A few weeks after his innauguration, I wrote a column predicting that President Obama would be a one-term chief executive if he stayed with the policy course with which he launched his presidency. A litte past the six-month mark of his first year in the Oval Office and things are going pretty much as I expected.
Over at Hot Air, Allahpundit offers an interesting comparison between the charisma of Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama. Both men are superb communicators, but Allahpundit points to the factor that most separates them:
“The failure of the Carter years was, in Reagan’s view, the failure of the man at the helm and the policies he had pursued at home and abroad. At no time had Ronald Reagan believed that the American covenant had failed, that America should apologize for itself in the world beyond its shores. There was no narcissism in Reagan. It was stirring that the man who headed into the sunset of his life would bid his country farewell by reminding it that its best days were yet to come.
“In contrast, there is joylessness in Mr. Obama. He is a scold, the ‘Yes we can!’ mantra is shallow, and at any rate, it is about the coming to power of a man, and a political class, invested in its own sense of smarts and wisdom, and its right to alter the social contract of the land. In this view, the country had lost its way and the new leader and the political class arrayed around him will bring it back to the right path…
“American democracy has never been democracy by plebiscite, a process by which a leader is anointed, then the populace steps out of the way, and the anointed one puts his political program in place. In the American tradition, the ‘mandate of heaven’ is gained and lost every day and people talk back to their leaders. They are not held in thrall by them. The leaders are not infallible or a breed apart. That way is the Third World way, the way it plays out in Arab and Latin American politics.
“Those protesters in those town-hall meetings have served notice that Mr. Obama’s charismatic moment has passed.”
Both Allahpundit and my good friend Ed Morrissey often have thoughtful insights on Hot Air that are well worth your contemplation. Go here and enjoy.
UPDATE: My mistake
The passage quoted above from Hot Air’s Allah Pundit was not written by Allah Pundit and he doesn’t claim to be the author. The passage is from an oped in The Wall Street Journal, which I would have known had I followed the link on Hot Air. My apology to Allah Pundit for unintentionally making it appear as if he wrote the passage he was in fact only quoting.
