Closing the book on Obama’s boulevard of broken dreams

[WestVirginiaRebel]

The Blaze:

As President-elect Donald Trump begins his triumphant march through Washington, D.C., Friday morning — a march that will end with an event many liberals are still too gobsmacked to even accept — it is difficult to remember the mood of the country just eight short years ago when Trump’s predecessor began the same procession. With Trump loudly promising to undo most or all of President Barack Obama’s prominent executive orders, to refill Gitmo, and to sign a bill that will repeal the one significant piece of legislation bearing Obama’s name, Obama has to wonder, as he watches the spectacle unfold, how it all went so disastrously wrong.

 

Obama assumed office with perhaps the most impressive cache of goodwill and political capital of any president since the 60s. He had convincingly defeated his Republican opponent — and more, his party had grabbed control of the House and a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate. Obama entered office with the raw power at his disposal to do almost literally anything he wanted, from a legislative perspective.

 

But Obama had more than just the raw power. He also had the backing of a significant part of the country that was just plain tired of the Republican Party. They were tired of the war in Iraq, which seemed to drag endlessly on with no hope of final resolution. They were tired of the financial crisis and Bush’s handling of it, including the TARP plan, which was broadly opposed by Bush’s own party. They were tired of Bush himself, who seemed like a decent man but who could never seem to get the right words out of his mouth whenever he was on camera and thus never gave the American people total confidence that he was as much in command of the situation as he should be.

 

Along came Obama, carrying with him all the promise of being the exact opposite of Bush. In the place of Bush’s stammering neologisms, Obama brought soaring rhetoric. In the place of the bitter partisan fighting that permeated Bush’s second term, Obama promised a new kind of politics, one built on positivity and change. In the place of Bush’s refusal to offer a clear vision of when the war in Iraq would end, Obama promised an unequivocal end to our misadventure in the Middle East. Obama had fierce detractors from the beginning, but the country as a whole was ready for Obama to lead. Obama’s approval rating on his Inauguration Day was, according to most polls, near a staggering 70 percent, including 40 percent of Republicans. In other words, Obama was more popular among registered Republicans on his first day in office than Trump currently is with the country as a whole.

 

It’s almost difficult to even remember the many plans Democrats had to reshape the country — and, indeed, the electorate — in the virtually unprecedented two-year window they believed they enjoyed between 2009 and 2011, because so many of those plans utterly failed to come to fruition. Remember card check, which was supposed to vastly increase union membership and financial power? Remember the comprehensive immigration reform they were going to pass that was supposed to provide them with an insurmountable demographic advantage over the Republicans? Remember how Gitmo was going to be closed and our troops were going to be pulled out of Iraq by 2010?

 

Ultimately, none of these things came to pass for three reasons.

________

 

Failing his way into history.

[Draggingtree]

The President Who Never Was

December 10, 2016 by Chris Buskirk 288 Comments

 

President-elect Donald Trump has already made President Obama irrelevant. He not only commands the media spotlight, as presidents-elect are wont to do, but in effect he governs from Trump Tower as he awaits the necessary formality of Inauguration Day. Whether it be convincing Carrier to keep its plant in Indiana or signalling a new day in Sino-American relations by talking to Taiwan’s president, the Trump era has already begun. And President Obama is not so much yesterday’s man as he is the president eagerly—and easily—forgotten.

 

Obama was elected in 2008 for his biography more than for his accomplishments, of which there were precious few: an elite education, some “community organizing” (whatever that is), a stint in the state legislature, and a cup of coffee in the U.S. Senate. He sold the American people on a package of “hope and change” and the people bought it. Twice.

 

The election this year of Donald Trump is more than just buyer’s remorse—it’s a repudiation of Obama’s promise to “fundamentally transform the United States of America.” In office, his agenda was stymied by a constitutional order designed to impede radical change.

https://amgreatness.com/2016/12/10/the-president-who-never-was/