I Don’t Need a Weatherman to Know Which Way I Probably Think the Wind Might Conceivably Be Blowing, Possibly

I am not a student of electoral trends and I am not good at predicting the results of elections.  

 

For example, earlier on in 2008, I believed that Obama would suffer a loss of McGovernesque (RIP) proportions.  I lived in Chicago.  I knew about Obama.  I knew him to be an impressive-appearing-and-sounding pol.  I knew him to be far left of the American mainstream.  I knew him to be a poorly-regarded state legislator and an undistinguished Representative.  I knew he had never accomplished much of anything else in his life, nor could I describe a single community organizational initiative with which he had been associated.  I believed that these things would become known to the electorate.  

 

Obviously, there were some things I did not know.  I did not know John McCain would be such a weak, old, candidate, or that he would make the Palin misstep.  I knew of the electorate’s deep dissatisfaction with George Bush (I shared it), but did not know how profound that revulsion was.  I assumed Obama would disguise his leftism, but I did not foresee the mainstream media’s wholesale abdication of its duty to report what it knew, or should have known, or should have discovered about the man if it cared to stand back from its lover’s blindly protective embrace.  By the time the election rolled around, I was not under any illusions as to its outcome.

 

This time around, the auspices were not much more comforting.  With the exception of Fox News and The Drudge Report – formidable exceptions, to be sure – the media’s coverage of the Administration and the campaign has run true to their 2008 form.  The layout of the electoral college appeared to be seriously tilted against Romney.  The polls in the swing states didn’t look good for the GOP.

 

And then there’s that immovable 47%.  Saw a great article on who is supporting the President that I thought hit the nail on the head – of course, I’ve lost track of it and I’m not going to remember all of its points.  It’s blacks; Hispanics to a somewhat lesser extent; people who rely on the government for welfare or employment or contracts, a truly frightening slice of the electorate; and college graduates steeped in “social justice” theory and socialist/collectivist economic and political dogma.  And, of course, there are those people who cannot shake off the romance of a skinny black "cool" president.  Others, of course.   

 

These people are not insincere or dumb (at least, not in numbers any greater than those on the other side) – they may really think that the socialization of medicine and cheap doctors is a good idea, and are happy to support and defend everything the President has done.  I’m not arguing with them here.  The point is, there’s nothing Republicans can do about those people (just like there’s nothing the Democrats can do with the Tea Party folks), and Romney needs pretty much everyone else, in addition to a major change in the prospects in the swing states.  

 

So post-conventions, things did not look good for Romney.  And I'm hearing that early voting in some swing states is favoring POTUS.   On this Election Eve, the polls still give Obama a decided edge in the Electoral College.

 

But for awhile now, I have had a feeling that Romney was going to win.   I felt that yeah, there’s a good chance Romney is going to get a lot of those undecideds and things were going to tighten up in enough of those swing states to give him the victory.  I see the Electoral College polls that continue to give Obama the swing states and the election. But I just get a feeling that the President is going to be defeated, possibly decisively.

 

I think the President believes it too. 

 

In the closing days of the campaign, he has become increasingly angry. He is astounded that the electorate no longer perceives his magnificence and inevitability.  His remark the other day that "voting is the best revenge" perfectly portrays his smallness, his bitterness, and his conviction that the American system is an oppressive one against which "revenge" must be taken through his policies attacking it.

 

I'm prepared to be wrong about that prediction.  But I think I'm right about a larger point this election is likely to prove:    

 

In important respects, even if he secures another term, Barack Obama has already lost.  

 

Because as this dreary administration stumbled through its term, certain things were becoming clear about this President to a whole lot of people who voted for him in 2008.  An administration that began with such excitement over its historical grooviness has grown pouty, angry, and even smutty.  Many people who didn't vote for the man, like me, were willing to see whether his administration would usher in an era of bipartisanship, improved race relations and international harmony.  

 

But the promise was false, the man himself not what he pretended to be.  And the media could not possibly cover it up over the course of a campaign where people really had to think had about who they’d put in the White House.  Even if he wins, it will be the victory of a hack, the baleful legacy of the New Deal and the Great Society spawning a host of hands-out Democratic client constituencies -- not a glorious affirmation of the wisdom of inclusion.

 

I started ticking off the reasons this election is even close after Barack Obama’s extraordinary electoral achievement of 2008, and each time I return to this draft I think of a couple more.  But I'll stop with an even dozen:

 

            (1)        His Policies Don’t Work and Will Damage the Country Even More as Time Goes By.    I’ll pass this – too big a topic for this entry, and others have done a more thorough job on any one of them than I could. 

 

            (2)      When It Comes to His Job, He's Lazy and Disengaged.  He makes George Bush look like a paragon of concentration and a dervish of productivity.  Historic levels of golf.   Many parties – Michelle especially loves them, and vacations.  Can't be bothered to attend national security briefings.   And did you read that article by Obama fan Ryan Lizza in Obama fanmag The New Yorker?  His style of decisionmaking is to examine checklists created by aids that he writes little comments on or checks off ("OK").  He doesn't like to meet with people.  He really doesn't like to do press conferences.  I was not at all surprised at his game-changing performance in the first debate – stories of his loathing of studying up for it had been circulating for some time.  

 

            (3)        In Fact, He Doesn't Like to Be Questioned At All and Is Discomfited and Angry When Challenged.   Because a guy who's gotten promoted on a record of near-zero accomplishments in private or public life is not going to be able to answer those questions or bat back those challenges.  And because he is not, in fact, “eloquent.”

 

            (4)        Now That We See that He's Not All That Capable, that Shadowy Personal History Starts to Matter.  He can't help it that his parents were who they were or that his father was unreliable and gone.  But he could have done a whole lot more to put the Kenya/Hawaii business to bed, and he behaved badly about it even when that somewhat peculiar birth certificate finally emerged (and was peculiarly exposed to a friendly press) –I wrote about it here, my point being that Obama does not think where he was born should matter, the Constitution notwithstanding.  I think he was born in Hawaii, but does anyone really believe that the 1991 book promotion blurb saying he was born in Kenya was an error deliberately introduced solely by his agent or anyone else?  Wouldn’t you like to see what he put on his college application? 

 

            It is now pretty widely accepted that he did not compose Dreams from My Father, but that it was written by radical professor William Ayres.  And that much of that book is (1) put generously, a composite of experiences and people (including women) Obama claims to have experienced and known and not a reliable autobiography, and (2) put ungenerously, false.  His academic career?  Extraordinarily opaque.   Evidence of self-composed “eloquence”?  Similarly missing.  His mysterious world travels, his contacts, his ties to radicals, his ties to race hustlers like Rev. Wright, his financial support – smoke/fire.  There remains much about this man that is unknown, and that is going to come out sometime, whether or not he is elected.  Like the Kennedys’ incredible womanizing while in office, there will come a time when we will be staggered at the character of the man we elected, and some of us loved.

 

           (5)        If Anything, His Policies and Attitudes Have Exacerbated Racial Tensions.   Even though his 2008 campaign repudiation of Jeremiah Wright was half-hearted, it was a step in the right direction.  I thought we would hear more about the value of education and other critical steps to continued improvement of race relations and the economic circumstances of urban blacks.  We did not.  The message continued to be the standard Democratic line of continued dependence.    He has been entirely content to let his supporters accuse his critics of racism.  His economic and labor policies have discouraged employment.  On balance, resentment over Democratic celebration of his mediocre tenure has fueled interracial suspicion – yep, contrary to the hagiography, his story is one of affirmative action writ large.

 

            (6)        It's Really True – He Believes in the Forced Redistribution of Wealth.  And I don't mean "wealth" in the sense of "a whole lot of money owned by people we would all agree are 'rich,' whatever that really means," I mean "assets owned by a person who has more than another person, irrespective of talent, industry, judgment, family, and other circumstances not controllable by the state."  His morality – in fact, the morality of much of the left – is that forcibly leveling prosperity is “right,” irrespective of the tendency of that policy to retard economic progress.

 

            (7)        It's Really True – He Believes that the United States Has Been a Force for Ill in the World, and that the Principles of Freedom and Capitalism Should Not Be Promoted.  No doubt the U.S. has made mistakes as a world leader, and has proceeded clumsily and sometimes corruptly.  On balance, though, the United States has been and remains (so far) a beacon of freedom, opportunity, and progress.  This President believes in the same leveling of countries that he promotes among persons of unequal wealth in the country he runs. 

 

            (8)        He's Actually Rather Unpleasant.   Mitt Romney suggested in his (disappointingly bland and shallow) convention speech that Obama is a nice guy.  I don’t think he’s a nice guy.  I think he’s motivated by jealousy and insecurity and this campaign is Exhibit 1.     He believes that wealth and merit should be punished, is an adversary to be defeated.  His campaign has been angry and negative.  He has refused to lend his personal charm to Democratic candidates.  His bus can’t move, there are so many corpses stacked under it.  The buck always stops well short of him.   

 

           Every president must have a healthy-self regard, but he is singular in is inability to disguise an ego bordering on megalomania.  The comparative frequency of his use of “I” in his public addresses is well-documented. 



Can you imagine any other campaign releasing a formal photo like this?

 

            (9)        It Matters that He's Never Accomplished Anything, Other than Electorally.   The public was aware of his lack of work experience and his relative lack of legislative experience, and that experience was decidedly lackluster (and notably unindustrious).  This was deemed not to matter with his personal charm and exciting message on the other side of the scale.  But now that that charm and message are in tatters, voters are recalling that this guy is pretty much just a guy, nothing more.  

 

            (10)        His 2008 Posture of Moderate Bipartisanship Was a Fraud.   No one, not even the 47%, is any longer claiming that he is a moderate or interested in bipartisanship.  I’m not a big fan of bipartisanship myself where principles are at stake, but the point is that this is how he held himself out, and how the media portrayed him, and why the center voted for him.

 

            (11)      He Is Protected by a Biased and Dishonest Media Establishment.  Speaking of which, his coddling by the mainstream media is undeniable.  You can howl about Drudge and Fox News all you want, but they are the exception and do not self-righteously deny their opposition to POTUS.   For the purposes of this list, the point is not whether either of the sides is right or wrong, it’s that the public can see that the MSM is steadfastly refusing to report carefully on this administration, and they resent it. 

 

 

            (12)      He Believes that He is Historically Inevitable.  And believes as well that that is a substitute for positive governing results.  Many of the moderates and undecideds who were caught up in the historic possibility of our first black president – and one with undeniable charisma when his fury over opposition isn’t bubbling to the surface – now perceive that the drama of his election was just that, a drama, a story, show biz.  They suspended disbelief and went with that story, but the second act has been a bust.  The President, however, has the sand to make “Forward” his campaign theme, and Mrs. Obama was caught the other day exhorting a crowd to think ahead to the wonders that can be accomplished if her man is awarded four more years.  But he has not proven to be an inspirational leader, or, in the solitude he’s most comfortable with, any other kind of a leader.  The mythology constructed for his 2008 campaign was brilliant – but, in the end, only a myth.  His presidency is no more a natural result of historical forces than is the administration on Mt. Olympus.

*     *     *

The reader will have noticed I didn’t say anything positive about Mitt Romney.  It is true that among the reasons I have voted for him is that he is not Barack Obama.  But he has run a strong campaign, he has a strong record of public and private achievement, he supports American capitalism, and he believes in American exceptionalism in the world.  Lots of reasons to vote for the man.

I’m caught up in his momentum and I am not going to deny that I believe the momentum will carry him to victory because I want to believe it.  Even if he loses, though, Barack Obama will be governing a country where more and more people have found him out. 

The textbooks of the future will dutifully report his historical significance.  The illusion of transcendence, however, has evaporated.  The promise of competence, a murky half-remembered dream.  For many of us – including those of us who did not vote for him but who were ready for a fresh breeze blowing through the White House – his defeat is already assured.

The Obama Campaign's Money Shot

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These ads are everywhere.  I glance at them -- how can one help it?

They come in all shapes and sizes.  Some are in black and white.

And they come in a variety of shapes:

Every time I encountered them, they gave me the creeps.  Why?  Lotsa Romney ads out there, too, shilling for dough.  Nothing wrong with that, part of the process.  First Lady out there shaking the tree.  Gotta have swag to run a campaign.  From what I read, the President needs it pretty bad.  So why was this particular ad so odd-looking and unsettling?

My first thought was that it did not seem very compelling to suggest that the candidate's wife was supporting him.  

I was also uncertain whether her endorsement is even a plus.  I have no idea whether Michelle is popular with voters.  She's a strikingly lovely woman, quite impressive at the lectern.  But after a good start as a candidate's wife and First Lady, it appears that -- the White House vegetable garden aside -- her main interests are celebrity hobnobbing, White House parties, and extravagant vacations with and without Barack.  Like her husband, she's gradually acquired a patina of unlikability.  

No, it wasn't her presence in the ad that was saying weird.

Suddenly, it struck me.

It was the slogan.

Join Michelle and tell Barack You're In.

I know, we all know, what it its author would say it means:   "Hey, we all like Barack -- he's my husband, you know, I call him Barack, you can too! -- so come along with me and join the Barack team!"

But  .  .  .  

Join Michelle.

Join her in what?

Must be:  join her in doing something 

What is she doing?

She is "telling" Barack, "you're in."

I know, I know, you don't have to say it, the "you" isn't "you, Barack," it's "you, reader."  

But I do not believe for an instant that whoever composed and approved this -- and I doubt the President or First Lady had anything to do with it -- didn't calculate that this is easily interpreted, even by those whose minds don't trend that way, as Join Michelle and tell Barack: "You're In."

There it was, the creepiness, the weirdness, the ick:  A pitch for cash accomplished in terms of a suggestion of POTUS coitus.  

Capitalizing, albeit subliminally, on what his handlers believe (and, I've come to think for other reasons, is the President's own belief) to be his sexual magnetism. 

I have some long thoughts about this President's emerging strangeness which I will spare you.  For now. But this bizarre and ubiquitous batch of Internet ads reinforces the thought that his handlers, some of them, seem somehow unserious about his re-election.  

The campaign's advocates for this ad knew how easily it could be read to summon up a carnal image.  (Try to imagine this ad with Hillary Clinton in that photograph in 1996 -- long before the Lewinsky scandal broke -- saying "Join Hillary and tell Bill You're In.")   Obama's ad guys think they're being clever, and that the clever people they believe to be their natural constituency will identify with it and applaud that winking naughtiness with their checkbooks.  Whether they are right, I don't know.  I do know they have diminished an already shrinking presidency, and man.  

A One-Term President Because He Doesn’t Care All That Much about Two

And, more importantly, because it shows.

Yeah, recently he's taken to saying that he's "unstoppable," but his heart doesn't really seem to be in it. 

Back in May 2010, when my readers were in the mid-one figure, I wrote that I didn’t think President Obama much cared about a second term.   My theory was that the President is motivated primarily by academic theory, and he judges success not on whether anyone votes for him, or his party, but whether the theoreticians he admires in the academy (to which he’ll unquestionably return) approve of his policies.

A couple of weeks ago, the President said a couple of extraordinary things that got much less media play than they deserved. I won’t say they prove my point, but they trend that way. In an interview with ABC’s Ann Curry, he said:

“There are days where I say that one term is enough.”

He went on:

“Michelle and the kids are wonderful in that if I said, 'You know, guys, I want to do something different,' they'd be fine. They're not invested in daddy being president or my husband being president.”



How many terms does he want?



That may sound like an offhand expression of mid-term weariness, and it may have been that. But this isn’t a midterm. This is the beginning of his campaign for his second term. This is the beginning of his big fundraising push. Let me ask you: If you had just heard this and the President asked you to write a large check for his campaign, would you?

He’s said things like this before. In January 2010, he told ABC’s Diane Sawyer: "I'd rather be a really good one-term president than a mediocre two-term president.”

Mind you, I’m not being critical of this mindset. It is entirely proper to say “I will govern according to my principles, which I think are really great principles, even if it proves unpopular at the ballot box.”  But I think it says something very important about this puzzling historical figure.  

First, he says he sometimes thinks that “one term is enough.”

Enough because . . . he’s tired? No, couldn’t be. He couldn’t possibly be intending to convey the impression of fatigue to his supporters and financiers.

Enough because . . . that is all he will need to accomplish his goals? Well, we know about the economy and the prospects for recovery before November 2012, so he won’t have improved that over what he inherited. He sometimes talks about his accomplishments, but Obamacare is on the run in the courts, will probably not survive a single-term presidency. His accounts of other “achievements” are frequently misleading; recently, the Washington Post – yes, WaPo – said of his speech extolling the success of the auto industry bailouts “What we found is one of the most misleading collections of assertions we have seen in a short presidential speech.” He got bin Laden, that was good. Excellent, in fact. But compared with his own expectations and those of his voters, it’s pretty thin gruel for three years.  No, hardly anyone thinks he's accomplished much or expects him to accomplish a lot more by November 2012.  And I don't think he believes it, either.

Enough because . . . he knows he cannot enact his social theories into law, at least not for long, and well, OK, he tried, and that’s enough?

Or: Enough because . . . he’s bored?

I think it’s some combination of these last two. Listen to him claiming to make a point about Michelle and the girls, but really making a point about himself (surprise!), suggesting that he might say to them: “You know, you guys, I want to do something different.”

Now think about that for a minute, especially in light of the “one term is enough” suggestion. You’re the President of the United States. What “something different” might you want to do as the end of your first term approaches that would be – I don’t know, more helpful to mankind, more fulfilling, more prestigious?

Look at it another way: What different thing would be better to Barack Obama than being President from 2013 through 2017?  Really, what’s bad about being the American President when you are nothing but a politician?  (Yeah, he taught some law school, but come on.  Guy's done nothing but politics, and has done it pretty darned well.)   I can think of some things: Hard work. Compromising cherished theories to get legislation enacted. Never-ending judgment of your performance. Exposure to a public that is sometimes less than enthralled with who you are, who see you as something other than an extraordinary symbol.

Here’s what I take away from President Obama’s remarks: He views his service in office more as a hobby than a calling. In line with my earlier thoughts, it’s an academic exercise for him. Doesn’t work out, cuts into the golf, people mad at you all the time, middle class just doesn’t understand the theory – fine, I’ll go do something different.

But I think there’s something else. Can’t prove it. Just kind of feel it.

I think Barack Obama just doesn’t think it’s all that big a deal to be President of the United States.

I think he thinks this because he doesn’t think the United States is all that big a deal to be the President of. He seems to take pleasure in suggesting that the U.S. is just another country in a world full of them. He certainly rejects American exceptionalism. He does not have a high regard for the Constitution. (That’s not a Tea Party sentiment – that’s my personal conclusion from his utterances, including this one I noted (scroll down) and others I’ve noted from time to time.) He feels bad about America’s past international initiatives.  He shows absolute unconcern at its slipping status in the world -- along with much of the academy, he thinks it deserves it, and that it is historically inevitable to boot.  And borders -- when you're not much of a country, what difference does it make who lives there? 

So being President of that country, to him, is just one of many “different” things to which he might apply his considerable gifts.  And by no means necessarily the most important one at this stage of his life. So it’s good that Michelle and the kids are so understanding.

I have a feeling that unless the Republicans nominate a diseased marmot or Sarah Palin (of which they are eminently capable), Barack Obama is going to have the chance to do that different, better thing come January 2013. 

Put aside whether his policies are good or bad, or whether or not you like them. 

He's just not that into the gig.

Tomorrow's Conventional Wisdom -- Today! (PART 2)

Three more hot thoughts on Politics 2010: 

This Is No Time for Bipartisanship – Let the Bickering Begin; or, Don’t Fear the Gridlock. Most of the American electorate – especially in this election -- doesn’t want the parties to get along. They don’t want the parties to compromise on bad policies. They want good policies. The voters do not agree, of course, on what those good policies are. But we now have a Republican majority in the House, and a Senate that will begin to tilt away from the Obama agenda. And the reason for that majority is because the voters want the Obama/Democratic policies stopped and reversed.

Does anyone suppose that this election was about a craving on the part of voters for bipartisan compromise? No – the majority loathed the results of Democratic hegemony from 2008-2010. They truly want to turn back the clock. They (no, no, not everyone, but the people whose numbers matter) regret their vote for Obama and are counting the days when they can turn him out (unless the Republicans nominate a peckerwood, of which they are surely capable – see later entry re Republicans' peckerwood problem). The Republicans should demand reversal of the last two years of nonsense and should not back down, even at the risk of nothing getting done.

I recall college discussions with pals over whether we would prefer almost any House or Senate candidate we could think of, Republican or Democrat, over a robot who would vote NO on every single vote. (Perhaps exceptions for veto overrides and the like.) Robot always won.

Another exception would be voting yes on certain specialized legislation, such as . . . .

*    *    *

Republicans Must Make Every Effort to Repeal The “Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act” – Policy and Politics.   Stop laughing. Yes, that’s the real name of “Obamacare.” As though it ended up having much to do with patients, protection, affordable care, or care at all. Surely the most reviled single piece of legislation in memory across a broad spectrum of American voters. Legislators could not tell you what was in it. Nancy Pelosi said we’d have to pass it to find out what was was in it. The bureaucracy it promised was gigantic and staggeringly complex. And in the meantime, we were treated to the vision of government social services collapsing economies and spawning beggar classes throughout Europe who demonstrated against any attempt to turn the tide of ruin.

And, of course, the bill itself was dead on arrival save for the legislative bribery it took to pass it.

And what’s happened since?

   --  Employers are cutting back and, in some cases, dumping health care benefits, and passing on higher expenses to employees. 

   --  Analysis after nonpartisan analysis has demonstrated its almost certain nonviability.

   --  President Obama himself admits that his repeated representations that healthcare costs will decrease under his plans may have been, um, untrue.

Almost nobody believes this monstrosity can work or is even beneficial to all but a few, at gigantic expense. To believe that people will tolerate a shrinking doctor class as MDs' rewards for excellence are slashed, while undeserving patients consume vast resources -- well, there are some who do believe that.   Supporters are scarce, and they seldom emerge from what is almost always a tower of academe or cosseted media position.  With each passing week, public support for the thing reaches a new low.

Obamacare doesn’t need fixing. It needs to die, and quickly, before the prospect of the economic and healthcare horrors it will unleash keep one more employer from adding one more employee.

Republican candidates called for repeal during the campaign, and now they need to demand it. Make the case – get the facts out – and work for repeal without compromise. It is the correct policy move.

But would it be politically prudent? The idea of repeal is very popular right now, and, as noted in my previous article, a large majority of Senators up for re-election in 2012 are Democrats. It is not beyond imagining that a strong Republican leadership could round up the votes required for repeal.

Nevertheless, it might well be a lost cause, since the President could veto any attempt at repeal, and Republicans are a Senate minority.  A majority for repeal might not be the necessary majority for override.  And, as we have seen with the recent tax agreement, there are Democrats out there (in this case, socialist Bernie Sanders of Vermont) who will filibuster.

Your Cool Hot Center advises Republicans: Let them filibuster. Let them vote against repeal. Let them vote to sustain the President’s veto. As long as you fight the good fight and present a factual, supportable case for repeal – not the peckerwood case, but the sound economic, moral, and policy case, perhaps while acknowledging the need for reform in certain areas – you will be rewarded in November 2012.   If you fight the good fight and lose, all it tells the electorate is that the housecleaning of 2010 was incomplete, and will energize the base for further corrections in 2012.

And, Republicans, if you don’t fight that fight, if you just nibble at the corners of Obamacare, if you try only to “reform” the beast, then you will have justified those souls who are convinced that principle counts for nothing in Washington, that anyone who goes there is inevitably compromised, must go along to get along, in derogation of the best interests of the Republic.

It’s gotta go. It or you.

*     *     *

No, I Don’t Miss George Bush.  And I don’t feel sorry for Wade Phillips.