This Was An Election About A Failed Presidency

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The Federalist: This Was An Election About A Failed Presidency

NOVEMBER 4, 2014 By Ben Domenech

As President Obama watches the returns this evening, it will be with the building resentment of an executive closer to the end than the beginning.

 

From Politico’s profile of the president at the second midterm:

 

“Obama, for so long the man with the bright future, has hated being relegated to a sidelined pariah in the midterms—even if it is the inevitable lot of a second-termer with approval ratings hovering in the low 40s—according to a dozen current and former Obama advisers we spoke with in recent days. He both resents the narrative that he’s basically irrelevant and doesn’t much relish the fact that many of his longest-serving staffers, the remnant core of his once-buzzing and brash White House, are strapping themselves to ejector seats. More than anything, Obama’s loathing for Washington, an attitude that reads as ennui to outsiders, has hardened into a sullen resignation at being trapped in a broken system he failed to change, advisers told us.”

 

For all the talk that this midterm election was about nothing, 2014 really was just about one thing: Barack Obama’s failure to live up to his presidency’s promise in almost every domestic and foreign policy arena.

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Contemplating Election Day, and Beyond

Roger Aronoff — November 4, 2014

While polls suggest that November 4th should be a very good election for Republicans—by most accounts they will take control of the Senate and increase their majority in the House—doubts remain. For one thing, as it is often said, the only poll that counts is the one taken on Election Day. But with many states offering early voting, and in some cases, such as Colorado, mail-in voting only, it is more than just Election Day that can determine the outcome. Among the other factors not reflected in the polls are third-party candidates, voter fraud and media bias.

 

The mainstream media, as always, are firmly in the corner of the Democrats.

http://www.aim.org/aim-column/contemplating-election-day-and-beyond/

[Draggingtree]

November 4, 2014

Celebrating Six Years of Broken Promises

By Jack Cashill

“In this country,” said Barack Obama in his victory speech six years ago today, “we rise or fall as one nation, as one people. Let's resist the temptation to fall back on the same partisanship and pettiness and immaturity that has poisoned our politics for so long.”

 

Nothing stopped Obama from fulfilling this promise, but he never meant what he said. Recently, former Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele, who is himself black, summed up Democratic strategy in the 2014 campaign, a strategy abetted by Obama at every turn.

 

“[Democrats] have been playing on this nerve in the black community,” said Steele, “that if you even so much as look at a Republican, churches will start to burn, your civil rights will be taken away and young black men like Trayvon Martin will die.”

http://americanthinker.com/articles/2014/11/celebrating_six_years_of_broken_promises.html

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Barack Obama's Failed Presidency

by Richard A. Epstein

Tuesday, July 5, 2016

 

The week after the Fourth of July is a good time to take stock of the presidency of Barack Obama. It is highly unlikely that he will change course in his six remaining months in office, so he will be judged by history on his current record. That record reveals an enormous gap between his grandiose promises and his pitiful performance over the past eight years.

 

Ironically, one of Obama’s finest moments came before he was elected President. When he secured his nomination in June 2008, a younger Obama waxed eloquent about his future role as a world historical figure:

 

I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal; this was the moment when we ended a war and secured our nation and restored our image as the last, best hope on Earth.

Obama constantly used the word “we” in that speech, but all too often that first person plural sounded more like the first person singular, as if his nomination heralded a sharp demarcation between the past and future. He spoke as if no one had ever addressed these issues before he “began” a transformation that was “absolutely certain” to reach full flower in his future administration. Obama here is a visionary captured by the nobility of his ends. But vision and skills are not always doled out in equal measure, and his lack of the latter made him unfit to choose the proper means for meeting the challenges he set out for himself.

http://www.hoover.org/research/barack-obamas-failed-presidency