WHEN Barack Obama took office last year he was compared to Superman, even joking at a dinner that he had been “born on Krypton and sent here … to save the planet Earth”. Last January he appeared on the cover of Spider-Man.
Now, with his legislative agenda in tatters, the president has moved from comic-strip hero to comparisons to one of the great flawed figures of American literature. Ten days ago Charlie Cook, a leading election analyst, compared Obama and his battle to push through healthcare reform to Captain Ahab and his suicidal hunt for the great white whale.
Despite poll after poll showing that Americans’ main priority is jobs, the president has focused on reforming the US healthcare system and extending coverage to the 40m citizens with no insurance.
“I think choosing to take a Captain Ahab-like approach to healthcare — I’m going to push for this even in the worst downturn since the Great Depression — is roughly comparable to Bush’s decision to go to war [in Iraq],” Cook told Politico. “It basically destroyed the first year of a presidency.”
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Who among us didn’t see this disaster about to happen when the momentum began to swing in Barry Oblamebush’s favour during the campaign? I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: The Americans have to have a better way of picking their would be leaders.
Those inclined to believe this had their minds made up before he took office. Any reasonable human would have had the expectation that NO president or even administration could “turn around” America’s fundamental problems. It took decades to create these problems and it will take decades to unwind them.
Obama’s greatest contribution was being Obama – thus, the slumbering right, self appointed as the fiscally responsible set, awoke and remembered that not everything is free and debt is BAD. All it took was a swarthy liberal president threatening to help the homies.
But that is the most Obama will be able to do. When the right finishes lynching him and puts their own mascot in, that person will be faced with an even bigger challenge – resisting his partisan urges to start another war. His successor will have an even bigger challenge – scaling back social security in the face of an even more powerful AARP lobby.
The next 10 years will be interesting.
Oh ye of little faith. The ‘Chosen One’ gave himself a B+, so what’s all this about failure. He’s only just begun his work…..completing his agenda…….fulfilling his destiny.
Obama has his hands full. Yes, He inherited a mess but it would appear His cure is worse than the disease.