Curse of the Clintons

When will the Democrats learn that no one wants a return to the second-worst President ever? Presumably when the Republicans learn that none one wants a return to the worst President ever. Anyway, Megan Carpentier writes:

In 2008, Sarah Palin, John McCain and their myriad sycophants promised the American people that, if they made the unconscionable mistake and voted for Barack Obama, they would doom this country to becoming a socialist morass in which taxes would go up and the dreaded government would expand to make sure that no American would be jobless or lack a living unemployment wage. In the midst of a deepening recession, Americans stormed to the polls to elect the socialist who would bring back FDR's Great Depression-era Works Progress Administration, guarantee jobs for all and smite the rich that brought the American economy to its knees.

In 2009, American voters realised they had elected a centrist Clinton acolyte. And everyone has been steamed ever since.

In reality, in 2008, Barack Obama promised people change. He never did define that and, for many Americans, anyone-but-Bush seemed good enough. The bums needed to be kicked out, and as the more Republicans promised "Real Americans" that Obama would change the very fabric of modern society, the more beloved he became among the vast majority of Americans who missed Clinton's economic boom and saw little more than a dime of Bush's post-9/11 tax cuts. They promised us European-style Socialism, and enough Americans had the Travel Channel in 2008 that Europe seems pretty cool, what with all the sidewalk cafes and non-Starbucks coffee and chocolate croissants that remain gooey in the center instead of hardening up like they were little more than melted chocolate chips to start with.

Oh, the conservatives warned us about Obama, and about the Obama voters who hadn't read a single white paper or dug too deeply into his health care reform plan. Of course, most of those people hurling those accusations thought "white paper" was something you bought by the ream at Staples and weren't sure if there was daylight between the 1994 healthcare plan Newt Gingrich told them was bad and that which was part of the Democratic party platform in 2008. So, it was hard to take them seriously, especially once they decided that Obama was a terrorist by virtue of the fact that Sarah Palin wouldn't vote for him.

But then Obama took office. As every former prom queen knows, it's just so hard to accept that slide in the polls from the pinnacle of one's popularity back to middling apathy with the rest of us. Lobbying for healthcare – even weighing in on the Baucus-Kennedy spat as president-elect, to push Baucus to the left – would have left him vulnerable to accusations that he was strong-arming Congress (as though Bush's legislative strategy wasn't to squeeze Mitch McConnell at conference committee every single time). Pushing through a repeal of Don't Ask, Don't Tell might have made him seem squiffy on national security. Pulling out of Iraq or Afghanistan would've made seem seem too much like Carter, even if Nixon really did start the withdrawal from Vietnam during his term. "Change" was, apparently, just fine – as long as it didn't change his poll numbers.

But, like every president, those poll numbers that soared as he and Michelle stepped from the presidential limo last year and walked along Pennsylvania Avenue in the bitter cold were always going to head lower than the average temperature in Washington DC in January. Popularity is like money in a hyperinflationary economy: spend it today, because it won't be worth the paper on which it is printed tomorrow. Nonetheless, Obama tried to hoard his political capital for some later fight that he hasn't yet fought and, now, likely never will.

What about all those campaign promises? Well, as Obama noted this weekend as he finally weighed in on the Massachusetts Senate race: he can't make anything happen without 60 votes in the US Senate. What, you might ask, is he doing to get those votes? He's promising Massachusetts voters that, if they elect Scott Brown, they're electing a neo-fascist, anti-health-care-reform legislator who will go out of his way to make it difficult for women to gain access to reproductive choice. I believe that's exactly how the Republicans took back the House in 1994. Unlike Obama, however, Scott Brown may actually live up to liberals' expectations. Obama should've just called him a socialist.