It bears repeating: He didn’t elect — or re-elect — himself.
It may well be — I wouldn’t deny it for a minute — that Barack Obama has less to recommend him as a U. S. president than any predecessor of the past century. Vain, cocksure, morose, disabled from admitting a mistake or a bad guess — what a guy! Small wonder no present poll shows him with majority public support.
There is irony here. Majority public support is what catapulted him to the presidency. The things he’s done which have lowered his reputation — e.g., put health care under federal control, fight for the redistribution of income, etc. — are pretty much the things he could have been heard pledging to do when he ran for the presidency. Except relatively few thought relatively much about the presumptive consequences.
We, the people elected him. That’s the point hardly ever acknowledged amid all the shouting and counter-shouting that drown Washington, D.C. in perpetual racket. We twice, not just once, armed him, escorted him to the White House, opened the front door for him, said, in effect, go to it.
The anti-Obama backlash now becoming a central fact of American politics is likely overdue, and probably constructive insofar as it slows him, hinders his designs, makes him think twice about notions that bear small resemblance to the products of careful, considered reasoning. Nonetheless, we shouldn’t be unduly hard on a guy we put where he is.
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