Coming Up Short - Obama Living Up To His Inexperience
President Obama's approval rating, an item we were once assured would be the president's trump card over any opposition to his agenda in Congress, has (according to Rasmussen) dipped below 50%. This has to be stunning for his fan base (a far more appropriate term in this case than "supporters"). But really folks, what did you expect? Wasn't his popularity ultimately going to be tied to his record rather than his promises?
This is a man out of his depth. His background doesn't include any executive experience or serious accomplishment and we knew that when he was elected. Let's do a quick recap to illustrate how massive a disconnect exists between anything Obama has ever done and what he's now attempting to do as president.
Before seeking the presidency, Obama's experience in government was hardly impressive. He was never an important legislator at any level. His well established history of voting "present" in the Illinois legislature seems to be the best characterization of a legislative career that one could charitably call "undistinguished." His private sector experience was even worse. Unless you count his years spent as a "community organizer," which should more accurately be seen as his first step on the rung of the famously corrupt Chicago political machine, his experience amounts to a brief and unremarkable stint teaching constitutional law after serving as an editor of the Harvard Review (despite which he curiously never had a single article of his own published).
His list of accomplishments across all levels of endeavor reads rather impressively... if he were applying for admission to a liberal arts college. It's fantastically inadequate as a background for the leader of the free world. He registered voters. He advocated (to very little effect) on behalf of the poor. Despite possessing an entry level record of accomplishment, he'd written not one but two autobiographies before his election to the presidency.
We're told we should respect Obama's savvy and political skill, if for no other reason than because he survived the gauntlet of a modern presidential election defeating all comers, including the impressive juggernaut that was Hillary!™ Clinton's campaign. Yet Obama did not come close to the campaign experience most other candidates - Clinton included - experienced. His was the least vetted most openly cheered by the media of any candidacy in the modern era. Republicans like to complain about liberal media bias, but this was something else entirely. Not only Republicans but any Democrats rivaling Obama were savaged by the media while Obama himself glided through with very little scrutiny.
Think about the things Obama's campaign was so highly praised for: staying focused; staying on message; refusing to get distracted by challenges which might take him off message. And yet that "message" we're supposed to so admire him for not losing was at such a high and lofty level ("Hope!" "Change we can believe in!" "Yes we can!" etc.) there still isn't a lot of agreement about what exactly he had promised his presidency would bring. Right now he's seeing serious defection from independents who supported him because they don't believe he's acting as the "moderate" they were so certain he had promised to be. Yet his left wing is equally certain they heard him profess to being one of them. He might please both groups with the same speech, but it's a lot harder to please them both with the same actual policies. That Obama himself apparently didn't see this coming is further testament to his lack of experience (and perhaps also the hubris of a man who could publish two autobiographies before doing anything of great note).
Just a few weeks ago conservatives were terrified that Obama's popularity was like an unstoppable locomotive which was going to barrel through Congress implementing socialized medicine, cap-and-trade, steep new deficits, and correspondingly steeply higher taxes before there was a chance to slow it down. And perhaps it could have been so. But here is the part that made that outcome so improbable: Obama doesn't know how to enact his agenda. His prior record shows a man who has serially avoided working in the messy details of legislation, and avoided acquiring leadership experience in the private sector's school of hard knocks. He's been able to cover seemingly irreconcilable differences in the past with a speech or a vote of "present." That works well enough when you're not accountable for accomplishing anything more serious than becoming popular. It's completely inadequate when you're held to account for actual achievement.
Back on the campaign trail Hillary!™ Clinton gained some slight traction when she raised the issue of Obama's lack of readiness (It's 3am, etc.). The problem with this criticism was that it wasn't broad enough. Obama didn't simply lack foreign policy experience rendering him unready for a possible international crisis. He lacked experience should a crisis arise most anywhere within his presidential purview.
Despite the distaste Republicans may feel for her, does anyone seriously believe Hillary Clinton would be squandering the first year of her presidency, buoyed by commanding majorities in both houses of Congress (historically unlikely to survive the next midterm election), so fecklessly? Would she have handed her top priorities over to Congressional leaders and committee chairs to do whatever they may like without a strongly guiding hand? Would she appear so unaware of the details of her own policies? Would she have made the mistake of trying to get everything done at once rather than organizing and prioritizing? I suppose the honest answer is, "We don't know." But it surely doesn't seem very likely.
And that's where the silver lining starts to emerge. When you're president it's 3 a.m. all the time. There's a big difference between being the guy who gets to pick up the phone and knowing what the heck you're doing in response. Hillary Clinton, for all her faults, would have known what she was doing. From a conservative perspective, this would have been far worse for the nation than Obama's fumbling inability to get his agenda accomplished. Somewhat ironically, the nation may get a reprieve from the liberal attempt to remake the nation into its Euro-socialist ideal because Obama is simply not up to the job.
This is a man out of his depth. His background doesn't include any executive experience or serious accomplishment and we knew that when he was elected. Let's do a quick recap to illustrate how massive a disconnect exists between anything Obama has ever done and what he's now attempting to do as president.
Before seeking the presidency, Obama's experience in government was hardly impressive. He was never an important legislator at any level. His well established history of voting "present" in the Illinois legislature seems to be the best characterization of a legislative career that one could charitably call "undistinguished." His private sector experience was even worse. Unless you count his years spent as a "community organizer," which should more accurately be seen as his first step on the rung of the famously corrupt Chicago political machine, his experience amounts to a brief and unremarkable stint teaching constitutional law after serving as an editor of the Harvard Review (despite which he curiously never had a single article of his own published).
His list of accomplishments across all levels of endeavor reads rather impressively... if he were applying for admission to a liberal arts college. It's fantastically inadequate as a background for the leader of the free world. He registered voters. He advocated (to very little effect) on behalf of the poor. Despite possessing an entry level record of accomplishment, he'd written not one but two autobiographies before his election to the presidency.
We're told we should respect Obama's savvy and political skill, if for no other reason than because he survived the gauntlet of a modern presidential election defeating all comers, including the impressive juggernaut that was Hillary!™ Clinton's campaign. Yet Obama did not come close to the campaign experience most other candidates - Clinton included - experienced. His was the least vetted most openly cheered by the media of any candidacy in the modern era. Republicans like to complain about liberal media bias, but this was something else entirely. Not only Republicans but any Democrats rivaling Obama were savaged by the media while Obama himself glided through with very little scrutiny.
Think about the things Obama's campaign was so highly praised for: staying focused; staying on message; refusing to get distracted by challenges which might take him off message. And yet that "message" we're supposed to so admire him for not losing was at such a high and lofty level ("Hope!" "Change we can believe in!" "Yes we can!" etc.) there still isn't a lot of agreement about what exactly he had promised his presidency would bring. Right now he's seeing serious defection from independents who supported him because they don't believe he's acting as the "moderate" they were so certain he had promised to be. Yet his left wing is equally certain they heard him profess to being one of them. He might please both groups with the same speech, but it's a lot harder to please them both with the same actual policies. That Obama himself apparently didn't see this coming is further testament to his lack of experience (and perhaps also the hubris of a man who could publish two autobiographies before doing anything of great note).
Just a few weeks ago conservatives were terrified that Obama's popularity was like an unstoppable locomotive which was going to barrel through Congress implementing socialized medicine, cap-and-trade, steep new deficits, and correspondingly steeply higher taxes before there was a chance to slow it down. And perhaps it could have been so. But here is the part that made that outcome so improbable: Obama doesn't know how to enact his agenda. His prior record shows a man who has serially avoided working in the messy details of legislation, and avoided acquiring leadership experience in the private sector's school of hard knocks. He's been able to cover seemingly irreconcilable differences in the past with a speech or a vote of "present." That works well enough when you're not accountable for accomplishing anything more serious than becoming popular. It's completely inadequate when you're held to account for actual achievement.
Back on the campaign trail Hillary!™ Clinton gained some slight traction when she raised the issue of Obama's lack of readiness (It's 3am, etc.). The problem with this criticism was that it wasn't broad enough. Obama didn't simply lack foreign policy experience rendering him unready for a possible international crisis. He lacked experience should a crisis arise most anywhere within his presidential purview.
Despite the distaste Republicans may feel for her, does anyone seriously believe Hillary Clinton would be squandering the first year of her presidency, buoyed by commanding majorities in both houses of Congress (historically unlikely to survive the next midterm election), so fecklessly? Would she have handed her top priorities over to Congressional leaders and committee chairs to do whatever they may like without a strongly guiding hand? Would she appear so unaware of the details of her own policies? Would she have made the mistake of trying to get everything done at once rather than organizing and prioritizing? I suppose the honest answer is, "We don't know." But it surely doesn't seem very likely.
And that's where the silver lining starts to emerge. When you're president it's 3 a.m. all the time. There's a big difference between being the guy who gets to pick up the phone and knowing what the heck you're doing in response. Hillary Clinton, for all her faults, would have known what she was doing. From a conservative perspective, this would have been far worse for the nation than Obama's fumbling inability to get his agenda accomplished. Somewhat ironically, the nation may get a reprieve from the liberal attempt to remake the nation into its Euro-socialist ideal because Obama is simply not up to the job.
Posted by Doug Williams on
Friday July 24, 2009 at 11:22am
