[NY Post] The reports are not good, disturbing even. We all deal with defeat in our own way...
I have heard basically the same story four times in the last 10 days, and the people doing the talking are in New York and Washington and are spread across the political spectrum.
... which doesn't actually make it true, just widespread...
The gist is this: President B.O. has become a lone wolf, a stranger to his own government. He talks mostly, and sometimes only, to friend and adviser Valerie Jarrett
...Chicago political hack, now senior advisor to President B.O....
and to David Axelrod
...a Chicago-based political hack, political adviser to Barack
B.O.Obama since 2004. Following the 2008 election, he was appointed as Senior Advisor to Obama and we all see how well that worked out....
, his political strategist.
That's not surprising. When you're groupthinking you stay with the group, even if it's a tiny group. Reality's too likely to intrude if you don't.
Everybody else, including members of his Cabinet, have little face time with him except for brief meetings that serve as photo ops. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton
... sometimes described as the Smartest Woman in the World and at other times as Mrs. Bill, never as
Another Edward Livingstone...
and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner...President B.O.'s snotty-looking treasury secretary, noted neither for his honesty nor for his competence, though he does wear natty suits...
both have complained, according to people who have talked to them, that they are shut out of important decisions.
There isn't room for everybody in the inner circle...
The president's workdays are said to end early, often at 4 p.m.
He never has struck me as a workaholic...
He usually has dinner in the family residence with his wife and daughters, then retreats to a private office. One person said he takes a stack of briefing books. Others aren't sure what he does.
My guess is that he spends the time watching Spongebob, maybe MSNBC when he needs reassurance...
Does the room have a mirror?
If the reports are accurate, and I believe they are, they paint a picture of an isolated man trapped in a collapsing presidency.
So how're things in the Fuehrerbunker?
While there is no indication Obama is walking the halls of the White House late at night, talking to the portraits of former presidents, as Richard Nixon did during Watergate, the reports help explain his odd public remarks.
Why would he talk to portraits of dead white guys, most of whom were disturbingly more competent than he is?
Obama conceded in one television interview recently that Americans are not "better off than they were four years ago" and said in another that the nation had "gotten a little soft."
It's that national malaise.
Both smacked of a man who feels discouraged and alienated and sparked comparisons to
Jimmy Carter,... the worst president ever. Maybe the second worst. The votes aren't all in yet...
never a good sign.
The ghost of James Buchanan is ever so happy to be moving up another notch in the competency list, going from the bottom to third from the bottom in a mere 30 years or so. Millard Fillmore and Franklin Pierce are looking nervous...
Blaming the country is political heresy, of course,
... but nothing could possibly be his fault. Remember the Carter administration, when the Dems were pushing the line that the country was actually ungovernable, so we should reelect Amy's daddy, rather than that actor from Caliphornia?
yet Obama is running out of scapegoats.
The number actually is finite, y'know...
His allies rarely make affirmative arguments on his behalf anymore, limiting themselves to making excuses for his failure. He and they attack Republicans, George W. Bush, European leaders and Chinese currency manipulation -- and that was just last week.
The week before it was Republicans, George W. Bush, European leaders, Pakistain, and Chinese currency manipulation...
The blame game isn't much of a defense for Solyndra and "Fast and Furious," the emerging twin scandals that paint a picture of incompetence at best....oozing corruption at second worst, incompetent oozing corruption at dead worst...
Obama himself is spending his public time pushing a $450 billion "jobs" bill -- really another stimulus in disguise -- that even Senate Democrats won't support.
You might describe the bill as "shovel-ready."
He grimly flogged it repeatedly at his Thursday presser, even though snowballs in hell have a better chance of survival.
They say insanity is doing the same thing over and over again in the expectation of getting a different result. That's just obsessive-compulsive insanity, though. Hard-core insanity is losing all touch with reality, with maybe a few manic-depressive mood swings to keep it interesting.
If he cracked a single smile at the hour-plus event, I missed it. He seems happy only on the campaign trail, where the adoration of the crowd lifts his spirits.
The crowds are getting smaller and less adoring. Every once in awhile somebody asks an awkward question.
When it comes to getting America back on track to economic growth, he is running on vapors. Yet he shows no inclination to adopt any ideas other than his own Big Government grab. His itch for higher taxes verges on a fetish.
He simply can't conceive of anything else. To actually cut taxes would be to do what his political opponents want, and doing that would be an admission that he was wrong.
Harvey Golub, former chairman of American Express, called the "jobs" bill an incoherent mess. Writing in The Wall Street Journal, he said that among other flaws, the bill includes an unheard of retroactive tax hike on the holders of municipal bonds. "Many of us have suspected that economic illiterates were setting the economic policy of this administration," Golub wrote, adding that the bill "reveals a depth of cluelessness that boggles the mind."