I’m not worried. It’s just like 1993 all over again. More and more liberal nonsense, completely unrestrained, until the voters finally get sick and tired of it and lower the smackdown.

Meanwhile, get a good look because it’s history in the making. As I said before: If you got a solar eclipse right over your head every sixteen years, you’d still make the effort to look at it or get a picture of it, right? It’s a rare opportunity to focus on some of our more hidden human weaknesses…and those of our so-called “leaders”:

Sometimes political movements, as they grow old, become arrogant, insular, and dismissive of criticism. Critics said that the conservative ascendancy of the last few decades succumbed to that disease, and there is more truth in it than conservatives would like to admit. What we are seeing in Washington, D.C., right now is different: President Obama and his supporters are showing early symptoms of this syndrome in the first flush of victory. The liberal ascendancy is already becoming a liberal complacency.

In part this tendency reflects the character of the new president, a preternaturally self-confident man. His ambition to remake American policy and politics is staggering. His agenda for just his first year in office includes a fiscal stimulus unprecedented in size, a push for a new energy economy, and the revamping of American health care. That ambition may wreck his presidency, or it may make him the world-historical figure he aspires to be. But what is more troubling is the unwarranted intellectual self-confidence that liberalism in the age of Obama increasingly exhibits.

The debate over the economic-stimulus plan illustrated the point. When that plan was criticized, President Obama, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and Senate majority whip Dick Durbin all resorted nearly immediately to the “argument” that they had won the election. It is of course true that a lot of Democrats won their elections and that they will consequently get their way in most policy disputes. Yet they — and liberals generally — seem oddly exercised by the continued resistance to their policies by the small and relatively powerless minority that elected Republicans now constitute.

I would argue that “I won, now back down” is a far more legitimate argument coming from a conservative than coming from a liberal. At least, in cases like this, when the election that just took place is one revolutionary in nature.

A revolutionary instant of support for liberalism, is a mandate to make something go. Making something go invites all kinds of debate that would be, if allowed, quite legitimate: How do we make it go? In this case we could discuss, waitaminnit, we’re out of money and we’ll fix the problem by spending lots of it? How does that work? Or: Waitaminnit, the economy is on a deathbed and we’re going to shock in back into robust health by taxing the ever-luvin’ snot out of it? Or, what has become my favorite lately: How come it is that if I’m offered a retention bonus, I’ll be able to keep it, even though you’re saying when an AIG executive is offered one, it’ll be revoked or taxed away on Congress’ whim? How is it you’re attacking their right to own property, and leaving mine intact?

This kind of liberal snobbery shuns important and necessary exchanges of ideas, like these, and many more.

The same is not true of a conservative who earns a mandate to make something stop. In that scenario, you have a situation like what we had in the 1994 elections: The voters are sick to death of something and want it ended.

You know, as far as that goes, according to President Obama’s own campaign rhetoric He fits into that paradigm as a conservative — in the sense He was put there to put a stop to something, not necessarily to make something go. “Change” from those “failed policies” that belonged to President Bush, and all that. Being a Messianic Enlightened Being who’s super-duper-smart, so I’m told, He should understand that when He puts a plan together, the time’s come to put it up for some kind of discussion — even though He won. The process of construction is just a bit more complicated than the process of destruction.

It’s yet another thing we’ve said around these parts quite a bit: You need to attend some kind of training to operate the crane that swings a wrecking ball to get rid of a building (and most of that has to do with how not injure people when you’re gettin’ it done, not so much the actual wrecking); to be the architect of the new building that goes up in its place, you need quite a bit more training. Things have to fit together. Materials have to be chosen and customized, measurements have to meet code, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Wrecking is easy. Stopping things is relatively simple.

The voters deserve to have some way of saying “we’re sick of this, enough!” They also deserve to have some way of saying “er, y’know, this really might not quite be what we had in mind.”

So David Broder is announcing the honeymoon is over (hat tip: Melissa), and His Anointedness’ approval ratings — yes, He has to worry about these too, just like any other President — have sunk beneath sixty percent. Maybe that’s as low as they’ll ever go. Maybe not.

If not, it opens up a question about the nature of His incredible popularity: If it continues to decline, will it decline the same way as with His predecessors?

I’m thinking not. I have a theory about this. I think, given the characteristics of the people who slavishly follow Him, this is going to be tracking downward along a different trend. These are people who have found it to be an incredible, intoxicating opportunity to be a part of a “change”; a change that had such an overwhelming inertia built up behind it, that without any one of them, it would’ve succeeded just fine anyway. These are, therefore, people who find it to be a spiritually uplifting experience to contribute to revolutions that don’t really need their help.

From that, and from interacting with them personally, I conclude most of them lack the character fortitude to participate in a real revolution. They don’t have experience being on the thin side of a crowd. After all, these are people who found the mere illusion of making a difference to be so affirming. Can it really be said they’d be this enthralled if they had any experience standing against the majority? I find that doubtful. I think these are people who crave, well before that feeling of making a difference and fomenting “change,” the safety of facing the same direction as the majority, ahead of it or behind it. This is necessary for the affirmation.

I don’t think Obama can have an approval rating of 49%. I think His approval numbers will slide down to 50%, and after that He’ll keep it there for a time, just long enough for His followers to figure what’s going on. And then once the reality sinks in He’ll be down in the twenties, or teens, or low teens. He’ll be just like any last-year’s fashion statement.

The point is, there will be a sudden, unrecoverable, drop. The challenge that will arise in 2012 will be to recapture some of that old excitement from 2007 and 2008. That will be the big question, upon which the elections will turn. Perhaps it will be like 1996 all over again — voters will figure, hey, we handed Him enough of a butt-paddling in the 2010 midterms voting all those Republicans into Congress, He’s gotten the message by now. Maybe He can give a few really awesome excellent speeches.

But it will, ultimately, be a campaign asking people to repeat a mistake. A mistake they will, by then, bitterly regret…not only with sorrow, but with some measure of rancor. The President asking them to forgive and forget will be polling at…oh…about 22%, tops.

Once the Obamafan perceives himself to be in the minority, it’ll all be over for good. They don’t have the intrepidity to tolerate a situation like that. They aren’t that strong. Their moral resilience is just not there.

That’s why they are so driven to provide the illusion that it is; and, why they’re never, ever quite finished proving it. It’s a desire to have something others have, that they’ve never had.

They’ll desert Him like rats on a sinking ship.

The fifty-sixth Best Sentence I’ve Heard Or Read Lately (BSIHORL) award goes out this morning to James Taranto (who, if memory serves, might already have received one or two…although I’m too lazy to go digging in the archives at the moment).

Highlighted in bold —

Obama’s new “optimistic” tone seems to reflect an adjustment in political tactics. Early in his term–until about a week ago, that is–administration officials were acting in accord with Rahm Emanuel’s dictum “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste.” The theory seemed to be that if people felt the situation was dire, they would be more amenable to Obama’s vision of transforming America into a European-style social democracy.

Now, it seems, Obama has concluded that the sense of crisis is an impediment to his goals. Therefore, he is counseling optimism and patience in the hope that that will win support for the things he wants to do.

But everyone knows the crisis is real, even if it falls short of a catastrophe. And hardly anyone is gullible enough to think that socializing the health-insurance business, imposing massive taxes on energy, and increasing the power of unions are going to resolve a crisis that has its origins in the credit markets.

Obama seems to care about the economic crisis only to the extent that it is an impediment to or an instrument for winning support for policies in unrelated areas. It is as if President Bush had responded to 9/11 by launching an all-out campaign for private Social Security accounts.

He seems to care about crisis only to the extent that it helps or hurts his agenda in unrelated areas. That’s how I would re-word it so it fits on a large refrigerator magnet…I’m still miles off from fitting it on a bumper sticker or coffee mug.

But you’re lookin’, right there, at why I’ve bet a hundred dollars plus a steak dinner on this guy being a one-termer. Nobody has an enduring craving for the salesman who is obviously just telling you what it takes to get things sold. He might be fun to have around for five minutes, or ten, but after an hour you want to toss him out on his ear. And if you ever want to see him again, it’s only because you’ve been enjoying a generous break from him.

The dude, like others like him, is like beef jerky. Just not that appealing when you get too much. That’s for starters. And now, as our duly Anointed Messiah, He can’t even keep it straight whether we’re in the middle of something that is a paralyzing crisis, or no-biggie. That kind of inconsistency will wear out His welcome even quicker still.

Baldwin Park democrat, speaking for probably several others:

President Obama did not come down from on high. He is not a miracle worker. He can not wave a magic wand and make things miraculously happen. He is a mortal. A human being. Nothing more and nothing less.

President Obama and his Administration hit the ground running on day one and have kept up a whirlwind pace ever since. Few Presidents have accomplished so much in such a short span of time. But not all of his campaign promises can be enacted in his first hundred days. The unprecedented number of high priority and competing issues facing the new President means that some changes will simply have to bide their time.

The changes will come, not as quickly as some would like, but they will come. Everyone needs to be realistic in judging President Obama’s performance so early in his Administration.

My goodness, democrats can get bossy when telling strangers what opinions they should have of things. Well, Don Surber seems to be abiding by the “needs to be realistic” part, in passing judgment on this “whirlwind pace” (hat tip: Gerard).

Barack Obama is too busy posing for magazine covers to actually do the job to which he was elected.

There is a price to be paid when a president throws a party every other night, weekends in Chicago or Camp David and poses for magazine cover after magazine cover.

After 51 days in office, Barack Obama has appointed only 73 people to 1,200 jobs that require Senate confirmation.

If they require Senate approval, they are important jobs.

But Obama is too busy to properly vet the people and appoint them to fill the jobs to get the work done.

That is his job.

And he shirks it.

And now we pay the price.

The London Independent reported: “Last week, it was all smiles and handshakes as Gordon Brown and President Barack Obama put on a show of unity in Washington.

“But yesterday, Sir Gus O’Donnell, Britain’s most senior civil servant, exposed transatlantic tension when he protested that Downing Street was finding it ‘unbelievably difficult’ to plan for next month’s G20 summit in London because of problems tracking down senior figures in the US administration. ‘There is nobody there. You cannot believe how difficult it is,’ the Cabinet Secretary told a civil service conference in Gateshead.”

The Times of London and other newspapers had similar accounts.

If our allies cannot reach us because Barack Obama has failed to appoint someone to answer the phone, how are we to have any friends in the world?

And yet this naïf little twit who barely qualifies to be a back bencher in the Illinois legislature had the nerve to tell reporters last week: “President Obama has accomplished more in 30 days than any president in modern history.”

He really said that.

He really thinks that.

He really thinks that because he could get legislation passed through a Congress that is overwhelmingly Democratic that he is God’s gift to the nation.

I think where the Barackapologists are going a little bit off-base here, is with this perception of theirs that they have been sold a whole sumptuous buffet of presidential/personal assets in exchange for their votes, when really what they got was only a single, solitary positive attribute: This ability that PBO has, to make a good impression on people. That was the only goody in the package.

And it just got recalled; there’s nothing left.

If I could travel back in a time machine to early November and tell people “Barack Obama is going to be defended by only a slim minority among his most ardent followers, for his underperformance in His first 50 days in office,” it would be perceived back there as extreme, fringe, kooky, agitprop right-wing propaganda.

And yet. Here we are.

Cross-posted at Right Wing News.

Megan McArdle:

Our sister publication asks analysts whether the administration’s economic forecasts are too optimistic. They would have gotten a more interesting discussion if their query had been “Is the Pope Catholic?” Of course they’re too optimistic. In fact, the word optimistic is too optimistic. A better choice might have been “insane”. Like Greg Mankiw, I would love to find a sucker investor who is willing to take the other end of a bet that both growth and revenue will fall short of the administration’s predictions.

Having defended Obama’s candidacy largely on his economic team, I’m having serious buyer’s remorse. Geithner, who is rapidly starting to look like the weakest link, is rattling around by himself in Treasury. Meanwhile, the administration is clearly prioritized a stimulus package that will not work without fixing the banks over, um, fixing the banking system. Unlike most fiscal conservatives, I’m not mad at him for trying to increase the size of the government; that’s, after all, what he got elected promising to do. But he also promised to be non-partisan and accountable, and the size and composition stimulus package looks like just one more attempt to ram through his ideological agenda without much scrutiny, with the heaviest focus on programs that will be especially hard to cut.

The budget numbers are just one more blow to the credibility he worked hard to establish during the election. Back then, people like me handed him kudoes for using numbers that were really much less mendacious than the general run of candidate program promises. Now, he’s building a budget on the promise that this recession will be milder than average, with growth merely dipping to 1.2% this year and returning to trend in 2010. Isn’t there anyone at BLS who could have filled him in on the unemployment figures, or at Treasury who could have explained what a disproportionate impact finance salaries have on tax revenue? These numbers…well, I can’t really fully describe them on a family blog. But he has now raced passed Bush in the Delusional Budget Math olympics.

This is an important voice — far more important than mine. This is an Obama voter. It’s not an Obama voter who was fainting at the rallies, getting tingles up her leg, screaming “There’s Just Something About Him!!” or any of that rot. This is a Main Street USA type, one who was sick to death of bloated, irresponsible spending, and voted for Obama to get something better.

That, I daresay, was the majority of The Holy One’s voting base.

I’ve bet some money that His Anointedness was going to be a one-termer, and then I said later on I’d like to double my stakes on that one if I had any takers. That was a stupid thing to say, and I’d like to retract it. What I meant to say was that I’d like to quadruple those stakes.

In 2012, He will not be getting any votes from the “There’s Just Something About Him!” folks. They’ll know there isn’t. Also, He will not be getting any votes from the “I Just Want To Be Part Of This Thing!” folks; we will have already had a black President, and there won’t be any thing to be a part of.

Oh, people will want change in ’12…far more than they wanted it in ’08. Far, far more. They’ll be hungry for change, and hungry for hope. They just won’t see Him as the Savior who can deliver it anymore.

Cross-posted at Right Wing News.