Former supporter Zuckerman fires 2nd shot over Obama’s bow

It was just yesterday that I posted about the equally meteoric rise and fall of BHO. But apparently driving Obama’s failures home… not merely confined to the MA special election loss… was important enough for Mort Zuckerman – former Obama supporter – to again fire another political shell over Obama’s bow. After recapping domestic and foreign failure after failure on record, Zuckerman’s op-ed in US News and World Report, “The Incredible Deflation of Barack Obama” comes to a single conclusion:

The consequence is that there isn’t a single critical problem on which the president has a positive public rating. Only a minority of Americans now believe the president will make the right decisions for the country. Nor can he any longer take refuge in the rejoinder that “we inherited a terrible situation.” Or blame it on fat-cat bankers and insurance companies. Blaming others, including Bush, for the country’s predicament is less and less persuasive. “At some point you own your presidency,” wrote Peggy Noonan in the Wall Street Journal. “At some point the American people tell you it’s yours.”

Another stellar point made by Zuckerman is Obama’s penchant for the cameras, and perpetual campaign mode of governance.

Perhaps the inevitable outcome was disappointment—and on this Obama has not disappointed. Alas, he has accelerated the deflation of hope with his extraordinary volume of public appearances. In his first six months, he gave three times as many interviews as George W. Bush, four times as many prime-time news conferences as Bill Clinton, and more interviews than both combined: 93 for Obama and 61 for his two immediate predecessors. He appeared on five Sunday talk shows on the same morning, followed the next day by David Letterman, the first-ever presidential appearance on a nighttime comedy show. In another week, he squeezed in addresses to the U.S. Climate Change Summit, the U.N. General Assembly, the U.N. Security Council, and a variety of press conferences.

His promiscuity on TV has made him seem as if he is still a candidate instead of president and commander in chief. He—and his advisers—have failed to appreciate that national TV speeches are best reserved for those moments when the country faces a major crisis or a war. Now he faces the iron law of diminishing novelty.

The ever affable and always entertaining Mark Steyn touched on the same in his column today, “Brown’s truckin’, Obama shifts into reverse”. Obama has a dogged approach to whipping up public support…. spam them with personal appearances, pounding the same talking points over and over until you think you’ve convinced them.

But you schlubs aren’t that smart. You didn’t get it. And Barack Obama is determined to see that you do. So the president has decided that he needs to start “speaking directly to the American people.”

Wait, wait! Come back! Don’t all stampede for the hills! He gave only (according to CBS News’ Mark Knoller) 158 interviews and 411 speeches in his first year. That’s more than any previous president – and maybe more than all of them put together. But there may still be some show out there that didn’t get its exclusive Obama interview – I believe the top-rated “Grain & Livestock Prices Report – 4 a.m. Update with Herb Torpormeister” on WZZZ-AM Dead Buzzard Gulch Junction’s Newstalk Leader is still waiting to hear back from the White House.

But as Zuckerman is quick to point out today, the POTUS problems are more than style. They are founded in doubt as to his substance, and competence. Citing a veritable mantra – almost Hannity style – Zuckerman leaves few stones unturned.

He sets deadlines and then lets too many pass. He announces a strategic review of Afghanistan, describing it as “a war of necessity,” only to become less sure to the point that he didn’t even seem committed to the policy that he finally announced. As for changing politics in Washington, he assigned the drafting of central legislative programs not to cabinet departments or White House staff but to the Democratic congressional leadership of Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, the very people so mistrusted by the public. Who could be surprised that the critical bills—the stimulus program and healthcare—degenerated under a welter of pork and earmarks that had so outraged the American public in the past?

Pelosi benefited from $54 million to relocate a Bay Area wine train, not to speak of a secret deal with the drug industry lobby to preclude negotiations on Medicaid drug prices and exclude drug imports from Canada, concessions that had previously been strongly rejected by Obama. Reid favored the gambling industry by arranging an earmark for a Los Angeles-to-Las Vegas high-speed monorail, even though it won’t be built for years. Some components of the stimulus did help soften the recession, yet only roughly a third of the $787 billion stimulus has been spent, and too much was spent on programs supported by liberal Democrats, which explains why so much of the stimulus money went toward education, health, energy conservation, and other activities, mostly worthy but not geared to achieving recovery and getting people back to work.

Taxpayers have thus come to see politics as usual masquerading as economic recovery. Indeed, both the stimulus and healthcare plans were voted on so quickly that the lawmakers had no time to read the bills. In both cases, the White House created the impression it was interested in passing anything, no matter how ineffectual. This was epitomized by Obama’s chief of staff essentially asserting that a healthcare bill would be passed even if all it consisted of was two Band-Aids and an aspirin.

Most critically, Obama misjudged the locus of the country’s anxiety: the economy. Instead of concentrating on jobs, jobs, jobs, he made the decision to “boil the ocean” and go for everything, from comprehensive health reform to global warming to a world without nuclear weapons … and the beat goes on.

Zuckerman let it fly on the delayed release of “stimulus” funds, applauding Shelby Steele’s observation in the Wall Street Journal “Where is the economic logic behind a stimu­lus package that doesn’t fully click in for a number of years?” Right on it’s coattails was his failure to reign in Congressional spending that took the nation’s debt ceiling up $3 trillion in between 2009 and today. This is approximately the same figure that took even the high spending Bush eight years…. the largest increases in annual spending being the two that the Democrats held control of both chambers in Congress.

Perhaps Zuckerman’s toughest critique was Obama’s haste in “remaking” America.

Obama, the theoretician in a hurry, made no allowance for the normal resistance to dramatic change and the public’s distaste for big government, big spending, and big deficits. He didn’t seem to realize that Americans understand in the most personal terms that excessive debt has real consequences, given how many have mortgages that exceed the value of a home and credit lines that are too much to carry. Yet this was what the president seemed to be getting us into. Over 60 percent of the country believes that government spending is excessive; Obama’s lowest approval ratings come from his mishandling of the present and future deficits.

With this self-perceived mandate, and the political reality that he had to accomplish everything possible while there was a supermajority in Congress, Obama pushed too hard, and as far left as he promised during his presidential campaign. This error in judgment of American society is not a character flaw easy to correct.

Now, post Massachusetts, the beltway spin is that Obama is trending towards the center. Perhaps that’s the new PC phrase for “duck, cover and divert”.

Officially cornered, Obama reluctantly tabled health care, but still sent Rahm’bo behind the scenes to Pelosi to see if the House would pass the Senate version as is. Only the most naive of fools would think there was.

The Scott Brown sweep in Massachusetts was, essentially, a “buy one, get 5 free” moment as Dem Congressional members backpeddled furiously on support for the exising bills. Even election analyst, Charlie Cook, calls it an “air raid siren” for Democrats. This is not the time to be, as Cook says, “exercising denial” with talking points and diversional tactics.

Still Zuckerman thinks Obama may be able to turn things around, despite the historic trend that a POTUS first year is usually their defining one. I suspect, with the irreversible spending that has already occurred, this will be difficult… even were Congress to slam the purse strings tightly shut this very hour. Much damage has been done, but it’s also possible much further damage has now been averted.

But I must disagree with Zuckerman’s “hope” for a turn around. Obama’s political image of competence and cool assurance has been shattered, and that damage cannot be undone. Even now, the next faux pas hit the media… the banking fees, the “Volcker Rule” which, as proposed, is Glass-Steagall on steroids. And Obama’s support for Fed Reserve Chairman, Bernanke, now being threatened by his peers.

Zuckerman, himself, shines a light on why Obama’s political capital is unlikely to be redeemed…. and yet missed the obvious himself. As he said in his final paragraph…

This brings to mind why an adviser to President Roosevelt in the 1930s, Bernard Baruch, told electors to vote for the person who promised them less. In this way, he said, “you would be less disappointed.”

Still holding on to a bit of that PEBO hope from last year, Zuckerman forgets that Obama won on lofty campaign promises. Remove the promises, you remove the Obama appeal. Fulfill the promises, and his inexperience and poor leadership/economic judgment are fulled exposed. This puts Obama between a rock and a hard place, and suggest his political damage as an effective leader are beyond repair.