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Townhall...
The
Growing Bipartisan Consensus on
Obama
By Emmett Tyrrell
8/19/2011
Washington:
Who on Aug. 18, 2010 --
almost one year ago -- said, “I now think it is clear even to official
Washington that President Obama is the worst president of modern times.
President Jimmy Carter is redeemed”? Yes, it was I. And I threw the
entire
weight of The American Spectator behind that asseveration, putting both
Jimmy
and Barry on the cover.
Now,
of course, others are stepping
forward and drawing the awkward comparison. On the left, there is
Maureen Dowd
in The New York Times quoting an anonymous Democratic senator who
laments that
“we are watching him turn into Jimmy Carter right before our eyes.”
Apparently,
the left-wing fussbudget Eric Alterman made the same comparison in U.S.
News
and World Report.
Yet
I went further, making the point
that between Barry and Jimmy, Barry is worse. Consider the prophet’s
performance on TV during this financial crisis. He is actually calling
for more
spending, and the markets continue to tumble. His fabled cool is
exposed. It is
obliviousness.
Columnists
William McGurn and Bret
Stephens made similar comparisons on the same day, Aug. 8, 2011, and in
the
same newspaper, the Wall Street Journal. Stephens is bold: “I just
think the
president is not very bright.” He quotes Socrates, Aristotle, and
Plutarch
respectively on wisdom, prudence and the costs of flattery. McGurn has
an eye
to history. He reminds us of the extravagant statements made about
Carter’s
genius over thirty years ago by New York Times columnists Tom Wicker,
Anthony
Lewis, R. W. Apple and the author Norman Mailer in The New York Times
Magazine.
It really is astonishing how these oafs fell for a liberal Democrat’s
claim to
high intelligence even as they dismissed a conservative Republican as
simple-minded while he ended the Cold War and set the American economy
on
course for the longest period of growth in modern history. I have in
mind
Ronald Reagan.
Stephens
quotes President Obama as saying
to an aide in 2008, “I know more about policies on any particular issue
than my
policy directors. And I’ll tell you right now that I’m ... a better
political
director than my political director.” Stephans excuses Obama’s vanity
as but an
echo of the balderdash said about him by his admirers. I know what he
means.
There is the “presidential historian” Michael Beschloss telling radio
host Don
Imus that Obama “is a guy whose IQ is off the charts....” Asked for
evidence,
Beschloss confides, “he’s probably the smartest guy ever to become
president.”
And, of course, a media “presidential historian” would know.
My
favorite panegyric to Obama comes
from The New York Times columnist David Brooks, recalling his first
interview
with then-Sen. Obama. “I don’t want to sound like I’m bragging,” says
Brooks,
“but usually when I talk to senators, while they may know a policy area
better
than me, they generally don’t know political philosophy better than me.
I got
the sense that he knew both better than me.” Brooks went on to make
this
invaluable observation, “I remember distinctly an image -- we were
sitting on
his couches, and I was looking at his pant leg and his perfectly
creased pant,
and I’m thinking, (a) he’s going to be president and (b) he’ll be a
very good
president.” What would this precious Washington insider have reported
if Sen.
Obama had been wearing pantyhose?
For
more than thirty years a wounded
Jimmy Carter has roamed the world speaking ill of whomever the sitting
president might be and occasionally making it difficult for that
president to
make policy. Obama has already surpassed him, speaking ill of America
as a
whole while being president. In Strasbourg, France, on April 3, 2009,
he said,
“Instead of celebrating our dynamic union and seeking to partner with
you to
meet common challenges, there have been times where America has shown
arrogance
and been dismissive, even derisive.” What he will do in retirement one
can only
imagine. But until his retirement, enjoy the show.
Read
it at Townhall
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