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Jennifer Rubin calls it amateur hour.
Now and then we get a perfect microcosm of the president’s ineptness. On foreign policy it’s Egypt and on domestic policy it’s the student loan debacle.
On Egypt, Foreign Policy reports: “Washington’s exhaustive attempts to be viewed as a neutral player in Egypt’s coup are unraveling as pro and anti-Muslim Brotherhood forces latch onto any evidence that America is against them.” Well, they both are right, I suppose. A policy in which neither side believes the U.S. is being constructive and in which it is impossible to tell what our policy is pretty much defines failure.
The domestic counterpart is the student loan mess. House Republicans agreed with the president’s compromise plan on the expiration of the student loan discount. But Senate Dems are at each other’s throats, a clear sign the president didn’t get support for his compromise before releasing it. The Hill reports:
‘Liberal firebrand Sen. Elizabeth Warren (Mass.) blasted a fellow Democratic senator Tuesday as a dispute over student loan rates escalated divisions within the party.
The clash, which is highly unusual among party colleagues in the upper chamber, came at a private caucus meeting about a subject that is helping Republicans land blows against their Democratic opponents.
“Elizabeth came out very strong against Manchin,” said a Democratic senator who requested anonymity to discuss the exchange. “She said, ‘They’re already making money off the backs of students, and this adds another $1 billion.’ “ ‘
The rival messages appeared to exasperate Sen. Charles Schumer (N.Y.), the Senate’s Democratic messaging chief, who engaged in an animated conversation with Sens. Joe Manchin, Tom Carper and Angus King before they met with reporters. House Speaker John Boehner (Ohio) had a nice soft ball over the plate which he casually hit over the fence in a written statement: …
Paul Brandus at The Week calls him “flounderer in chief.”
Six months into his new term, President Obama should be feeling pretty good. After all, the economy is looking up and Americans are more confident about their prospects. The job market is healing and housing prices are up double-digits over the past year. New cars are rolling out of showrooms at the fastest pace in nearly six years. There’s nothing like that new car smell.
Yet to many folks in Washington and around the country, a different odor is discernible: It’s one of panic, they say, the smell of a president who is floundering. He seems to know it himself.
“I sure do wanna do some governing,” Obama said at a recent fundraiser. “I wanna get some stuff done. I’ve only got three and a half years left, and it goes by (snaps his fingers) like that.”
Most Americans wanna see some governing too. We wanna see some stuff get done. But we haven’t, at least not yet. For a man who claims to have an acute awareness of time, the president has an inexplicable knack for wasting it.
Tick tock: He spent the first four months of his new term fighting for gun control, an emotionally driven response to an issue of undeniable importance. But (and with the utmost respect to the victims of gun violence) it is not an issue on par with the number one concern for the vast majority of Americans: jobs and the economy. The White House has also been in reactive mode to the IRS mess, and the revelation that the government is tracking our phone calls, email, and snail mail. On top of that came a quiet news dump, deliberately timed to occur as the 4th of July weekend was getting underway, that the employer provision in ObamaCare, the president’s crowning domestic achievement thus far, was being delayed until after the 2014 midterms. …
Peter Foster at Telegraph, UK says foreign policy ratings are plummeting.
A fascinating new poll is out today that shows Barack Obama’s foreign policy approval rating has plummeted over the last two months.
On May 1 the Quinnipiac poll found that 47 per cent of Americans approved of Mr Obama’s handling of foreign policy, while 43 per cent disapproved. Two months later the same pollster has Mr Obama running a 12-point negative rating – 52 per cent disapprove, compared with 40 that approve.
That’s a sharp fall, given the fact that it comes after one of the busiest periods in Mr Obama’s presidency for foreign policy. There was the shirt-sleeve summit with China’s new president, the decision to do more in Syria, the announcement of talks with the Taliban and now, of course the coup-that-wasn’t in Egypt. …
All of this leads Megan McArdle to think the GOP will be in control in 2017.
My assertion that there’s a 70% chance that the GOP controls White House, Senate, and House in 2017 has attracted a lot of pushback. And it’s certainly possible that I’m wrong! Here’s my thinking, for what it’s worth:
Since the Civil War, only two Democratic presidents have been succeeded by another Democrat. Both of them–FDR and JFK–accomplished this by dying in office.
Since World War II, only four presidents have been succeeded by a member of their party. As I mentioned above, two of them accomplished this by dying in office. One of them accomplished this by resigning in disgrace ahead of his own impeachment. Only one of them, Ronald Reagan, left office at the end of his appointed term and was succeeded by a duly elected member of his own party. Mostly, the White House flips back and forth like a metronome.
At the beginning of Obama’s term, people were talking about the kind of Democratic dominance that FDR enjoyed. Didn’t happen. Isn’t going to. So I think the GOP goes into the race with a big edge on the White House. Voters just get tired after eight years.
For example, when I pointed out how few presidents have been succeeded by members of their own party, you may have been tempted to argue that Al Gore “really” won. I’m not going to have that argument right now, but even assuming you’re correct, what does that tell you? That after the greatest economic boom in decades, the Democratic vice president fought hard to a statistical tie with the Republican governor of Texas. Sure, he wasn’t the most charismatic candidate either, but neither was George Bush. Getting a third term in the White House just seems to be really difficult. And Barack Obama is not going to finish with a ground-shaking economic boom.
Add to that the Democratic bench. …
A quaint thought leads off the latest column by Thomas Sowell.
I am so old that I can remember when most of the people promoting race hate were white.
Apparently other Americans also recognize that the sources of racism are different today from what they were in the past. According to a recent Rasmussen poll, 31 percent of blacks think that most blacks are racists, while 24 percent of blacks think that most whites are racist.
The difference between these percentages is not great, but it is remarkable nevertheless. After all, generations of blacks fought the white racism from which they suffered for so long. If many blacks themselves now think that most other blacks are racist, that is startling.
The moral claims advanced by generations of black leaders — claims that eventually touched the conscience of the nation and turned the tide toward civil rights for all — have now been cheapened by today’s generation of black “leaders,” who act as if it is all just a matter of whose ox is gored. …
Walter Williams’ takeaway from the Zimmerman trial was the sad state of black education.
As if more evidence were needed about the tragedy of black education, Rachel Jeantel, a witness for the prosecution in the George Zimmerman murder trial, put a face on it for the nation to see. Some of that evidence unfolded when Zimmerman’s defense attorney asked 19-year-old Jeantel to read a letter that she allegedly had written to Trayvon Martin’s mother. She responded that she doesn’t read cursive, and that’s in addition to her poor grammar, syntax and communication skills.
Jeantel is a senior at Miami Norland Senior High School. How in the world did she manage to become a 12th-grader without being able to read cursive writing? That’s a skill one would expect from a fourth-grader. Jeantel is by no means an exception at her school. Here are a few achievement scores from her school: Thirty-nine percent of the students score basic for reading, and 38 percent score below basic. In math, 37 percent score basic, and 50 percent score below basic. Below basic is the score when a student is unable to demonstrate even partial mastery of knowledge and skills fundamental for proficient work at his grade level. Basic indicates only partial mastery.
Few Americans, particularly black Americans, have any idea of the true magnitude of the black education tragedy. The education establishment might claim that it’s not their fault. They’re not responsible for the devastation caused by female-headed families, drugs, violence and the culture of dependency. But they are totally responsible for committing gross educational fraud. It’s educators who graduated Jeantel from elementary and middle school and continued to pass her along in high school. It’s educators who will, in June 2014, confer upon her a high-school diploma. …
Paul Mirengoff thinks there is nobody as clueless as John Kerry.
Has the United States ever had a more clueless Secretary of State than John Kerry? Perhaps, but I can’t think of one.
Not long ago, James Rosen traveled with Kerry to Egypt, among other places. Kerry met for two and half hours with then-President Mohammed Morsi. According to Rosen’s report in Playboy (yes, Playboy):
Kerry emerged from [the meeting] so persuaded of Morsi’s sincerity in pledging to administer the IMF reforms and extend an olive branch to his political opponents that Kerry decided on the spot to unlock $250 million in frozen U.S. aid.
Within 72 hours [Kerry's aides] informed us that the Egyptian Supreme Court had just canceled the parliamentary elections set for April and that the intentions of Morsi and the Brotherhood were again proving difficult to discern.
(Emphasis added)There are areas in which Kerry’s ability to discern is unquestioned — French wine, yachts, and the like. But if one cannot discern the intentions of the Muslim Brotherhood, or worse, discerns them as extending the olive branch to political opponents — one shouldn’t dabble in, much less help shape, foreign policy.
Kerry is an old hand at romanticizing anti-American tyrants and would-be tyrants. Most recently, he perceived Bashar al-Assad as a potential U.S. ally and Middle East peace-broker, prepared to extend the olive branch to Israel.
Kerry isn’t totally devoid of the ability to judge character, though. He figured out that John Edwards was a phony. Then, he made Edwards his choice for Vice President of the United States.