Incompetence

When Barack Obama and his fellow Democrats swept into office two years ago, they misread their mandate. A large majority voted for the Democrats in 2008 simply because they were not Republicans. Nearly everyone was tired of George Bush, tired of his wars (although Iraq did appear at last to be turning the corner) and fearful of a collapsing Wall Street. The 2008 Republicans did not deserve to be re-elected, and most independents and even many Republicans agreed. The GOP’s message of “I’m bad but the other guy’s worse” had predictable results. The Democratic wave that began in 2006 crested in 2008. The Democrats would probably have won anyway, but the fact that they had an attractive candidate sealed the deal.

The President and his party immediately began pursuing the liberal agenda: much greater government control of the economy, more government assistance for those viewed as “not rich”, and an end to the Iraq war. The voters, however, mainly wanted him to save the banking system from collapse and let the resilient economy recover like it normally does within 18-24 months.

All the President had to do was not make things worse. By November, 2010, with the economy and jobs on the upswing, the mid-term elections could well have made the Democratic Congressional majority even more lop-sided.

The large banks and Wall Street did survive—one cheer for that—but the pursuit of the liberal agenda birthed a health-care monstrosity filled with consequences unknown and unintended. The entire health-care sector and employers everywhere hesitated to hire as the citizenry tried to digest the health care bill. (Plopping 2,700 pages of far-reaching legislation into the economy’s midst is like Microsoft slamming 2,700 pages of code into Windows 7 without any testing.)

Once a derogatory meme takes hold—witness Gerald Ford and Sarah Palin's example—it becomes impossible to shake. The President’s supporters in the media are doing their best to tamp it down, but after the slow reaction to the BP oil spill and the failure of the stimulus package, the whiff of incompetence has become inescapable.