by Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n
Tribune Media Services<\/p>\n
Barack Obama\u2019s favorability in the polls fell when he acted like himself \u2014 overexposed, hard-left in his press conferences, and boastful about legislative achievements like Obamacare and a stimulus of more than $1 trillion.<\/p>\n
Then a strange thing happened. Obama largely went quiet. Often he was out of sight, vacationing in Hawaii or golfing. It was almost as if he had learned that the less he was seen or heard, the more Americans liked the\u00a0idea<\/em>\u00a0of Obama as president rather than the reality of his constant \u201cMake no mistake about it\u201d and \u201cLet me be perfectly clear\u201d sermonizing.<\/p>\n Obama has now edged ahead of his potential Republican rivals in the polls. He waited for the noisy Republicans to grab national attention in the debates and primaries before moving hard to the left to firm up his base. So while the nation was amused, repelled, and bored by the constant back-and-forth over Mitt Romney\u2019s moneymaking and Newt Gingrich\u2019s marriages and off-the-cuff philosophizing, President Obama matter-of-factly canceled the vital Keystone-pipeline project.<\/p>\n He even more quietly prepared to ask Congress to raise the debt ceiling to over $16 trillion to accommodate his fourth consecutive reckless trillion-dollar-plus annual deficit \u2014 while planning to slash the defense budget in the next decade. Did anyone notice that he made controversial \u201crecess\u201d appointments when Congress was not really in recess \u2014 a tactic that, as a senator, he had opposed?<\/p>\n Obama now rarely talks about his supposed signature achievements, whether the huge \u201cpump-priming\u201d deficits or the unpopular Obamacare. Republicans have controlled the House of Representatives only for the past year, yet Obama now blasts them for stopping what he wanted to do as president. In contrast, he hardly praises the Democrats who controlled both houses of Congress for twice that time and enacted all that he wished. How strange to keep silent about successes, only to broadcast failed what-ifs.<\/p>\n President Obama now campaigns on events that happened despite, not because of, him. His administration has cut federal oil leases by 40 percent, subsidized money-losing and now bankrupt green companies, and openly wished that gas and electricity prices would skyrocket to make alternative energy cost-competitive. But recently he bragged that we are pumping more oil than ever. Natural gas is suddenly no longer an earth-warming pollutant but welcomed in vast abundance.<\/p>\n Left unmentioned is the cause of this unexpected energy bounty: The economic stagnation between 2009 and 2012 has curbed energy demand, while private entrepreneurs have used new fracking and horizontal-drilling technology on largely private lands to revolutionize the production of fossil fuels. Again, Obama seems to take credit for things that occurred over his opposition \u2014 as if to say, \u201cI knew you\u2019d be glad I didn\u2019t get my way.\u201d In the fine tradition of American politics, the successes of others are Obama\u2019s; Obama\u2019s failures are the failures of others.<\/p>\n Both as a candidate and early in his term, Obama blasted all the Bush-Cheney anti-terrorism protocols as either unnecessary or illegal. Iraq was a \u201cdumb\u201d war, and he declared the surge a failure.<\/p>\n But as president, Obama expanded these intelligence measures, and used a beefed-up military to kill Osama bin Laden and go after al-Qaeda captains. He followed the Bush-Petraeus timetable of withdrawal in Iraq and praised our successful nation-building there.<\/p>\n One could almost infer that Obama is now happy that he did not fulfill his earlier promises to close Guantanamo, end renditions and tribunals, prune back the PATRIOT Act, and get out of Iraq by March 2009. George W. Bush is still to be blamed for the present stagnating economy, as he is never to be praised for crafting the security measures vital for our current successes.<\/p>\n This year, Obama will run not so much on what he really did in 2009 and 2010, but more on what he wanted to do, but was stopped from doing, in 2011 and 2012. The president will tell his base that he really wished to go green in a big way, while telling Middle America that lots of oilmen went ahead on their own to find new gas and oil. For his liberal supporters, Obama really did want to end the anti-terrorism protocols, and for the rest of America he really did find those same protocols necessary to kill Islamic terrorists.<\/p>\n The message is clear: If voters do not see or hear the new un-Obama too often, if his left-wing legislative agenda is sidelined, and if the private sector can ignore him, then voters may still sort of like the idea of him back as president.<\/p>\n \u00a92012 Tribune Media Services<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services Barack Obama\u2019s favorability in the polls fell when he acted like himself \u2014 overexposed, hard-left in his press conferences, and boastful about legislative achievements like Obamacare and a stimulus of more than $1 trillion.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","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":[271,278],"tags":[12,189,48,446,40,213,238,1022],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-fQ","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":467,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/obama-the-hare-romney-the-tortoise\/","url_meta":{"origin":982,"position":0},"title":"Obama the Hare, Romney the Tortoise","author":"victorhanson","date":"September 10, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services The 2012 race has turned into one of Aesop's classic fables. After each new media blitz against the no-frills Mitt Romney, a far cooler President Obama races ahead three or four points in the polls \u2014 only to fall back to about even\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Election 2012"","block_context":{"text":"Election 2012","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/obama-administration\/election-2012\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":658,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/good-news-what-good-news\/","url_meta":{"origin":982,"position":1},"title":"Good News–What Good News?","author":"victorhanson","date":"July 6, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson PJ Media I\u00a0have a confession to make: I don\u2019t quite understand the jubilation among the conservative-Republican forces during the last two months of the Obama crack-up, and here, unfortunately, is why: 1.\u00a0The so-called Obama crash. I believe that Obamism \u2014\u00a041 months over 8% plus unemployment\u00a0[1], anemic\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "America's Future"","block_context":{"text":"America's Future","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/americas-future\/"},"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":982,"position":2},"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":6803,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/obama-and-the-suspension-of-disbelief\/","url_meta":{"origin":982,"position":3},"title":"Obama and the Suspension of Disbelief","author":"victorhanson","date":"December 2, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/\u00a0PJ Media\u00a0 Adding straws of scandal \u2014 Fast and Furious, the Associated Press monitoring, the IRS fiasco, and the NSA spying \u2014 on any presidential back except Barack Obama\u2019s would have long ago broken it. Watergate ruined Richard Nixon. Iran-Contra earned a special prosecutor and nearly\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Identity Politics"","block_context":{"text":"Identity Politics","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/american-culture\/identity-politics\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6732,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/obamas-fallout-for-the-left\/","url_meta":{"origin":982,"position":4},"title":"Obama’s Fallout for the Left","author":"victorhanson","date":"November 12, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"He will not be harmed by his \"misspeaking,\" but his fellow liberals will. by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/\u00a0National Review Online\u00a0 Conservatives keep blaring, \u201cObama lied!\u201d over the president\u2019s serial untruths about the Affordable Care Act. Even liberal pundits now talk of the president\u2019s \u201cmisspeaking,\u201d or even of his \u201cmisleading\u201d statements\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Political Culture"","block_context":{"text":"Political Culture","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/american-culture\/political-culture\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/11\/3963358921_d33ba22354-300x225.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1183,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/bering-there-the-obama-sequel\/","url_meta":{"origin":982,"position":5},"title":"Being There–the Obama Sequel","author":"victorhanson","date":"January 8, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson PJ Media Rip Van Obama President Obama went into a deep slumber in December. When he woke up this January, he found himself back even in the polls, with neither a press conference nor another overhyped presidential televised address to be heard. Sleep, quiet, and solitude\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Campaign 2012"","block_context":{"text":"Campaign 2012","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/obama-administration\/campaign-2012\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/982"}],"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=982"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/982\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":983,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/982\/revisions\/983"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=982"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=982"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=982"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}