House of Eratosthenes

Barack Obama has won a place in history with the worst ratings of any president at the end of his first year: 49% approve and 46% disapprove of his job performance in the latest USA Today/Gallup Poll.
:
Mr. Obama has not governed as the centrist, deficit-fighting, bipartisan consensus builder he promised to be. And his promise to embody a new kind of politics—free of finger-pointing, pettiness and spin—was a mirage. He has cheapened his office with needless attacks on his predecessor.

George Will expounds.

Consider his busy December — so far.

His Dec. 1 Afghanistan speech to the nation was followed on Dec. 3 by his televised “jobs summit.” His Dec. 8 televised economics speech at the Brookings Institution was followed on Dec. 10 by his televised Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech, which was remarkable for 38 uses of the pronoun “I.”

And for disavowing a competence no one suspected him of. (“I do not bring with me today a definitive solution to the problems of war.” Note the superfluous adjective.) And for an unnecessary notification. (“Evil does exist in the world.”) And for delayed utopianism. (“We will not eradicate violent conflict in our lifetimes.” But in someone’s.) And for solemnly announcing something undisputed. (There can be a just war.) And for intellectual applesauce that should get speechwriters fired and editors hired. (“We do not have to think that human nature is perfect for us to still believe that the human condition can be perfected.” If the human “condition” can attain perfection anyway, human nature cannot be significantly imperfect.)

Then on Dec. 13, he was on “60 Minutes” praising himself with another denigration of his predecessor, aka “the last eight years.” (Blighted by “a triumphant sense about war.”) When Attorney General Eric Holder announced that five accused terrorists would be tried in federal courts, he said: “After eight years of delay. …” When the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force made the controversial recommendation that women should get fewer mammograms, Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius said: “This panel was appointed by the prior administration, by former President George Bush.” In congressional testimony, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner almost deviated from the script. He said the Obama administration began after “almost a decade” — slight pause — “certainly eight years of basic neglect.”

Will finishes strong…

A CNN poll shows 36 percent of the public in favor of what the Democratic Senate is trying to do to health care, 61 percent opposed. It is clear what the public wants Congress to do: Take a mulligan and start over.

So Republicans can win in 2009 by stopping the bill, or in 2010 by saying: Unpopular health legislation passed because of a 60-40 party-line decision to bring it to a Senate vote. Therefore each incumbent Democrat is responsible for everything in the law.

The folks from whom I’d really like to hear, are the ones who one year ago were looking forward to the inauguration ceremonies and a new era of (heh) unity, an end (snicker) to partisan bickering, and a (guffaw) new age of mutual cooperation in Washington so things could (groan) finally get done!

They’re probably skipping the expected apology because they figure nobody’s really waiting to hear it.

Well, I’d certainly like to hear it. I think they owe it to the rest of us.

Rove, like Cheney, seem to be pretty level-headed and reasonable — and decent guys to me — and they always have. This elicits everything from gasps to guffaws every time I utter it, exposing the Alinsky-ization of their personas.

They are people with whom I may disagree sometimes, but it doesn’t change my opinion of them.

Rove is particularly bright and has the verbal prowess to cut like a knife to the heart of the problem. This man can say what needs to be said in very few words, whereas Obama (given a teleprompter) can yammer on eloquently for days and say absolutely nothing.

One thing that really stood out to me in Rove’s article was the fact that the stimulus money amounted to $787 billion and we’ve “only” spent $244 billion of it — and Obama says it’s working, economy’s looking up, right?

Great. Let’s have that other $543 billion back then, thank you very much, and stop talking about Stimulus II, shall we? That should help us out on the World Credit Rating market, maybe stablize the dollar, and keep oil prices from shooting back up so high.

Just a thought.

The GOP should start pushing for that.
- philmon | 12/17/2009 @ 10:22
“The folks from whom I’d really like to hear…”

Yup, waiting…
- tim | 12/17/2009 @ 10:38
I had two readers last year who professed to be conservatives yet said they were going to vote for The One. We argued… ahem. “discussed”… the issue quite a bit. They don’t come around any longer. Coincidence? I think not.
- bpenni | 12/17/2009 @ 12:58
Yeah, you know that’s the kind of thing that gets me a little upset. How would you be treated if you said out loud (or acted on) “I don’t want to talk to you anymore because you voted for Holy One.” Like a small-minded, bigoted fool, right?

How come they get to say “I know my bright-ass idea hasn’t worked out and it makes me too embarrassed to talk to you”? Isn’t that a little bit worse? I mean, sheesh…just admit you had a stink-bomb of an idea, get it out of the way, and proceed to argue about baseball or whatever. It’s just a mistake, that’s all. We all make ’em.
- mkfreeberg | 12/17/2009 @ 13:50
Assuming people realized a year ago that the economy might get worse before it got better, I doubt anybody back then could have predicted just how severe, long-lasting, and painful this recession could be.

All those millions of Obama voters had themselves convinced that things couldn’t POSSIBLY get any worse than they were under Bush…even though the recession only began in early 2007 and then only after some other party took control of both houses of Congress.

Obama’s supporters were wrong then, and they’re wrong now. It’s frustrating to see how some people never seem to learn.
- cylarz | 12/17/2009 @ 21:37

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“Cheapened the Presidency with Needless Attacks on His Predecessor”Thursday, December 17th, 2009

“Cheapened the Presidency with Needless Attacks on His Predecessor”
Thursday, December 17th, 2009