Yesterday\u2019s \u201cBuffett Plan\u201d speech may be remembered as marking a fatal moment of turning in Barack Obama\u2019s presidency.<\/p>\n
Yes, Mr. Obama will remain in the Oval Office for at least a year and a half more. \u00a0Who knows, he may even win a second term. \u00a0But there was something about Washington\u2019s reaction to his remarks that signaled he is no longer seen as holding the levers of power in the nation\u2019s capital \u2013 or if he grips them, no one believes he knows how to work them.<\/p>\n
One player after another was left wondering, what\u2019s new here? \u00a0Same old; same old. \u00a0In his witty New York Post <\/em>column this morning, former Reagan White House speechwriter and Commentary<\/em> editor John Podhoretz likened listening to him to finding yourself transported into the movie Groundhog Day.<\/em> \u00a0Over and over the same scene is replayed, the same characters, the same set, the same lines. (http:\/\/www.nypost.com\/p\/news\/national\/groundhog_day_bam_is_spinning_his_TkFGIicE1mHOQiEppLQeXN<\/a> )<\/p>\n And now he\u2019s told his whoppers about the rich paying less that even the mainstream media is starting to trot out the facts. \u00a0The Associated Press ran an analysis of the numbers this morning, concluding, \u201cPresident Barack Obama says he wants to make sure millionaires are taxed at higher rates than their secretaries. The data say they already are.\u201d (http:\/\/www.google.com\/hostednews\/ap\/article\/ALeqM5iP3lhS4ZQ-UhyUvFfUgdPCiu-jJA<\/a> )<\/p>\n It would be one thing if the administration\u2019s policies of two years ago had worked. \u00a0Then more of the same might have made sense. But despite his protests to the contrary, the president took a bad situation and made it worse. \u00a0After the massive monetary creation of the last months of the Bush administration, it would have been appropriate to allow the new liquidity to work its way through the economy.<\/p>\n As it happened, that injection sparked a revival in May-September 2009, a recovery that all the sterile spending, anxiety about massive debt and taxes to follow, suffocating regulations, confounding compromises of the rule of law, and passage of Obamacare and Dodd-Frank managed to kill. \u00a0The result was not a deep recession with a sharp recover (per most post-World War II downturns) but an economy that hit the floor like a dead fish and just lay there.<\/p>\n Even so the president roles out the proposals that he rolled out before, and even before that. This rote repetition marks the administration as not just inept in making economic policy. \u00a0It is an incompetent political player, as well. And in Washington, fumbling politics is fatal.<\/p>\n The consequent rumblings are making news, or at least some of them are.<\/p>\n From the Black Caucus you hear that if he weren\u2019t one of our own, we\u2019d be marching on the White House by now (http:\/\/thehill.com\/blogs\/blog-briefing-room\/news\/182209-cbc-chairman-if-obama-wasnt-in-office-we-would-be-marching-on-white-house<\/a> ).<\/p>\n From New York Times <\/em>columnist, David Brooks, we read (http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2011\/09\/20\/opinion\/brooks-obama-rejects-obamaism.html?_r=2&pagewanted=all<\/a> <http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2011\/09\/20\/opinion\/brooks-obama-rejects-obamaism.html?_r=2&pagewanted=all><\/a> ) the thrill is gone; this is not the Obama I fell in love with.<\/p>\n