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Jewish World Review August 11, 2011 / 11 Menachem-Av, 5771 The man who never was By Jack Kelly
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
If Congress doesn't raise the ceiling on the national debt, America will lose its AAA credit rating, President Barack Obama said.
Republican insistence on spending cuts was the greatest obstacle to a debt ceiling deal, and thus to our credit rating, most journalists said.
They were spectacularly wrong. Just days after the debt ceiling was raised by the largest amount ever, the stock market crashed, and the bond rating agency Standard & Poors downgraded America's credit.
The deficit must be cut by $4 trillion over the next ten years, the bond rating agencies say. The debt limit bill will trim spending by, at most, $2.4 trillion. Our credit would have remained AAA if the GOP plan had passed, an S&P executive told Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis.
Journalists have written more about who they think won or lost in the debt limit deal than about whether it actually would reduce our gargantuan debt.
The big winner was President Obama, said columnist and television commentator Craig Crawford.
"The president got what he most wanted, postponing another debt ceiling fight until after the election, without politically damaging entitlement cuts," Mr. Crawford wrote on his blog.
I wonder if Mr. Crawford has been living on another planet.
During the debt ceiling debate, Mr. Obama's job approval plunged to 40 percent in the Gallup Poll, the lowest level ever. Concluding the deal he praised won't lift that much, because Americans oppose it, 46 percent to 39 percent, Gallup found.
Americans oppose the deal for precisely the reason Mr. Crawford claims Mr. Obama "won." They don't think it cuts spending enough.
Mr. Obama has been more popular than his policies. The debt ceiling debate may change that.
"Most striking was how irrelevant the president seemed to the entire debate," wrote Bloomberg columnist Virginia Postrel. "Obama didn't present his own alternative to the various congressional plans or make a case for a particular policy. When he tried to address the public, he came off as condescending, self-interested and detached."
Democrat leaders in Congress were appalled by Mr. Obama's behavior during the debt negotiations. At one point, according to The Hill newspaper, the president was asked to leave the room so serious negotiating could be done.
"He's turning into Jimmy Carter before our eyes," a Democrat senator told New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd.
In military history, The Man Who Never Was was Major William Martin, created by British intelligence in 1943. MI5 dropped off the coast of Spain a corpse chained to a briefcase containing phony plans for an invasion of Sardinia, assuming, correctly, that the documents would be turned over to German intelligence. The Germans didn't realize until two weeks after the invasion of Sicily began that Sardinia wasn't the real target.
In politics, The Man Who Never Was is the brilliant, politically moderate reformer with a "first class temperament" journalists told us about in 2008. The petulant, partisan ideologue we saw during the debt ceiling negotiations bears little resemblance to that guy.
The "world class orator" is notoriously dependent upon a teleprompter, and unable to sway public opinion.
"His speeches lack humor and rely on the same focus-grouped platitudes," said Matt Continetti of the Weekly Standard.
The debt limit deal gives Mr. Obama political ownership of our rapidly deteriorating economy, which is why Republicans don't think they conceded much when they agreed to postpone another debt limit vote until after the election.
Yet Mr. Crawford thinks Mr. Obama "won."
Perhaps he doesn't, really. Perhaps journalists have so much invested in the mythical Obama they created they don't dare show the little man behind the curtain.
"What might once have been dismissed as an embarrassing lapse into bobby soxer squealery now has to be recognized as a desperate attempt to keep a dying euphoria alive," Andrew Klavan wrote in City Journal.
But eventually even liberal journalists will turn on Mr. Obama, because his stimulus didn't stimulate; his regulatory policies kill jobs; his promises about Obamacare have proved to be false.
There are only two credible explanations for these failures. Either the policies themselves are to blame, or Mr. Obama implemented them badly and has marketed them poorly.
Liberals never admit -- especially to themselves -- that their ideas are wrong. So the fault has to be Mr. Obama's.
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JWR contributor Jack Kelly, a former Marine and Green Beret, was a deputy assistant secretary of the Air Force in the Reagan administration.
© 2009, Jack Kelly |
Arnold Ahlert | |||||||||||
