No RIP
It’s way too early to be writing an obituary for the Obama presidency. At this point in Clinton’s first term, he hadn’t even bottomed out yet. You have to remember that Clinton hit such a low that the much less fragmented national media of the time was talking about whether or not the very presidency itself was still relevant in the first half of 1995, but Clinton pretty much sailed through to a re-election in 1996 that was predictable quite a ways out from the first week of November. It’s reasonable to be a lot less optimistic about the continuation of Pelosi’s term as Speaker, though.
If I were going to do an autopsy on the Obama presidency today, though, the likely causes of death are simple.
1. He did not understand that his opponents would do anything to win, including intentionally hurting the country.
2. He did not understand how dishonest and vicious his opponents would be. That is just an unforgivable amount of stupidity or naivete after what they did to Bill Clinton.
3. He did not understand that in an economy this bad, people care more about results than about appearances of bipartisanship or about “the tone”.
