Peter Wehner certainly thinks so:
In the first year of his second term, the president has failed on virtually every front. He put his prestige on the line to pass federal gun-control legislation–and lost. He made climate change a central part of his inaugural address–and nothing has happened. The president went head-to-head with Republicans on sequestration–and he failed. He’s been forced to delay implementation of the employer mandate, a key feature of the Affordable Care Act. ObamaCare is more unpopular than ever, and it’s turning out to be a “train wreck” (to quote Democratic Senator Max Baucus) in practice. The most recent jobs report was the worst in a year, with the Obama recovery already qualifying as a historically weak one. Immigration reform is going nowhere. And then there’s Syria, which has turned out to be an epic disaster. (To be sure, Mr. Obama’s Middle East failures go well beyond Syria–but Syria is the most conspicuous failure right now).
In watching the Obama presidency dissolve before our eyes, there is a cautionary tale to be told.
I respect Peter Wehner greatly, but I disagree with him greatly here. Not on the facts, but on their meaning. Wehner is thinking conventionally about the meaning of success and of failure. If you look at each of these issues in a conventional way, he is correct that Obama has not been successful. But this is not a conventional situation.
I believe Obama has been very successful, although at the moment his formidable ego might be smarting a bit because he’d have preferred to have won the battles Wehner lists and be basking in the glow of his previous adulation squared. But his failures are relatively minor compared to the more major battles he’s already won, and each failure doesn’t seem to stay in the mind of the easily-distracted public very long. And don’t forget he still has three and a half years in which to revisit those fights and perhaps win them this time.
Here are Obama’s major successes:
(1) Weakening the US on the world stage
(2) Withdrawing from Iraq and substantially withdrawing from Afghanistan
(3) Passing Obamacare and fostering the general increase in government dependency, helping to create a docile public that is increasingly and reliably and perhaps permanently supportive of Democrats
(4) Discouraging efforts to set up checks on voting fraud, to the long-term benefit of Democrats
There are two major thrusts to Obama’s policy goals, the foreign and the domestic. In each case, they represent fundamental transformations of what has gone before. They can be summarized as (a) weakening America and (b) entrenching and norming the leftist influence on the voting public. Both missions have been substantially accomplished. It really doesn’t matter if Obama’s personal popularity and influence falls (although I don’t see his poll numbers sinking nearly as much as they should be), although of course he’d rather they didn’t. But he knows that he is set for life anyway: he never has to run for office again, a large segment of the American public (and the world) still reveres him, he will have enough money to do whatever he wants, and he will be free to go round the globe making interminable speeches—which is one of his favorite activities anyway.
[Neo-neocon is a writer with degrees in law and family therapy, who blogs at neo-neocon.]
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Don’t forget redefining marriage, of a piece with Obamacare in making us more dependent on the government. Yes, I know it seems like closing the barn door after the horse is out; but really it’s closing the barn door so the horse can’t get back in.
If women aren’t married to men, they are married to the government.
Abolish monogamy etc
Obama was on track to another success in furthering the interests and standing of the muslim brotherhood. That was side tracked a little in Egypt, and just now slowed in Syria. Nevertheless, he has 3+ more years to further, as he stated: “my muslim faith.”
Agree Prof: All going according to his general outline: never let a crisis got to waste and what is good for the country do the opposite..
Regarding Obamacare, the fact that it’s a train wreck is a good thing from the President’s point of view. In order to fix these “glitches”, that will be blamed on Republican obstructionism, we’ll have to switch to a single payer system. Thus, the original desire of the Left to destroy the private insurance and medical system and bring everything under government control will be complete.
It might be possible to stop it through the budgeting process, but the GOP’s lack of testicular fortitude renders this possibility moot.
We won’t be on single payer for long. Promises than can’t be kept will be broken.
At some point after the number of people paying into social security is less than the number collecting benefits everything shifts not just in terms of unsustainable spending but also in terms of the social contract. For sixty years Americans have increasingly seen relying on social security because it looks like as a far better deal than getting married, having kids and teaching them to support parents in old age. Suddenly having kids will look like the better deal -if only all those childless old people didn’t have to be supported.
“…if only all those childless old people didn’t have to be supported.”
Two words for them: Soylent Green.
Mr. Neo, you are starting to sound alot like Nancy Pelosi with your spin on Obama’s successes. You are like the jumper from the 100 story building who thinks everything is fine through 99 floors. Our nation will snap back and throw the yoke of Obamacare and Obama Marxism off as soon as he leaves office.
Agreed! Your analogy of the jumper was great BTW.
I read this thing with great difficulty and felt as if the author was purposely using schizophrenia or dual personality disorder traits just to confuse me about what h/she really believes. Mushy.
Let me know how that theory works out when you hit the ground inspectorudy.
If u choose to accept a progressive dem definition of success, then we can applaud Dear Leader
If you apply normal American values (yes they still predominate), Little Barry is a failure.
Our author must be a good ‘ol Washington DC REPublican’t weasel who finds a way to conceive of failure and then concedes defeat
First, Neo is a “she” not a “he”.
Second, you have a serious reading comprehension problem.
Go back and read what she wrote again.
She is foursquare against Obama and all he stands for.
She correctly perceives that Obama’s intentions are the opposite of America’s best interests.
Exactly, serious reading comprehension problems in these comments. Dare I mention the schizophrenic use of mental health terminology.
Thank You, turfmann and Mary Sue, for stating what ought to be obvious for poor George, Inspectorudy, Carol & DriveBy. Their “reading comprehension” appears to have taken a holiday(assuming they normally have it).
N-Neocon is a rock solid Neoconservative. In ALL Ways.
There are plenty more humiliations to come.
Dead right. Thanks for this. You get it.
For the first time, I can see a tiny glimmer of hope that Obamacare may be delayed/defunded while Obama is president and the Senate is in Democrat control.
The news today is that the AFL-CIO is now in open revolt against Obamacare. In addition, CNN’s most recent poll shows support for most or all of Obamacare is down to 39% while 57% want all or most of it repealed.
http://townhall.com/tipsheet/guybenson/2013/09/12/cnn-poll-large-majority-opposes-all-or-most-obamacare-provisions-n1697880?utm_source=TopBreakingNewsCarousel&utm_medium=story&utm_campaign=BreakingNewsCarousel
Keeping it alive ought to be a very hard vote for Democrats with those numbers. If only I had faith that the Republicans could figure out how to delay/defund it without sabotaging themselves in the process.
If, at some point, the votes to repeal Obamacare emerge, then there are enough votes in Congress to override a presidential veto. Which means the votes are there in theory to impeach and remove Obama from office.
I have always believed that Obama is such an existential threat to the Republic that eventually even the most left-leaning in Congress would correctly understand the damage that he has inflicted with complete malice aforethought. After all, he was fully to the left of Bernie Sanders, for the love of God.
As it stands now, we would be in better hands if Putin were our president.
I truly believe that Obama is a traitor to our nation – in the context of the Constitution and the law. His mission is to destroy us and has ever been that. I hold no fantasy that he will ever be charged, much less convicted. But make no mistake that Barry Soetoro is doing far more damage to this nation than all of the Cold War spies now in prison combined with Benedict Arnold.
Barack Obama is the worst American that has ever lived.
If not Putin Putin, how about long-dead Karl Marx?
Obama Supporters Sign “Karl Marx for President” Petition
In the following video, Mark Dice, tells passers-by that Obama endorses Karl Marx for president in the 2016 election. People willingly sign a petition to get Karl Marx on the ballot.
Read more at http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2013/09/obama-supporters-sign-karl-marx-for.html#qWPrfTdZwWFVJ4z5.99
“Barack Obama is the worst American that has ever lived.”
Those who voted for him aren’t too good, either. By himself he’d be helpless.
And, those votes are not there!
You may be forgetting the impediment of the Republicans, who appear to want to fund and retain Obamacare more intensely than anybody else. They simply will not stand for ending Obamacare.
McCain and other Republicans will rush to Obama’s aid if he is in jeopardy of having a failed presidency.
He has been successful at turning civil agencies into ungovernable ideological attack dogs. IRS, EPA and likely the NSA.
Democrats will be leveraging those weapons for years to come…
Funny, but I see a country very close to a moment like that which happened behind the iron curtain in 1989. No one believes in what politicians say and increasingly in government itself. Young people may have voted for Obama but they seem to trust government even less than their grandparents. Nor is anyone all that afraid of not following the rules.
Was that recall about guns or was it about ramming through an unworkable law against the wishes of elected law enforcement- a situation not dissimilar to how most physicians feel about Obamacare.
Ever wonder what DHS intends to do with those 1.5 billion bullets they bought?
RE: “No one believes in what politicians say…”
“And that’s GOOD THING!!!!!” – Martyr Stewart
“No one believes in what politicians say and increasingly in government itself. Young people may have voted for Obama but they seem to trust government even less than their grandparents.”
Yet I don’t personally know of a single person who went for Obama five years ago who has changed his mind since.
What does “collapse” mean?
JFK was shot in Dallas. And, LBJ was sworn in on the plane ride back to DC. With Kennedy’s body in the cargo area.
Then, we had Nixon resign. But before he resigned his veep, Spiro Agnew, resigned.
We also saw Jimmy Carter’s first term collapse. But he was running for a second term, anyway. Only to lose to Ronald Reagan.
Now we have the Snowden leaks, successfully proving the N.S.A. has been running without Constitutional supervision.
You see lawyers standing on street corners carrying warning signs? I don’t.
Seems to me that all the Obama talk about how small politics was, and how to bring people together in a purple America, was a a cynical smokescreen to hide the partisanship, although Republicans are not cleared of a share of responsibility for making the matter even worse.
Obama and Democrats seem to understand the power of winning the cultural war and using technology to manipulate and reinforce their victory. Don’t Republicans have the same goal? As such, neither cares much for the concerns of the other.
Ironically, some Mulim arguments about the West have some validity, too, even as their medieval ideas of what constitutes a good life are way off the wall in so many ways. Too many instances of corrupted Western society exist, leading down a path of internal disintegration, fueled by a political divide that may be impossible to breach without some real leader to emerge, with the capability to both motivate the American people and to handle the details of administration in a fair, proper and open manner.
Obama has shown he is not up to that job, nor does it seem that anyone else is ready to emerge.
There is no Obama Presidency to collapse. It is all just a media smokescreen. They are doing their best to declare victory for Obama and move on to other topics.
Within two weeks current events in Syria will figure no more prominently in the news than current events in Libya.
So long as the media persists the ‘Obama Presidency’ will too.
While ya all are focused on Obama, you may have missed that Dr. Bao, the medical examiner in the Zimmerman trial, is suing the State of Florida for $100-million. He said the State purposely threw the case. (Whatever.) Maybe, in China they do “re-do’s” But we really do have laws on double-jeopardy.
But Bao’s lawsuit made my day.
Did O’Mara really cut Zimmerman loose? His phone must be ringing off the hook from other lawyers who’d love to step up to the plate.
It’s funny when lawyers just go quiet looking at train wrecks.
Ever since Obama took the Syria question to congress, I’ve been singing that song from Sound Of Music, Edelweiss, except I substitute the word Schadenfreude. And yes, I am twirling about in lederhosen as I sing.
Obama and his team are amateurs at governance, but professionals at winning elections and in politics winning is everything. If the election were held today, he would still win despite Solyndra, IRS, Benghazi, NSA, Obamacare, Syria and all the rest. He remains personally popular, and left remains firmly in control of the press, academia, Hollywood, government workers unions, the legal industry, etc. Nearly half of wage earners pay no federal income tax. Unemployment and other benefits are now so generous, for many people it longer pays to work giving us a record low in the labor force participation rate. California provides the model for our path to a one-party state. Once a red state, California became a tossup, and now solid blue. So blue, the Democrats have a super majority rendering the Republicans irrelevant. As we have in California, America as a whole will become an idiocracy. If the immigration amnesty bill passes, more needy, low-skilled, low IQ hordes from the Third World will flood into America transforming it forever. We can survive almost anything, except a fundamental change in the nature of the people who make up the country.
Obama is not only winning, he has won. The America that I grew up is gone.
I don’t know about Obama’s presidency, but America is in collapse. Like Hillary Clinton’s ankles, it’s about to explode.
You left out “Immigration Deform”.
Obama’s objective still is “The Fundamental Transformation Of America” which includes so weakening America that it is no longer a major player on the world stage. Obama has to be acutely aware that after he leaves office Americans could easily turn around and elect a man who would, Reagan like, rebuild America’s military and economic strength where it would regain its preeminent geopolitical status and re establish a Pax Americana over the world once again. To prevent that eventuality, Obama would have to tie America down by either multiple restrictive international treaties or by bringing it to the surrender table against some foe, be it Islam or the Russians and their Chicomm allies.
Its scary to think that every foreign policy misstep, goof, or faux pas made by our Commisar In Chief may be planned and deliberate, intended to bring us to some surrender table and submission to an external power, but Obama, unlike the Titanic’s captain Edward Smith probably knows precisely where the iceberg will be when the ship of state he is guiding arrives at that very same spot.