African-American governor and an early Obama supporter, urged the president to get his act together.
“The need is becoming more obvious by the day,” Wilder wrote. “Getting elected and getting things done for the people are two different jobs.”
Read More: By David Reilly, Bloomberg
Tags: Barack Obama, Jimmy Carter, President Palin
Former President Jimmy Carter said Tuesday that racial politics played a role in South Carolina Rep. Joe Wilson’s outburst during President Obama’s speech to Congress last week and in some of the opposition the president has faced since taking office.
Carter attempts to discredit Obama’s opponents
"I think an overwhelming portion of the intensely demonstrated animosity toward President Barack Obama is based on the fact that he is a black man, that he’s African-American," Carter told "NBC Nightly News." "I live in the South, and I’ve seen the South come a long way, and I’ve seen the rest of the country that shares the South’s attitude toward minority groups at that time, particularly African-Americans."
"That racism inclination still exists, and I think it’s bubbled up to the surface because of belief among many white people — not just in the South but around the country — that African-Americans are not qualified to lead this great country. It’s an abominable circumstance, and it grieves me and concerns me very deeply," Carter said.
Michael Steele, who is the first African-American to chair the Republican National Committee, denied Wednesday that race is fueling protests.
"President Carter is flat-out wrong," Steele said in a statement. "This isn’t about race. It is about policy."
Read More: CNN.Com
Tags: Barack Obama, Jimmy Carter, Playing the race card, Racism
President Jimmy Carter once sent a note to an adviser extolling the importance of crisis to leadership. "When a president has authority to act unilaterally (as in a crisis), his leadership can
be exerted. Otherwise, compromise, delay and confusion are more likely. It’s our system. I like it."
Just Like Carter Obama lacks credibility
Politicians, like the rest of us, are often victims of their wishes. Carter was eventually smacked by the waves of crisis he sought to ride.
But encouraging a sense of crisis is a traditional tool of executive leadership. And using a joint session of Congress to address a single domestic issue is the most dramatic expression of this approach.
Carter did it effectively in April 1977. He spoke of the energy crisis as "the moral equivalent of war." Energy resources were "simply running out." (Carter’s CIA predicted worldwide oil shortages by the mid-1980s.) America needed to "cope with a crisis that otherwise would overwhelm us."
Read More:By Michael Gerson, Washington Post
Tags: Barack Obama, Credibility, Jimmy Carter, Speeches
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.
Read More: By Geoffrey P. Hunt, American Thinker
Tags: Barack Obama, Failed Presidency, Jimmy CarterIn briefing President Barack Obama one day this spring, White House economist Jared Bernstein delved into such arcana as the yields on different forms of credit relative to the risk. Later, Paul Volcker pulled Mr. Bernstein aside. “Why would the president want to know that level of detail?” asked the former Federal Reserve chairman.
“That’s what he wants,” Mr. Bernstein replied.
Obama is making decisions others would leave to experts
Many presidents have directed policy from on high, shunning the details of most issues. Mr. Obama has adopted a different style, particularly when it comes to economics, as he and his team wrestle with the worst financial crisis the nation has faced since the Depression.
In a White House ritual new with this administration, the president gathers with his advisers every weekday morning for an Oval Office update and debate on the economy. The breadth of topics is wide, from the underemployed to childhood obesity, and Mr. Obama often dives into the minutiae.
Read More: By NEIL KING JR. and JONATHAN WEISMAN, Wall Street Journal
Tags: Barack Obama, Jimmy Carter, Micromanager, Minutiae
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