On the campaign trail, Obama was portrayed as a moderate, willing to extend the olive branch of bipartisanship. Then he became known for his views on the redistribution of wealth, revealing himself to be a liberal. Next, he was branded a socialist. But was he ever thought to be scandal-ridden and incompetent? Not until now.
In a time where Obama would do well to seem calm, collected, and in charge after a knock-down, drag-out fight over healthcare, the chinks in his armor are beginning to show.
BP and Barack: A Love Story
Despite what Ken Salazar, Obama's Secretary of the Interior, has said about keeping a "boot on the neck" of BP, Obama's actual dealings with BP seem to indicate otherwise. In fact, out of all of BP's contributions to federal candidates, the President ranks #1 among its recipients. I suppose this conflict of interest might make it more difficult for him to apply pressure with that size 13 1/2 heel. Oh, why do we always hurt the ones we love?
His hesitance to do anything at all in the midst of this crisis (besides hang out with the Duke basketball team and Bill Clinton) bears a strong resemblance to the left's caricature of a supposedly uncaring President Bush in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. However, while Bush only took a mere four days to physically arrive at the scene, Obama's arrival to Louisiana took nearly two weeks.
Is it a lack of compassion? Is it incompetence? What is it that keeps Obama at the point of being so stupefied? At any rate, something needs to happen before James Carville blows a gasket over this.
I'll Have Mine Chicago-style, Please
At press time, there are two scandals on the horizon where the White House has dangled the carrot of federal jobs to Democrats in primary races for political reasons. Apparently, Obama didn't learn much from the Blago scandal, but I suppose the Chicago culture is so ingrained in the mindset of the White House that it's difficult to resist.
Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - Clavos
According to Fox News, the position offered to Sestak was merely a seat on a presidential advisory committee, with no remuneration, which makes the WH offer even more senseless, since it clearly was not attractive enough to entice Sestak.
2 - Baronius
I read the American Spectator article. The whole discussion seems a bit ahead of itself. Political fortunes always change. I mean, the Republicans have been patting themselves on the back about their November 2010 wins for at least a year. Optimism is fine, but don't count your chickens before they hatch. And that's with regard to the 2010 elections. 2012 is an even longer ways away.
This article and the one in the American Spectator don't mention the most important factor in Obama's theoretical slide from power. If you want to know whether the salmon are running, watch the bears; if you want to know if there's any political opportunity in 2012, watch Mrs. Clinton.
3 - handyguy
And until then, even more important if also more boring: watch the unemployment rate.
4 - handyguy
If things were to be bad enough to tempt Sec. Clinton to run in 2012, the Dems would lose anyhow. An insurgency campaign against an incumbent nearly always ensures that [McCarthy in '68, Kennedy in '80, Buchanan in '92]. [BTW, I think there is virtually no chance she will run.]
5 - Dr Dreadful
Nearly always ensures that?
Has there been any instance of a president succeeding another president from the same party in circumstances other than term limits, resignation or death?
6 - Dan(Miller)
Please permit me to be the very first to note the obviously racist nature of this specious article. Not only does it suggest that President Obama may have problems -- obviously a patently glaring racist attack -- it clearly states that the chinks in . . . [President Obama's] armor are beginning to show.
As all right thinking people know, "chink" is a term of gross racial disparagement and is so viewed by those of Asian ancestry. This hardly obscure reference to the now gloriously amicable relationship between China and the United States, so despised by rightist racists simply because it is the product of President Obama's mature diplomacy, is terrible! The author should be deported to Singapore and flogged unmercifully.
Gosh Darn! This is as horrible as a Washington Post headline tattooed indelibly in my memory many years ago, Chinks in the Alliance, referring to certain alleged problems arising in the wholesome alliance between two peace loving, enlightened and gallant comrades in the war against capitalist oppression, Russia and China.
For Shame! I say, For Shame! This simply goes to show that Conservative bloggers from Alabama and other Confederate states can't help themselves; political correctness reeducation camps are needed, instanter! Where are the defenders of Truth, Justice and the Politically Correct American Way?
Dan(Miller)
Sob, I can't take it any more. The End Times must surely be upon us.
7 - Baronius
Clinton: "I'm not speaking for the administration so I will preface that with very clear caveat. The rich are not paying their fair share in any nation that is facing the kind of employment issues, whether it's individual, corporate, whatever the taxation forms are."
When your Secretary of State is making unvetted statements about fiscal policy, you've got bigger problems than an oil spill.
8 - Heloise
Here's some buzz for you I called this Obama's bay of pigs as in BP. Rush spun it even better to Obama's "Bay of Rigs" gotta love that one.
Besides "I can bash Obama but you can't" won't hunt with even the stanchest of Dems. They are all throwing mud. And the latest is Blago who is out of the crook's closet and might stab Obama, Rahm and Valerie in the back without drawing blood.
Can't wait. Will he last until 2012? Who knows? But he probably won't win re-election because as I say "experiment over!"
Heloise
9 - handyguy
I don't know what point you think you're making, Baronius.
That quote out of context may make it seem Clinton was criticizing White House policy. Not even a little bit.
Read the whole article: a speech at the Brookings Institute followed by questions from the audience. It was the very last question, and this is what was asked [by Kemal Davis, a Turkish national and former UN anti-poverty official]:
...how do you think we can manage the balance between fiscal responsibility, which is, of course, very necessary, but also attention to the most vulnerable, the poorest segments of both American population and worldwide population, and the need still to strengthen this recovery, to strengthen employment...?
Her answer was quite long, not the one tiny sound bite you quote, and it was clear she was talking about multiple countries, not the US specifically. And she emphasized convincingly both then and several times earlier that she was very supportive of Obama's economic policies.
She's an amazingly smart and articulate woman. You're trying to portray her as a sneaky game-player.
10 - Jamison
Dans comment is too funny to be serious. Tell me its satire.
11 - Clavos
Try to figure it out for yourself, Jamison...
12 - Silas Kain
A few months ago I presented the prospect of Hillary Clinton being in the right place at the right time. There are PLENTY of people out there who would take her as an alternative to a Republican. If the Democrats fare poorly in November, the Secretary of State is out right after the holidays. She writes a book. Does some policy speeches. Visits a few heads of state. Wines and dines Hollywood. And she's Teddy Kennedy to Jimmy Carter Obama. The difference? Hillary is a woman -- and a quite brilliant one at that.
The Senate Democrat Leadership steered the entire 2008 Presidential Election Barack Obama's way. Everyone in D.C. knows it. Hillary Clinton was screwed over by her own peers in the Senate, NOT because of Bill but because she is a "SHE". Senators Reid and Schumer talk a good game but they're as Victorian as a Mormon missionary when it comes to women. Democrat House members will feel the pain in the next Congress. It will be a coalition of women, LGBT and Independents that force Hillary into candidacy status.
13 - Jeff Forsythe
After scanning the contents of this rather slanted editorial commentary, I shall employ the expression “balderdash” to describe this drivel only because I consider myself too refined for the term bullshit
Ooops; did that slip out?
Mr. Forsythe
14 - Heloise
Dan I think he meant to say "kinks" in his armour. Oh damn, that's racist too, so he can't win. Funny, I have not heard that idiom in a long time. I think he got it right.
I was the first to say that we should cut Obama some slack. But since BP and the understanding that Obama has his armour chinks have happened because they are full of BP and Sachs money then gloves off or is it boots on the neck? Too funny.
15 - Glenn Contrarian
Silas -
I would have loved to have seen Hillary in office myself - that's why I was an alternate state delegate for her in the primary. I listened to her - we were no more than 30 feet away - at a rally, and it was really something to listen to her rattle off fact after fact after fact, statistic after statistic after statistic, to answer the questions that audience members asked. She had no notes on her hand, no teleprompter. She didn't need one.
That satisfied, I am quite satisfied with President Obama, because considering the crap sandwich he was handed in January of '09, and looking back on our recoveries from all other recessions since WWI, only one did better, more quickly - and his initials were FDR, for the Depression was effectively over by '36...but FDR listened to the Republicans in '36, went on an austerity kick, and we sank back into Depression part II as a result and stayed there until a certain government-funded stimulus named WWII came along.
But FDR didn't have two wars to deal with at the same time. Compared to the presidents of history, President Obama has done very well indeed and we can be rightly proud of him.
Now I'll sit back and watch the vitriol flow from those who just can't stand a Democrat in the White House....
16 - Baronius
Handy, we read the situation very differently, even aside from Clinton's motives. The situation reminds me of Califano under Carter. Califano was an old-style Washington liberal who knew levers of power that Carter's people didn't. As head of HEW, Califano went (there's no better word for it) rogue. Carter wasn't strong enough a leader to keep him in line.
Obama has largely isolated Clinton, doing a lot of his foreign policy through envoys. But Clinton has her own power base, and a background on a variety of issues. She's Plan B for the Democratic Party, even if she doesn't want to be. Now if she's speaking off-the-cuff about tax policy, without the okay of Obama's economics team, that's a problem.
17 - handyguy
I understand that it's more fun to sling shit around than it is to sing about sunshine and roses, at least for political commenters/venters on a blog site. But I do find all the doomy Obama predictions in this thread pretty ridiculous, if inevitable.
But really, who could want the job of president any more? There's always someone to throw mud and call you an idiot. No matter who was president now, McCain or Romney or Ron Paul or Hillary Clinton, their negatives would have been driven up by this point.
People are full of bile, even if they're not quite sure what they're mad about, and the 24-hour megaphones of the Web, cable news and talk radio can make the world seem unendingly ugly and chaotic.
The amazing thing is that Obama's favorable ratings remain as good as they are: 47.9% approval, 45.9% disapproval in the latest RealClearPolitics averages. I think he deserves much better than that, but I'm just a boring old Pollyanna in a room full of snarling, chortling loudmouths.
18 - handyguy
Baronius: as I stated, in context her remarks were about the world, not just the US. [Perhaps you couldn't be bothered to look at the entire question and the entire answer. But then you shouldn't draw such sweeping conclusions about it.]
And at any rate, her words are not at odds with White House policy. If she were going rogue, why would she preface her sentence with that ever so cautious 'caveat'?
This 'hidden Obama-Clinton conflict' is a favorite meme of conservatives -- they really love it. You can find that same fragment of a quote, without any of its surrounding context, on a dozen right-wing web sites, aka 'the echo chamber.'
19 - Ruvy
I think all this chattering about Obama's fall from grace are far and away premature. Unless someone can press home the case that Obama's occupancy of the White House is fraudulent, and make it stick with military leaders in the States, his tenure is assured until 20 January 2013. If the Republicrats keep counting their unhatched eggs this way, the party of Obama-sheep will continue to control congress until then, too.
Guys like Braden should hold their tongues and let the BP oil slick work its way up the Atlantic coast, closing beaches and killing fish as it goes. Obama will fall in his own oil slick in G-d's good time.
20 - Baronius
Handy, I've read the question. I read the caveat. To me, the caveat is much more aggressive because it clearly stated what I've been claiming: that a top administration official didn't bother checking with the policy spokesmen before making a statement outside her domain. (And yes, her comments can be applied to the US, and would accurately state her position if applied to the US.)
The rest of your reponses in 17-18 were just complaints about political groupies, GOP groupies in particular. Lumping people together shouldn't be part of your new bipartisan spirit, Handy. I don't think it's accurate either. Some conservatives have commented about Clinton's statement, pulling the partial quote from the Politico article. But they've commented on the tax implications of it, not on the impropriety of the statement itself.
21 - Cannonshop
Obama is the "Twilight" generation's idea of a President, just like the sparkly vampires of Twilight demonstrate their idea of a healthy relationship. He'll be in a long time, regardless of what he does, or what happens. It's about the Personality Cult, not the policy.
22 - Jordan Richardson
The presidency has been about personality and character for ages. Obama's far from the first example of a president elected for his image and he won't be the last.
23 - Clavos
The presidency has been about personality and character for ages. Obama's far from the first example of a president elected for his image and he won't be the last.
Quoted for Truth -- unfortunately.
We'd do a lot better if we elected on merit.
But we never will.
24 - Baronius
OK, Clavos, suppose it's all up to you. Who would you want to see become President on merit?
25 - roger nowosielski
It will never happen because a president is a mere figurehead in American politics.
The vested interests are the ones that rule, and our so-called executive is but a skipper whose main purpose is to keep the ship of state on an even keel.