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Then she lands a round-house punch on the First Eff-Up for general mismanagement of the economy, which is the issue that's gonna make him unemployed next January 21st. And for his verbal gaffes of a much higher order than Joe Biden's foot-in-mouth flimflammeries:
The president stepped in it this week with his own failure to communicate.
Mr. Obama, at a campaign appearance at a fire house in Roanoke, Va.: "Look, if you've been successful, you didn't get there on your own." If you own a store or factory "somebody invested in roads and bridges," somebody built the infrastructure that allows for commerce. Fair enough. We all built it, with public moneys for public benefit. But it makes as much sense to tell the wealthy businessman, "Feel guilty because the taxes of the poor built that highway," as it does to tell a mother on public assistance, "Feel guilty because your hardworking neighbors built that road."
How about nobody feel guilty?
The president seemed to me to be confusing a poor argument—he implied we owe our wealth and growth as a nation to government programs—with a good one, that nobody achieves success alone. This is true: Nobody proceeds unhelped through life, everyone who's achieved something got some encouragement from a neighbor or a teacher or a coach.
But Mr. Obama makes this point mischievously. He aims his argument at his political opponents—Republicans, Romney supporters. Yet many of them—most, probably—are involved one way or another with churches, synagogues, civic groups and professional organizations whose sole purpose is to provide assistance and encouragement to those who are ignored and disadvantaged. Conservatism doesn't mean "do it alone." God made us as social animals and asks us to help each other.
Mr. Obama was trying to conflate a nice thought—we must help each other—with a partisan and ideological one, that government has and needs more of a role in creating personal success. He did not do it well because his approach was, as it often is, accusatory and vaguely manipulative. Which makes people lean away from him, not toward him.
It is odd he does not notice this, because communicating is his obsession. He made this clear again in his interview last week with Charlie Rose. "The mistake of my first couple of years was thinking that this job was just about getting the policy right," he said. "But, you know, the nature of this office is also to tell a story to the American people that gives them a sense of unity and purpose and optimism."
I am certain the president has no idea how patronizing he sounds. His job is to tell us a story? And then get our blankie and put us to sleep?
When he says "a story" he means "the narrative," but he can't use that term because every hack in politics and every journalist they spin uses it and believes in it.
We've written of this before but it needs repeating. The American people will not listen to a narrative, they will not sit still for a story. They do not listen passively as seemingly eloquent people in Washington spin tales of their own derring-do.
The American people tell you the narrative. They look at the facts produced by your leadership, make a judgment and sum it up. The summation is spoken—the story told—at a million barbecues in a million back yards.
The narrative on the president right now is: He's not a bad guy, but it hasn't worked.
Some people will vote for him anyway, some won't. But all, actually, know it hasn't worked. That's the narrative.
To get that wrong—that the American summation comes from the bottom up and not the top down—is a big mistake. It means you don't know you've got to change some facts, as opposed to some words.
Deep doodoo is Obama's home territory nowadays, as the media begins to comprehend that the Golden Boy might be Fool's Gold that just ain't ready for prime time, despite the rave reviews they've been giving him over the last three& years.
Kim Strassel points out in another article today on what a nasty piece-of-work this First Nixon is turning out to be. Persecuting an Idaho rancher for contributing to Romney shows that Obama's Chicago Mafia & his Justice Department are working overtime to mau-mau the GOP contributors. The rants against the Koch brothers are another piece of the commissars' game plan. Would that the media point out the silly Buffett's feet of clay and the malevolent Soros' attacks coupled with his active bent toward state socialism on the European model.
The Mainstream Legacy Media still have a long way to be as fair-and-balanced as FoxNEWS & the Wall Street Journal seem to be.
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