Who likes the president?
Rich Democrats aren’t coughing up anymore, the New York Times reports. The Goldman Sachs crowd has dropped him cold. His inside circle can’t seem to get out of the White House fast enough. Approval ratings suck.
Other Democratic politicians don’t want him on the campaign trail.
Black people have, apparently, soured on him, too. The people in the backyards he’s visiting don’t seem very happy about having them in their backyards.
Obviously anybody the least right-of-center finds him anathema.
Who’s left? There is a block, but they seem stoic, dug in, anti-Fox. And you certainly don’t hear much of a passionate defense from them anymore.
The answer is that nobody likes him as much as they did, or as much as they thought they would, or even as much as they thought they should.
At this moment, we have a largely unrecognizable figure in the White House. The weirdly continuing questions about his birth place and religion may be not so much a slur as a demented metaphor for his real lack of identity — and friends.
There’s a guilty sense, too. People are edging away from him because they now feel they got it so wrong. It’s buyer’s remorse with recrimination — self-recrimination.
How did everybody get it so wrong is a question many people seem to be asking themselves — not least of all these people slinking out of the White House.
It is not just that he has turned out to be something different. In fact, reasonably, he isn’t that different. The more powerful sense of remorse or at least sheepishness may come from people now asking themselves how and why they came to think of him as different than he was. More confounding, they may not really now be able to remember just who exactly they thought he was.
So to refocus the story: Some mass misperception put Barack Obama in the White House and now nobody knows what to do with him.
Can there be a more awkward situation?
*This article originally appeared at Newser.com
Being elected at the apparent outset of the ‘gfc’, Mr Obama was always going to be a fall guy, imho.
Loss of an opportunity for genuine reform in America. Not really a surprise how both parties are in lock step to the whims of Wall Street allegiance and cashed up lobby groups. What was the land of opportunity now appears to be the great plutocracy. Social mobility must be at an all time low.
Still, there’s a few dead dogs to throw at the Republican door if the democrats are smart like the Iraq/Afghanistan wars, GFC & wall street bailout.
Pressure should be bought to bear on the Democrats who have not followed the reform program and wasted a majority and mandate for change that the vote represented.
What is a real tragedy is what John Stewart has defined as those who control the conversation and can repeatedly air falsehoods without being challenged. 20% of people in the US believe Obama is a foreign born, muslim, communist.
The best gift he could give if he is on the way out is pushing campaign reform to give power back to the people. If the hypocritical tea party get a majority ironically this may be something they can achieve.
One term President and welcome back Hillary, the stage is yours and probably the nomination.
‘Obviously anybody the least right-of-center finds him anathema.’
Of course they do. He is not right-of-center. (And I get the impression that ‘center’ in America is pretty far right already.) But lots of people who are not, voted him in. He can’t be all things to all people. He is what he is. If America changes its mind at the next Presidential election, they’ll vote in someone else, and opposite (Sarah Palin !!!!)
I get the feeling that Barack Obama has resigned himself to – or at least prepared himself for – being a one term president (a la Bartlett). I think he really values the opportunity to do the good he can do in the time allowed, over historical fame/glory.
Let’s hope the Republicans who get in next time (if that’s how it happens) don’t just focus on undoing the good he has done eg the health care reforms.
That would remind us of the Abbott Attitude.
PS article complete bollocks IMHO
‘People slinking out of the White House’ apparently a reference to Rohm Emmanuel who has a date with the contest for Mayor of Chicago, which makes a lot of sense.