The New Republic

An even better approach would be to push hard for the Infrastructure Bank. This would be a winning issue for two reasons: (1) Most people realize that the nation's roads, bridges, and water mains are deteriorating and need to be upgraded, and (2) doing this needed work would generate tens or hundreds of thousands of good jobs for engineers and construction workers. If the Republicans oppose the Infrastructure Bank on the grounds that we can't afford it, while at the same time urging more tax cuts for the rich, they will clearly demonstrate their upside-down priorities. Even their basic commitment to the nation that they profess to love so dearly will be called into question. Any party that would allow the nation's infrastructure to fall into ruins while pushing for more handouts to the rich and corporate bigwigs can't claim to have the country's best interests at heart. Once Americans start thinking about "the unpatriotic Republicans," the GOP is going to have an image albatross around its neck that it will find hard to get rid of.

- DAVIDDREIER@EARTHLINK.NET-old

August 3, 2011 at 2:47pm

Talk all you want (and BHO is likely to talk little re jobs). The debt deal makes it impossible for government to do anything to create jobs. Not only has BHO signed onto the meme that the debt is the second-most important political goal (compromise is his #1), but also that reducing spending to in theory reducing the debt creates jobs-- via the confidence fairy. You cant put shoes of any type on this pig. As roi said yesterday, like Churchill's critique of Chamberlain's Munich "compromise": He chose dishonor to avoid war. He will get war. BHO chose dishonor over an immediate economic (politically-manufactured) econonomic crisis. He will get a (true) economic crisis by deepening this resession--quite likely to a true deporession. The numbers are already coming in-- and will get worse with this deal.

- drofnats1

August 3, 2011 at 2:52pm

Another quick infrastructure fix, along the lines of FAST, would be to tackle the billions of dollars of backlogged maintenance in our national parks and monuments. Pairing fixing Yellowstone Park with ending some oil subsidies might make the whole thing more palatable for Republicans, lest they get an attack ad against them that says, "Congressman Smith voted for Big Oil over our national parks."

- benjamin81

August 3, 2011 at 3:00pm

Maybe if the bill promises only to renovate charter schools, it would have a chance to pass. Otherwise, Republicans will dig in, plead poverty, and rail against throwing money down the rat hole of public education.

- propjoe

August 3, 2011 at 3:40pm

- Too bad the last big boom during a Democratic presidency came from a guy who boasted the era of big government is over. And Obama had to win the nomination by running against his wife? I think people need to hear all Democrats hammer away with passion, from local to federal and each cabinet post drowning out any other issue: We're going to put America back to work and if won't join us, get out of the way.

- michaelg

August 3, 2011 at 4:04pm

"As roi said yesterday, like Churchill's critique of Chamberlain's Munich "compromise": He chose dishonor to avoid war. He will get war. BHO chose dishonor over an immediate economic (politically-manufactured) econonomic crisis. He will get a (true) economic crisis by deepening this resession--quite likely to a true deporession. The numbers are already coming in-- and will get worse with this deal." Roi's inability to formulate a cogent argument against BHO's stewardship is reflected in his use of Churchillian metaphors, invoking Hitler, and calling his opponents terrorists and blackmailers. Drofnats, please explain how BHO created an economic crisis or made things worse. That you are hoping for a true economic crisis to prove a point puts you in the same league as the Tea Party and Republicans who want the same thing.

- wkwami

August 3, 2011 at 4:14pm

Not a bad idea. But I fear that the GOP will ultimately gut anything President Obama proposes before it reaches the Senate. What does a watered-down version of an infrastructure bank look like? What about a diluted FAST? As soon as Obama pushes either of these bills, instransigent Republicans will nitpick about some minor element in the legislation; and the president will feel pressured to accommodate them because he desperately needs to stimulate the economy. Then Huffington Post will throw up another "OBAMA CAVES" headline, liberals will be demoralized, and the GOP will dance in the end-zone. I have no faith at this point in the Republicans' ability to compromise. I expect them to demonize and undermine any piece of legislation the administration touches. They've actually managed to convince Americans to believe the fallacy that less government spending, sans additional revenue, yields economic growth--as if less household spending (a popular, but disingenuous analogy) plus lower income makes someone a millionaire.

- maxhencke

August 3, 2011 at 5:25pm

Pivot to jobs--HOW? Do you seriously believe that even remotely effective stimulus spending can come out of this Congress? All the president has to offer is talk, and already it is apparent that that talk isn't likely even to be of the Clintonesque I-feel-your-pain variety but Dr Sunshine nonsense about how the economy is getting better. http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/08/03/hope-is-not-a-plan/

- AaronW

August 3, 2011 at 7:51pm

I am quite a bit more cogent than you, wkwami. The sum total of your contribution here is your insistence that anything that anyone suggests about Obama's stewardship that is other than fawning applause is "speculation." Of course, since we cannot have do-overs with history, any and all criticism about what might have been different can always be labeled speculation. Therefore, the wisdom that you have to share with us is that criticism of Obama's stewardship is inherently speculative, ergo no one can successfully criticize his stewardship. Then you claim that no one has. If you have ever said anything else the bears mention, I missed it. For anyone like wkwami, who has trouble following the ball, let us reprise. Here is a list of Obama's failures as steward: 1. Failed to ask for more than necessary on his stimulus bill, pre-negotiated with himself, and ended up with far too little larded with pointless tax cuts. 2. Failed to manage his own healthcare initiative or coordinate with Democratic congressional leaders. In his feckless bid for "post-partisanship," he acceded to a plethora of Republican demands for changes in the bill without remembering to bargain for so much as a single Republican vote in exchange. The resulting bill was a kind of Frakenstein's monster of policy that only was enacted because Pelosi and Reid pulled his chestnuts out of the fire at the last instant. 3. Failed to do his political work of making the case for his healthcare initiative leaving congressional Democrats to take all the heat. Conceded the public square entirely to extremist Republican rhetoric -- death panels and the like -- with the result of a huge loss in the 2010 elections. 4. Fails consistently to coordinate his political strategy and messaging with other Democrats. The Times reported that less than a week a go he was first coordinating with Democratic leadership for a unified position on the debt ceiling. That was about eight months too late. Treats the Democrats and the Republicans as if they are for all practical purposes equal while he stands above. Politics is a team sport. Obama is not a team player. 5. Failed when the ordeal of the ACA was finally over to press jobs, jobs, jobs as the most urgent task facing the country running up to the 2010 elections. Rather late now. 6. Got rolled in the negotiation over the Bush tax cuts, over which he did not even have to negotiate. Got far too little to stimulate the economy and failed even to ask for an increase in the debt ceiling. 7. Has continued Bush's anti-civil liberties policies and is in flagrant violation of the War Powers Act. 8. Made a complete mess of the negotiations over the debt ceiling that never should have happened in the first place resulting in spending cuts that are likely to precipitate a double dip recession coming on top of the cuts he stupidly agreed to in his failed negotiations over the Bush tax cuts. In the process, he has seen his own poll numbers come way down jeopardizing the White House over nothing at all. 9. Now purports to be "pivoting" to jobs when there is not a blessed thing he can do about it having demonstrated beyond peradventure that he is not in the slightest a political force to be reckoned with. I think that suffices, wkwami. Now you can tell us how that is all speculative, as is your custom. ________________ My "opponents" are not terrorists. Republicans who threaten to damage the country unless they get their way are terrorists. Churchill was right. No evidence though that you understand why.

- roidubouloi

August 3, 2011 at 8:50pm

Oh, did I forget to mentioning completely letting the perpetrators of the colossal banking fraud off the hook and exacting no price for bailing them all out of the mess they created while adopting policies that have sucked demand out of the economy in order to recapitalize the banks, a huge de facto tax increase on working people and a very large part of the reason why the economy is still so sluggish? In a nutshell, he didn't have the stones to stand up to Wall Street which is a large part of the reason we are still in a mess. He did a good job with auto industry though. Many gold stars for that one.

- roidubouloi

August 3, 2011 at 8:55pm

Just found your post on the other thread, wkwami. Here is my response: http://www.tnr.com/blog/jonathan-chait/93052/how-the-debt-committee-could-turn-republican-against-republican?page=1#comment-334688

- roidubouloi

August 3, 2011 at 10:34pm

Roi, my response is right there as well. Now, back to the matter at hand. For the sake of argument, let's assume that you are 100% correct about BHO's failures (which I largely disagree with, so there's no point debating who is right or wrong). The question then becomes what do you propose be done? Do you primary BHO and choose a Democratic alternative, or do you vote for the Republican alternative? Decision time... tick tock.

- wkwami

August 4, 2011 at 12:10am

Well, wkwami, what I will not do is vote for Obama again. "MADNESS!" you and others might well reply. "WHAT DO YOU WANT, A REPUBLICAN PRESIDENT?!?" To which I would reply that what appears to be madness, cutting off one's nose to spite one's face, is less mad if one takes a longer view. Obama's failed administration is the apotheosis of thirty years of increasing Republican extremism combined in a vicious cycle with thirty years of Democratic triangulation. In every election since 1980 Democrats have tried to gain ground lost to Republicans by becoming more like them. They have assumed that so long as they continued to call themselves Democrats and so long as they remained somewhat less conservative than their Republican opponents they could move well to the right and not lose support from the traditional Democratic base of liberals and minority voters. With Republicans the movement has been in the same rightward direction but for the opposite reason--Republicans believe, with good reason, that if they fail to uphold the extreme conservative beliefs of their base, their base will abandon them. The only way to break this cycle is for the Democratic base to take a page from the book of their Republican counterparts and refuse to relinquish their votes to just any old stooge who calls himself a Democrat. Might such behavior on the part of liberal voters cost Democrats elections? You betcha. Would on a short view would I rather have Obama in the White House than Michelle Bachmann or Mitt Romney? To be sure. But if in the longer term it would help shift this lumbering ship of state in a more salutary direction, I'd tolerate some short term pain. (By "short-term" I mean a decade or more.) I'd love to see a liberal primary challenger emerge. I don't think it's going to happen. I fully admit that I have a hard time imagining who such a person might be. Most of the possible candidates I can imagine are disqualified for one reason or another, most commonly for being already implicated in the Obama debacle. That's okay. I still won't vote for the man. And I'll be telling all my Democratic friends and family that I won't be voting for Obama and that I think they should withhold their votes as well. (In 2008 I gave Obama over $500 and encouraged my mother to volunteer for his campaign. I couldn't do so myself as I live abroad. She helped him be the first Democrat to win Virginia since Carter. This year, I hope she sits it out, and I've told her so.) View it as a kind of strike. If the Democratic candidate won't pay me the respect of making even a pretence of fighting for core Democratic Party beliefs, I won't pay him the respect of giving him my vote. And if Obama loses his reelection bid and the exit polls show poor turnout among core Democratic constituencies, maybe the next Democratic candidate won't take us for granted.

- AaronW

August 4, 2011 at 1:00am

http://www.tnr.com/blog/jonathan-chait/93052/how-the-debt-committee-could-turn-republican-against-republican?page=1#comment-334701 "Decision time ... tick, tock." Ah yes, no sooner are we done with the latest episode of hostage taking by the Republicans, than it is time to be taken hostage by the Democratic hierarchy who imagine that, no matter how badly they behave, we have no choice but to support them. Let's be clear, the reason Obama bungled the debt ceiling negotiations was because he went in not prepared to let them do the damage they threatened and deal with it. He had no plan for that alternative. That's no way to start a negotiation. They smelled his bluff, they called it, and he folded. Now you want disaffected Democrats to act like that too, to be unwilling to accept the possibility that Obama may lose and so be forced into line no matter how indifferent he is to our values and how unwilling to fight for them. You want us to be bluffing like Obama so that he can call our bluff. Well, I'm not bluffing and neither are many in "the base" without whose support he is toast. People will stay home knowing that the result will be a Democratic loss because there exists no other means to protest the betrayal and make clear to this president and future Democratic candidates that we will not accept faux Republicans in the stead of actual Democrats. What I propose to do is join with others in making clear to Obama and his erstwhile advisers that, despite being a New Deal Democrat while in the womb, I do not accept the sucking up to the right, at least not without giving them a fight every bit as aggressive and ruthless as the fight they give us. If he still insists on being post-partisan and above the fray, too bad. Bye, bye. His clock is ticking, not mine.

- roidubouloi

August 4, 2011 at 1:50am

From The Onion: Obama: Debt Ceiling Deal Required Tough Concessions By Both Democrats And Democrats Alike WASHINGTON—A day after signing legislation that raised the government debt ceiling and authorized steep budget cuts, President Obama thanked Democrats as well as Democrats for their willingness to make tough, but necessary, concessions during negotiations. "I'm truly grateful that both Democrats and their Democratic counterparts were able to reach this consensus, accepting an agreement that is far from perfect not just for Democrats, but also for Democrats," Obama said Wednesday of the deal that cut federal spending $2.1 trillion over 10 years but included no revenue increases of any kind. "Lawmakers from across the political spectrum—from moderate Democrats to the more liberal members of the party to dyed-in-the-wool progressives—reached within the aisle and showed the nation that compromise requires real sacrifice from everyone." Obama added that while it may look ugly at times, politics is about Democrats giving up what they want, as well as Democrats giving up what they want, until an agreement can ultimately be reached.

- AaronW

August 4, 2011 at 2:20am

Posted the following on a dead thread by mistake: Last night I was watching the Aussie ABC network news roundup. They had a little piece on the debt ceiling deal. They showed a clip of Obama speaking about the deal. Not sure what the specific occasion was. He was outside. I can't quote him verbatim, but l can give the gist of it. He was saying that debt ceiling crisis was manufactured and that it was the last thing our teetering economy needed. Fair enough. But then who did he blame for this unnecessary, manmade challenge to our prosperity? The Republicans? Fuck no! He blamed all of us! "We did this to ourselves," he said. I was dumbfounded. "We..." Who's "we", sucker? Incompetence compounded by abject weakness...

- AaronW

August 4, 2011 at 3:22am

The people who read "The Beast" care about politics and public policy but they represent only a tiny sliver of the population who do. The vast majority of our fellow citizens could not name the vice president or tell you who their congressman is or what party he represents. Our corrupt, dysfunctional government is probably what we deserve.

- paskunac

August 4, 2011 at 6:31am

Aaron W. and roidubouloi: Everything the two of you say here is right on the mark. Obama has been a terrible disappointment. He's weak and, to use the tired old cliche, he's closer to Wall Street than to Main Street. However, a right-wing Republican president, especially if the GOP were able to achieve a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, would be a disaster almost beyond imagining. So I will vote for Obama even though I have pretty much lost all faith in him. Aaron, you say you'd like to see a liberal primary challenger, but you don't know who that could be. How about Russ Feingold? The man is for the people and he seems utterly incorruptible.

- DAVIDDREIER@EARTHLINK.NET-old

August 4, 2011 at 10:06am

In a nutshell, I'm with wkwami on all this. Whatever his "failures," it seems to me the President's critics don't give him credt for anything at all. Forget the big ticket items for the moment, like ACA, stimulus, etc. It seems to me this President and his administration have achieved a lot of other, let's say smaller things (for want of a better term), that don't get much attention. These include, for example, expansion of S-Chip, the children's health insurance program (I recall a discussion I had with a military mom, who noted the big difference this program made for her family), the Ledbetter equal pay for women act, and creation of the consumer protection bureau. In addition of course there was expansion of Federal assistance for stem cell research, improved federal loan program for college, missile deal with Moscow. I'm sure there are other things I've overlooked. But how can any of the above not be described as, at worst, liberal objectives, if not progressive? I recall a blog I read somewhere, maybe last year, that described the President as trying to make life at least a little better in general for the American people. We know the GOP only cares about the rich. Given that, there's no way in my book Obama is in the same camp as the Republicans, as many of his critics suggest. And yes, I will vote for him again next year.

- ballston

August 4, 2011 at 12:16pm

AaronW: "Pivot to jobs--HOW? Do you seriously believe that even remotely effective stimulus spending can come out of this Congress?" Good question. Glad to see you acknowledging reality for once. Now tell us how you'd spur job creation in this political environment. You saw a way out of the debt-ceiling using the 14th Amendment, surely you can come up with a way for the President to get another stimulus through Congress?

- wkwami

August 4, 2011 at 1:07pm

Having failed to build political capital (or even to try) and having exhausted through fecklessness the enormous political capital he had at the start of his presidency, there is very little Obama can now do about anything. He is politically spent. He will tread water through the election, trying to use theatrics such as his midwest tour to compensate for the inability to do anything at all, because he lacks public support. There is a reasonable shot that the Republicans will be so frightening that Obama will squeak through. He has placed anything more than that beyond his reach. There is an equally good chance, maybe better, that a double-dip recession, brought on by his initially inadequate stimulus and his fiscal tightening since then, will sink him and what is left of the Democrats in Congress. Now just why you, wkwami, think AaronW or anyone else should have the solution to Obama's political incompetence long after the horse has left the barn is beyond me.

- roidubouloi

August 4, 2011 at 1:31pm

Well said, ballston. There's definitely way too much focus on what he didn't do well. I think the other problem is attributing to Obama the failures of the democrats in Congress. Some have argued that he's supposed to control the party like some sort of leviathan, but I just don't buy it. Congressional reps and senators are elected for a reason, and the last time I checked it wasn't to be the president's hand-puppets, even if that's how the Republicans appear to treat it.
The GOP is a herd of handpuppets anyway: do what you're told or GTFO. I guess I'm not terribly surprised there are those democrats who see the "success" the Republicans are having and desire to ape their behaviors in hopes of achieving some of that success for themselves.
Oddly, or perhaps not, I don't see the Republicans' success at all. Most of the time, they're just preaching to the choir. And any time they actually try to engage democrats or independents their arguments are flimsy and unconvincing, at best. The lame-stream-media's efforts to simply repeat what Republicans are saying just makes everything seem louder. The Republicans have tried to paint themselves as heros of the debt ceiling, and everything else, this whole time, but the public hates them worse than the democrats. The only thing that's really changed in public perception is the level of satisfaction with Obama's job rating as people now seem to see him as part of the problem as well.
But, I'm not going to say I don't see an upside to letting the Republicans have control of the government again. I'm a big fan of hard lessons, and Americans of all walks of life are desperately in need of some damn hard lessons when it comes to politics these days.

- GSpinks

August 4, 2011 at 1:39pm

Obama is the leader of the Democratic party, a responsibility he has totally shirked. A big part of his shirking was the refusal to coordinate his efforts with Democratic congressional leadership. As such, he, not congressional Democrats, deserves the lion's share of the blame. It is not a matter of their being handpuppets, but of organizing legislative and political effort in a coordinated way. When a party holds the White House, the failure, refusal, or inability of the president to do his political job leaves a vacuum that is inevitably filled by chaos. The party cannot possibly organize itself around the president as if he were not there. Whether Republicans' arguments are persuasive to you or not, or consist entirely of yelling booga, booga, booga, is of no consequence. They have set the rhetorical frame with respect to the two major issues of the Obama presidency, healthcare and the economy. As such, they are winning the political war. That's what the purpose of political rhetoric is, political power. The only relevant metric for political rhetoric is whether it secures, sustains, bolsters political power. By the only metric that matters, Republicans are doing far better than they should. The reason is that the president, and therefore the Democrats, do not even attempt any counter-narrative. Complete political incompetence.

- roidubouloi

August 4, 2011 at 2:06pm

Roi, if understand you correctly, you have no good alternatives, either. Your narrative about Obama having exhausted enormous political capital through fecklessness is another one of those speculations presented as fact. The possibility that there are other more plausible explanations for the current state of affairs other than fecklessness on Obama's part completely escapes you. Consider the question... Why didn't LBJ run for re-election? We KNOW (not speculative) that policy-wise, LBJ accomplished a lot on the liberal/progressive agenda. But we also KNOW that he became extremely unpopular within the Democratic party and was facing a primary challenge from RFK. And then there was his escalation of the Vietnam War. Using your reasoning we are to surmise that LBJ exhausted enormous political capital through fecklessness or some such thing, resulting in the state of affairs that led to his decision not to run for re-election. Or we could also acknowledge that his major policy successes engendered a push back from the other side (the political version of Newton's 3rd law of motion, if you will). The Democrats failed to account for this and let the Tea Party run with it in 2010 elections with the so-called enthusiasm gap - Democrats simply needed to vote to protect their policy accomplishments. Instead they let the perfect become the enemy of the good and whined their way to defeat. In essence they forgot the long game. I am of the opinion that should Obama meet a similar fate as LBJ, it won't be because he squandered political capital through fecklessness, but because he got too much done too soon, and democratic voters, yes the voters, did not counter the Tea Party at the ballot box.

- wkwami

August 4, 2011 at 2:31pm

Roi: "Obama is the leader of the Democratic party, a responsibility he has totally shirked. A big part of his shirking was the refusal to coordinate his efforts with Democratic congressional leadership." You epitomize a large part of what is wrong in American politics today - the belief that top down party politics determines voter choices; that as long as the leaders coordinate an effective message, they can win. You err! Exhibit A - the Republicans, whom we all tend to credit with being a well organized lot, and always on message, lost Congress in 2006 and got trounced in 2008. Did Rove et al somehow shirked their responsibility? Or did they became political dunces within that time frame? Something else may explain what is happening, but you can't see it because it is in your political blind spot. "They have set the rhetorical frame with respect to the two major issues of the Obama presidency, healthcare and the economy. As such, they are winning the political war. That's what the purpose of political rhetoric is, political power. The only relevant metric for political rhetoric is whether it secures, sustains, bolsters political power." This is classical nonsense! You give far too much credence to political rhetoric. You completely ignore the fact that you cannot convince anyone against their reality that says otherwise. As with LBJ, most of Obama's political successes will bear fruit in the future, while those that have kicked in went largely to the minority interest (the poor, women, gays). The vast middle who are struggling to get by don't see much of an improvement in their lives, and they are rightly upset with the state of affairs. The long term unemployed cannot convinced the economy is getting better, they have to see improvements in their lives.

- wkwami

August 4, 2011 at 2:59pm

Obama backs us into a corner and I am supposed to have alternatives? Because, I suppose, in the world according to wkwami, I am a voter, therefore responsible for all political outcomes, and Obama is the President of the United States, therefore responsible for no political outcomes. Or, at the very least, any attribution to Barack H. Obama, President of the United States, of responsibility for anything is purely speculative. On the other hand, it is not speculative that the reason for our problems is the Obama accomplished so very much so very fast. That, in wkwami's world, is a fact, beyond speculation. Curious dichotomy there, don't you think? I have to laugh out loud at your historical amnesia, wkwami. Are you perhaps too young to remember the Vietnam War? I'm not. I was 16 in 1968 when Johnson announced he would not run. I campaigned for him when I was 12 in 1964. Do you think he was unpopular in the Democratic party because of The Great Society or the Civil Rights Act? Or because he was fighting an immoral and pointless war, with young Americans being thrown onto a funeral pyre to save face? I think Johnson was heartsick at what a series of his bad and worse decisions, under the influence of incompetent and dishonest generals, had wrought in Vietnam and sought both to atone for his sins and provide an opening for another course, for a peace he could not achieve, by declining to run. What on earth does that have to do with Obama? Not a bloody thing. What I observe is that Obama has shirked his political responsibilities, preferring both to sit in the White House making policy and to stand back and allow congressional leaders and other Democrats to take fire while he tries to stay out of the line of fire, sweeping in at the end to chastise them for their failure to achieve a good outcome while the general sits on his butt. A leaderless army. It is necessarily speculative that the outcomes would have been different had Obama been willing to give rhetorical battle, not by himself to be sure, but in a coordinated effort with he rest of the party of which he is supposed to be the leader. All alternative outcomes are necessarily speculative because there is no alternative history. So what? Does that mean we are to cease drawing inferences from experience about what we should or should not do? It is not, however, speculative that Obama has done virtually nothing, ever, to make the Democratic case to the public or criticize the Republican maniacs who are doing everything imaginable to undermine and neuter him. That is something we can observe. On the one occasion when he did, over the Ryan budget, it was hugely successful. You decline to draw appropriate inferences from such evidence, of both failure and success, as exists on the grounds that any such inferences are necessarily unprovable. By that logic, one can only hide under the bed or intone, as you do, that everything is for the best in this, the best of all possible worlds, as it is the only possible world because it is the only world that exists. You really do bear an astonishing likeness to Dr. Pangloss. "The Democrats failed to account for this and let the Tea Party run with it in 2010 elections with the so-called enthusiasm gap . . ." No sir. The Democrats were and are leaderless. The man who holds the titular responsibility is AWOL. That has nothing to do with allowing the perfect to be the enemy of the good and all such blame the voters nonsense. Obama has not even attempted to do his job as Democratic political leader. That is not acceptable merely because neither I nor anyone else can ever, in principle, prove the outcome would have been different if he had. We have some reason to believe that political effort and sound leadership yield political rewards. We have no reason to believe that the absence of political effort and leadership will do likewise.

- roidubouloi

August 4, 2011 at 3:07pm

Here's a more balanced analysis of the Obama Presidency, including three competing narratives: President Barack Obama’s First Two Years: Policy Accomplishments, Political Difficulties http://www.brookings.edu/papers/2010/1104_obama_galston.aspx During his first two years in office, President Barack Obama and his Democratic allies in Congress compiled a substantial record of policy accomplishment—the economic stimulus, bringing the financial system back from the brink of collapse, rescuing two automakers, universal health care, sweeping reform of financial regulation, and major changes in student loan programs, among many others. Nevertheless, the political standing of both the president and congressional Democrats slipped steadily through much of this period, and the voters administered a substantial rebuke in the November 2010 midterm elections. While some contests remain unresolved, the Democrats have lost at least six Senate seats, at least ten governorships, and more than sixty House seats, the most for a mid-term election since 1938. By any measure, this is a substantial and consequential expression of public discontent. What went wrong? There are four broad schools of thought...