Something has changed over the course of the last five weeks. Barack Obama, who seemed politically invincible to his supporters and many media commentators, now seems vulnerable. His approval ratings are dropping, public concern is rising, the debt is exploding, and the economy is, in many respects, worsening...
The money from the stimulus package is being spent far slower than we were told (less than 8 percent has gone out the door) — and the money that has been spent has been badly targeted. The legislation itself is bloated and filled with pork, exactly the kind of incoherent product one expects when a chief executive defers almost completely to committee chairmen. The stimulus package, which the Obama administration itself said should have made things better by now, has made things worse.
This would be damaging enough to any president, but it is particularly damaging to Obama. The reason is that this represents the first significant crack in his image. Obama, we were told, is the man with the golden touch, a person of Socratic wisdom and piercing intellect, the next Lincoln, a “sort of God.” He is, we were assured, a man in command of both facts and theories, at once competent and curious, urbane and sophisticated, free of dogma and drawn to experts, a public official who can see things few others do and solve problems in ways few others can. Obama’s administration, in turn, has been stocked with the best and the brightest, people of Ivy League educations and dazzling intellects. They would show us how to govern in ways that would inspire admiration, and even awe. So it is quite damaging that the one piece of legislation which, at this early date, we can make a preliminary judgment on — the stimulus package — has been an utter failure.
The faithful are still trying to blame it on George W. Bush, but everyone else knows better.
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