The Post-Obama Era

The WSJ's Fouad Ajami declares the Obama presidency over and straps on the autopsy apron, past tense and all.

Mr. Obama's self-regard, and his reading of his mandate, overwhelmed all restraint. The age-old American balance between a relatively small government and a larger role for the agencies of civil society was suddenly turned on its head. Speed was of the essence to the Obama team and its allies, the powerful barons in Congress. Better ram down sweeping social programs—a big liberal agenda before the people stirred to life again.

Progressives pressed for a draconian attack on the workings of our health care, and on the broader balance between the state and the marketplace. The economic stimulus, ObamaCare, the large deficits, the bailout package for the automobile industry—these, and so much more, were nothing short of a fundamental assault on the givens of the American social compact.

And then there was the hubris of the man at the helm: He was everywhere, and pronounced on matters large and small. This was political death by the teleprompter.

Americans don't deify their leaders or hang on their utterances, but Mr. Obama succumbed to what the devotees said of him: He was the Awaited One. A measure of reticence could have served him. But the flight had been heady, and in the manner of Icarus, Mr. Obama flew too close to the sun.

We have had stylish presidents, none more so than JFK. But Kennedy was an ironist and never fell for his own mystique. Mr. Obama's self-regard comes without irony—he himself now owns up to the "remoteness and detachment" of his governing style. We don't have in this republic the technocratic model of the European states, where a bureaucratic elite disposes of public policy with scant regard for the popular will. Mr. Obama was smitten with his own specialness. 

It's an impressive piece of work in its sheer mendacity.  In the space of a few paragraphs here, Ajami manages to hit all the GOP talking points:  Obama's "arrogance", his "misread mandate" despite being an overwhelming majority in Congress, the "failure" of his first year in office despite the truly productive passage of legislation, his "overexposure" as the "Awaited One" and all the hubristic messiah complex bullshit that goes with it, how a "liberal agenda" was rammed down America's throat against its wishes, etc.

Ajami hits all the boxes on the Obama Derangement Syndrome checklist, and adds a few new ones, particularly referring to Obama in the past tense, like the President's remaining three years are irrelevant and only the GOP matters now.  Obama has already been written off in Ajami's view as an unfortunate blip in the 30-year reign of the GOP, an aberration that must only be recognized for the depth of its apparent and total collapse.

Thus the piece demonstrates pretty much everything wrong with the Village media today, substituting and even expanding on GOP talking points repeated wholesale in the opinion columns of papers like the WSJ.  The piece doesn't even make sense either, it ignores basic fact and spins wholesale a mirror universe where Obama and the Democrats won in 2008 but never should have been able to even try their agenda, whereas Bush's approval numbers were far lower than Obama's are now and he was allowed to rule by fiat as a President should.

It's maddening stuff, really.  But it's par for the course. Talking about the President as if he is a ghost of the distant past instead of in office for another three years is not just disingenuous, it's outright disrespectful.