Failure of Failures

Indulge me if you will, and join me in imagining that Obamacare has taken the calamitous path of the Hindenburg and ended up as little more than a smoldering warning against hubris. Imagine, that is, that enrollment rates have remained dangerously low; that the risk pools consist largely of the elderly and the sick; that the insurance companies, unable to operate on the magical thinking of which the White House is so fond, are being forced either to get out of the market completely or to raise premiums dramatically; and that skittish Democrats have started to run away — first calling weakly for fixes, then hinting at more, and then barely resisting the temptation to follow the trail of the pitchforks and nullify the president’s signature achievement. Imagine, in other words, that things are bad.

Now answer me this: If such a scenario were actually to come to pass — and, of course, it most certainly has not as of yet — how serious a failure will we judge it to be? Will we see it as a hiccup? Will we claim that it is typical for a second term? Or will we consider it to be a calamity of historical proportions? Personally, I would plump for the lattermost: In my view, if Obamacare were to fail hard, it could well come to be seen as the most catastrophic domestic-policy enterprise of the last century.

I do not say that flippantly. The last 100 years have certainly thrown up a few turkeys — Prohibition, the 1933 National Industrial Recovery Act, and the short-lived Medicare Catastrophic Coverage Act of 1988 all come to mind — and yet Obamacare stands out as being potentially even worse because, as David French recently noted, it has the disadvantage of being unprecedently partisan. This, after all, is a law that bears a president’s name. This is to say that if it fails, not only will it hurt a swath of innocent citizens — as many other messy initiatives have — but it will also discredit for a generation the worldview of its architects. And this, as Joe Biden might say, is a “big f***ing deal.”

Via: NRO

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Poll: President Obama approval at 41 percent

President Barack Obama’s approval ratings have continued their slide in his fifth year in the White House, with the latest number down 14 points from last December, according to a new poll.

Just 41 percent of Americans approve of the job Obama is doing, while 53 percent disapprove, according to a Pew Research Center poll out Friday. That 12 point deficit in approval is the largest of Obama’s presidency, according to Pew’s polling.

Pew compared Obama’s approval to the last few presidents in their fifth year. Obama’s decline mimics that of George W. Bush, who registered a 36 percent approval rating at the same point in his term, down 12 points from the December before. Bill Clinton, on the other hand, was at a 58 percent approval the year after he was reelected.

(PHOTOS: Obama’s second term)

Asked about their feelings on Obama’s handling of five specific issues, Americans only approved of his job on terrorism, 51 percent to 44 percent. The president registered his lowest rating ever on handling the economy, with 31 percent approving to 65 percent disapproving. His approval rating in each category besides terrorism was in the 30s.

Pew surveyed 2,003 American adults from Oct. 30 to Nov. 6 for the poll, which has an error margin of plus or minus 2.5 percentage points.

Via: Politico

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OPINION: Why Obama's Falling Apart

A presidential reelection campaign needs three key elements: a defense of the incumbent’s record, a successful effort to define the opposition and a compelling vision of a second term.

President Obama may well celebrate a second term in Chicago next month, but the conventional wisdom underestimates the difficulty he faces, as his campaign has distinct problems with all three elements

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His defense of his record is exceptionally weak, his effort to define Mitt Romney is nearly exhausted, and his vision for the next four years — perhaps the most important — has been largely missing from his effort this year.

Defense of the incumbent’s record

Four years ago, Obama expressed great confidence that he would be running amid renewed prosperity; he famously told Matt Lauer, “One nice thing about the situation I find myself in is that I will be held accountable. You know, I’ve got four years...If I don’t have this done in three years, then there’s going to be a one-term proposition.”

In February 2009, even most Republicans would probably have predicted that by 2012, the country would be feeling much more prosperous, with much lower unemployment.

Friday’s jobs report brought much-needed good news, with the 114,000 new jobs in the payroll survey meeting economists’ expectations and bringing unemployment down to 7.8% — but that was fueled by 582,000 part-time jobs. GDP growth is at a meager 1.3%, gasoline is averaging $3.78 per gallon nationally and the foreclosure rate is only slightly below 2011’s 17-year peak.

Any fan of Obama who tells you he expected the country to be in this condition at this moment is either lying to you or lying to themselves.

Still, Obama’s poll numbers have overcome the economic gloom for much of the year, because many Americans concluded he was doing the best he could after stepping into a bad situation. Probably the single most effective line of the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte was Bill Clinton’s declaration, “no President — not me, not any of my predecessors — no one could have fully repaired all the damage that he found in just four years.”

Via: Daily News

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