by Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n
NRO’s\u00a0The Corner<\/em><\/p>\n Many saw Obama’s polls dropping for a variety of reasons, and can anticipate what’s next. People took the candidate at his word of bipartisanship, fiscal seriousness, and centrism, and from day one got instead shady Cabinet nominations of tax cheats and lobbyists, indifference to congressional corruption as symbolized by Rangel and Dodd, a whiny monotony of “Bush did it” for a year, a 1,000-page healthcare monstrosity, fiscal insanity, serial appeasement of enemies with conscious neglect of old allies, and on and on. No hope, less change.<\/p>\n And when the polls showed that almost the entire Obama agenda \u2014 more stimuli, more new government programs, statist healthcare, cap-and-trade to come, no gas\/oil\/nuclear promotion, apologetic foreign policy, “comprehensive” immigration reform as envisioned by the La Razistas \u2014 was unpopular and polling poorly, congressional Democrats, for much of the summer and fall, sighed something like, “Oh, no matter, the rock-star president’s ratings are still untouchable and he can come in here and by osmosis put me over the top.”<\/p>\n But not now. The former celebrity Obama has lost that luster, point-by-point over a year, bleeding by a thousand small cuts until he nears 40 percent approval. In themselves, the bad jokes like the flippant remark about the Special Olympics, the lunatic appointments like Anita Dunn and Van Jones, the serial untruths about airing the healthcare debate on C-SPAN or shunning lobbyists, the phony deadlines on Gitmo and the Iranians, the bribing of senators with hundreds of millions of dollars in taxpayers’ funds, the bowing, the snubbing of the British, the use of the race card against tea-party critics, the Skip Gates mess, the Orwellian NEA business, constant fluff photos ops, but rare real press conferences \u2014 all that in the aggregate brought Obama to his present state.<\/p>\n And now the question is not whether the president’s charisma can save his unpopular agenda, but rather whether the president’s growing unpopularity makes things even worse. This takes place, of course, in a landscape of 10 percent unemployment, a nearly $2 trillion debt, and rising energy prices. Somehow more deficits and subsidized wind and solar won’t be winning issues.<\/p>\n An obvious prediction: The upcoming show trial of KSM, cap-and-trade, and amnesty are not winning issues \u2014 and will have to be Gitmoized or they will threaten to destroy the Democratic party for years.<\/p>\n Finally, how ironic \u2014 Obama was elected as a reaction to Bush’s mistakes of deficit spending and big-ticket new entitlements that nullified his otherwise effective anti-terrorism war; instead, he took what people liked about Bush and ridiculed them, while trumping Bush’s spending that had turned so many off.<\/p>\n \u00a92010 Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Victor Davis Hanson NRO’s\u00a0The Corner Many saw Obama’s polls dropping for a variety of reasons, and can anticipate what’s next.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[610],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-uC","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1724,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/damn-the-evidence-full-speed-ahead\/","url_meta":{"origin":1898,"position":0},"title":"Damn the Evidence, Full Speed Ahead?","author":"victorhanson","date":"April 12, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson NRO's\u00a0The Corner The strangest thing about Obama's gargantuan, trillion-dollar-plus new healthcare entitlement is the timing. Not only are we running $1.7 trillion annual deficits and scheduled to nearly double the $11 trillion debt in only eight years \u2014\u00a0and watching the logical end to an entitlement state\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "April 2010"","block_context":{"text":"April 2010","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2010\/april-2010\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1809,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/obama-too-little-too-late\/","url_meta":{"origin":1898,"position":1},"title":"Obama–Too Little, Too Late","author":"victorhanson","date":"March 1, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services The United States may very well owe a crushing $20 trillion by 2020. And thus President Obama last week named a bipartisan commission to find ways to address our national debt. Such a Periclean response might sound sincere and worthwhile. But it comes\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "March 2010"","block_context":{"text":"March 2010","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2010\/march-2010\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1874,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/obama-in-free-fall\/","url_meta":{"origin":1898,"position":2},"title":"Obama in Free Fall","author":"victorhanson","date":"January 27, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson NRO's\u00a0The Corner A\u00a0year ago, a number of \"moderate\" Republicans and Democratic stalwarts, in the gush of the inauguration, warned us of new Democratic majorities for years to come. A new race\/class\/gender dynamic would doom conservatives and their-old-white-guy party and its reactionary fellow-travelers. And, of course, the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "January 2010"","block_context":{"text":"January 2010","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2010\/january-2010\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6799,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/affordable-care-of-patient-protection-or-obamacare\/","url_meta":{"origin":1898,"position":3},"title":"Affordable Care or Patient Protection or Obamacare?","author":"victorhanson","date":"December 2, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/\u00a0NRO's The Corner\u00a0 There are some rumors that the administration wants to distance itself from the slang \u201cObamacare,\u201d a term the president embraced in the 2012 campaign but now finds hurtful to his polls and his colleagues in the Congress. But what would be alternatives? We\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Healthcare"","block_context":{"text":"Healthcare","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/obama-administration\/healthcare\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1760,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/let-the-games-begin\/","url_meta":{"origin":1898,"position":4},"title":"Let the Games Begin?","author":"victorhanson","date":"March 25, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson NRO's\u00a0The Corner I\u00a0don't follow the Democratic thinking. Their president polls below 50 percent. The Democratically-controlled Congress polls less than 20 percent. Healthcare reform polls at about 45 percent support. Looming future bills like cap and trade and amnesty as a part of immigration reform poll even\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "March 2010"","block_context":{"text":"March 2010","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2010\/march-2010\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1923,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/on-the-horizon\/","url_meta":{"origin":1898,"position":5},"title":"On the Horizon","author":"victorhanson","date":"January 2, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson PJ Media Some Modest Obama Predictions 1) We will begin to hear, ever so insidiously, mention again of the \u201cwar on terror\u201d; some quiet memo will go out to cool all the talk of \u2018man-made disasters\u2019 and \u2018overseas contingency operations\u2019. 2) Either shortly or soon next\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "January 2010"","block_context":{"text":"January 2010","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2010\/january-2010\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1898"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1898"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1898\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1899,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1898\/revisions\/1899"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1898"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1898"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1898"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}