Fw: Anatomy of a Failed Presidency

Anatomy of a Failed Presidency
The following is an interesting article and I wonder how long Dr. Hunt can remain at NIH once the powers that be get wind of this article.

Dr. Hunt is a social and cultural anthropologist. He has had nearly 30 years experience in planning, conducting, and managing research in the field of youth studies, and drug and alcohol research. Currently Dr. Hunt is a Senior Research Scientist at the Institute for Scientific Analysis and the Principal Investigator on three National Institutes on Health projects. He is also a writer for American Thinker.

Another Failed Presidency

An article from American Thinker by Geoffrey P. Hunt

Barack Obama is on track to have the most spectacularly failed presidency since Woodrow Wilson. In the modern era, we've seen several failed presidencies--led by Jimmy Carter and LBJ. Failed presidents have one strong common trait-- they are repudiated, in the vernacular, spat out.
Of course, LBJ wisely took the exit ramp early, avoiding a shove into oncoming traffic by his own party. Richard Nixon indeed resigned in disgrace, yet his reputation as a statesman has been partially restored by his triumphant overture to China

But, Barack Obama is failing. Failing big. Failing fast. And failing everywhere: foreign policy, domestic initiatives, and most importantly, in forging connections with the American people. The incomparable Dorothy Rabinowitz in the Wall Street Journal put her finger on it: He is failing because he has no understanding of the American people, and may indeed loathe them. Fred Barnes of the Weekly Standard says he is failing because he has lost control of his message, and is overexposed. Clarice Feldman of American Thinker produced a dispositive commentary showing that Obama is failing because fundamentally he is neither smart nor articulate; his intellectual dishonesty is conspicuous by its audacity and lack of shame.

But, there is something more seriously wrong: How could a new president riding in on a wave of precedented promise and goodwill have forfeited his tenure and become a lame duck in six months? His poll ratings are in free fall. In generic balloting, the Republicans have now seized a five point advantage. This truly is unbelievable. What's going on?

No narrative. Obama doesn't have a narrative. No, not a narrative about himself. He has a self-narrative, much of it fabricated, cleverly disguised or written by someone else. But this self-narrative is isolated and doesn't connect with us. He doesn't have an American narrative that draws upon the rest of us. All successful presidents have a narrative about the American character that intersects with their own where they display a command of history and reveal an authenticity at the core of their personality that resonates in a positive endearing way with the majority of Americans. We admire those presidents whose narratives not only touch our own, but who seem stronger, wiser, and smarter than we are. Presidents we admire are aspirational peers, even those whose politics don't align exactly with our own: Teddy Roosevelt, FDR, Harry Truman, Ike, and Reagan.

But not this president. It's not so much that he's a phony, knows nothing about economics, and is historically illiterate and woefully small minded for the size of the task--all contributory of course. It's that he's not one of us. And whatever he is, his profile is fuzzy and devoid of content, like a cardboard cutout made from delaminated corrugated paper.
Moreover, he doesn't command our respect and is unable to appeal to our own common sense. His notions of right and wrong are repugnant and how things work just don't add up. They are not existential. His descriptions of the world we live in don't make sense and don't correspond with our experience.

In the meantime, while we've been struggling to take a measurement of this man, he's dissed just about every one of us--financiers, energy producers, banks, insurance executives, police officers, doctors, nurses, hospital administrators, post office workers, and anybody else who has a non-green job. Expect Obama to lament at his last press conference in 2012:
"For those of you I offended, I apologize. For those of you who were not offended, you just didn't give me enough time; if only I'd had a second term, I could have offended you too."

Mercifully
, the Founders at the Constitutional Convention in 1787 devised a useful remedy for such a desperate state--staggered terms for both houses of the legislature and the executive. An equally abominable Congress can get voted out next year. With a new Congress, there's always hope of legislative gridlock until we vote for president again two short years after that.

Yes, small presidents do fail, Barack Obama among them. The coyotes howl but the wagon train keeps rolling along.
Margaret Thatcher: "The trouble with Socialism is, sooner or later you run out of other people's money."
"When you subsidize poverty and failure, you get more of both." - James Dale Davidson, National Taxpayers Union

"The more corrupt the state, the more it legislates." - Tacitus


"A Liberal is a person who will give away everything he doesn't own." - Unknown

10 comments:

gruaud said...

Ho hum. Another day, more lying.

From ISA:
"As of October 2009, the Institute has received
several inquires regarding an August 31, 2009
article in the American Thinker. Mr. Geoffrey P.
Hunt (the actual author of the article), as far as
we can ascertain, is an executive in the electronics
industry and a regular contributor to the American
Thinker. His work has been attributed to Geoffrey
P. Hunt, PhD, Senior Scientist at ISA. Please note
Dr. Hunt has never written anything for the
American Thinker and would appreciate any help
in rectifying this case of mistaken authorship /
identity."

They can't ever tell the truth because their ideology
is morally and intellectually bankrupt. Thus, the constant lies, distortions, and logical fallacies.

C'mon reactionaries, surprise me. Tell the truth about something. Tell me the sun rises in the
east, for god's sake. Can you even do that?

Anonymous said...

Such tripe. And it wasn't even a year into his Presidency that this steaming pile of crap was written! Amazing!

Nixon gets off the hook because of his outreach to China? Really? But LBJ goes down in flames as a failure despite Medicare, Medicaid and the Civil Rights act? Both had their faults but you have to be an extreme partisan hack to come to those conclusions.

And what's this crap about "no narrative"? What? If Obama is anything, he's inspirational and gives a great speech. Its a major part of his political success.

I wonder if this writer remembers 1981-82, during the depths of Reagan's first term. Would he come to the same conclusions that he was a "failed" President? Somehow I doubt Saint Ronnie would get the same treatment from this genius.

Thx 4 Fish said...

This has the intellectual significance and tortured logic of a Thomas Sowell opinion piece. I really would have picked him as the author.

Funny how he didn't even bring up W. in his list of failed presidents. Anyone know how that speaking career is going for W?

Sharoney said...

Take out the references to President Obama in that piece of drek and replace them with "President George W. Bush" and you will finally have something approaching truth.

Projection--it's what Republican scum have for dinner.

ferschitz said...

Thanks for correct attributions (so I don't have to waste time looking it up). Agree that this is all a lot of corporatist, rightwing projection and bunk. It's all they've got.

What's ironic is that one could write constructive criticism about BHO (or anyone) that at least might be useful. We all have faults and calling attention to faults, so that they can be improved or corrected, is fine.

Yet these nonsensical rants just engage in name-calling, lies, smear and doltishness, plus then they don't even have the GUTS to be honest about who writes it. Really quite stupid, but as we've all witnessed, wingtards actually seek out being lied to... witness Bible Spice's weird word salad this weekend in TN. I hear tell that the Wasilla Grifta pledged to donate her $120K "speaking" fee to a charity (aka Sarah Pac).

Please wake me if the rightwing think tanks or pundits ever tell the truth. I won't hold my breath.

Celia said...

Richard Nixon indeed resigned in disgrace, yet his reputation as a statesman has been partially restored by his triumphant overture to China

Nah.

katz said...

Katz is a millionaire
Katz is a millionaire
Katz is a millionaire

Anonymous said...

Katz, I realize what you're trying to do, but repeating something over and over again does not, despite the apparent tactics of the right wing, make it come true.

Tootseye said...

Omigawd, Celia: I missed that line of sheer audacious bull shit. If they are "elevating" the supreme CROOK Tricky Dick to some vaunted status, then ya know they've jumped the pooch... but then again, we already know that.

Katz is a millionaire
Katz is a millionaire
Katz is a millionaire

(why not?)

sabina moon said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
 
Creative Commons License
MyRightWingDad.net is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.