The perception of Obama comes back to reality
JammieWearingFool reads the New York Times so we don’t have to, and the NYT tells us that there’s a perception out there that President Obama is a wimp on National Security. Really? I hadn’t noticed.
It’s not just coming from Republicans (for example, Dick Cheney’s accusation that Mr. Obama is trying to pretend that the country isn’t at war). Now barbs are coming from the center too. This week’s Foreign Policy magazine has a provocative cover: Mr. Obama next to Jimmy Carter with — gasp — an “equals” sign in the middle. New York Times/CBS polling shows that public approval of Mr. Obama’s foreign policy dropped 9 points to 50 percent between last April and November. Leslie H. Gelb, president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, wrote on the Daily Beast blog two weeks ago that Mr. Obama needs to toughen up with his adversaries. “He puts far too much store on being the smartest guy in the room,” Mr. Gelb wrote. “He’d do well to remember that Jimmy Carter also rang all the I.Q. bells.”
The Washington Post reports that Obama is failing in the perception of his domestic agenda as well;
In winning the White House, Barack Obama’s team earned a reputation for skill and discipline in dominating the communications wars with opponents. In office, virtually the same team has struggled, spending much of the past year defending the administration’s actions on the two biggest domestic issues — the economy and health care.
Translation (I ran the paragraph through Babelfish’s Media to English); campaigning is easier than actually accomplishing stuff.
Stuff like giving us a tax credit which ended after six months instead of a permanent tax cut and standing around with their collective finger in their collective nose wondering why the economy doesn’t get better. Standing on the edge of a huge tax increase because they won’t extend the Bush tax cuts and wonder why businesses won’t invest in jobs.
An erratic health care plan that changes every time someone talks about it. A Congressional Budget Office that knuckles under to Democrat threats and produces faulty numbers. A homeland security director that issues two opposing evaluations of our security within twelve hours.
A known terrorist who clams up as soon as he’s read his Miranda rights. Another known participant in the worst terrorist attack in our history gets most of the evidence against him tossed out of court. All because the administration thinks terrorism has a legal solution.
Obama’s centerpiece of his national security plan was to close Guantanamo – where’s that going? He tried to return some detainees to Yemen, until the blogs and the media convince him that it’s a bad plan and does a 180 degree shift of that policy.
For Pete’s sake, nearly a year into his presidency, over eight years since 9-11, he announces that we’re at war with al-Qaeda.
But Axelrod said the best antidote to all the criticisms aimed at the White House and to declining poll numbers will be a genuine turnaround in the economy.
“People are unsettled and unhappy about that, and they should be,” he said. “The politics will follow the progress, and as we climb out of this terrible hole that we’ve been in, the politics will respond.”
You’d be more convincing if you took your finger out of your nose, Dave.
Category: Barack Obama/Joe Biden, Media, Usual Suspects
It’s not the finger in his nose, but the thumb up his ass that worries me.
This administration will say anything, do anything, pay any price, lie, cheat, and steal, to get their way.
The new spelling of “corruption” is now OBAMA.
The only way that our national security and our economy begin to improve is when this entire administration of morons is out of office.
“A genuine turnaround in the economy” translates to, we won’t talk about national security, unless something really bad happens. So, one day after the 0 admits that we’re at war, let’s have a meeting on the economy. Brush that WOT crap under the rug, we have to get everyone looking somewhere else.
Exactly right, this administration thinks that this is just a large exercise in criminal law, not a war.
And yeah, we’ve known about that war, haven’t we? Now the left would have us be soooo fucking grateful because the pied Piper said the words.
Well. You know what? Remember it was to save his own sorry ass and not because he gives a damn about our Country. He will if it serves his purpose. Yeah, the cynic is ever present.