Obamalaise

[WestVirginiaRebel]

NY Post:

There is a lot of luck involved in a presidency; it wasn’t because of Jimmy Carter’s personal incompetence that the 1980 Operation Eagle Claw helicopter mission to rescue the hostages in Iran failed. Similarly, it’s not mainly President Obama’s fault that the economic recovery is so weak — but he is hardly the one to make this argument after blaming President Bush for the 2008 financial crisis. Presidential decisions aren’t always at the core of everything.

Nevertheless, the comparisons of Obama to Carter have something to them besides the dull gray feeling of each presidency, the four-year wallow in economic quicksand.

Both men were borne into office on a surge of good feeling — a clean slate, renewal, possibility bordering on exhilaration. And both men seemed hurt, embittered and overwhelmed when history fell short of hype.

To this day, Carter is still defending the extraordinary 1979 prime-time address in which he chided America for its “crisis of confidence” (though Carter never used the word, it will forever be known as “the malaise speech”).

In January 2012, Carter told Piers Morgan, “the immediate response of that was the most favorable that I ever had to a speech . . . it was just a frank analysis of how America needed to change and that we still had resilient strength to overcome any difficulty if we work together.”

If we work together. The phrase was for Carter, as it is to Obama, a rebuke. It’s like a frustrated spouse saying, “I could have gotten that promotion, given a little time to prepare, but I just don’t get any help around the house.”

President Obama is fond of blaming his troubles on an obstructionist Congress, though he had massive majorities in both houses for two years — and the reason the House of Representatives now opposes him is simply because it was ordered to do so by the same voters he believes wanted him to go even further down the path he was heading.

In essence, in every speech, Obama is telling citizens, “Don’t blame me. Blame yourselves for voting in all those Republicans.” He omits to mention that, for three-quarters of the Clinton presidency and all of the Reagan presidency, the House was in the hands of the opposition.

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"It's not my fault." Repeat as often as necessary to try and get people to believe it.

[raygun]