A Former editor of The New York Times once damned his boss, publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr., with faint praise. “I’ll say this about Arthur,” said Max Frankel, “he’ll never make the same mistake three times.”
If only we could enjoy such modest confidence in Barack Obama. Instead, we are faced with a president determined to make the same mistake repeatedly, no matter how much pain it causes American families.
As such, Obama would seem to meet the classic definition of insanity — doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. Or perhaps he’s actually indifferent to the results, seeing them as a price others must pay for his agenda.
Neither diagnosis offers much hope for change.
The spark for these thoughts was Obama’s interview with CBS News, where he “confesses” that his biggest mistake was a failure to communicate, or, as he puts it, “to tell a story to the American people.”
“When I think about what we’ve done well and what we haven’t done well,” the president said, “the mistake of my first term — couple of years — was thinking that this job was just about getting the policy right. And that’s important. But the nature of this office is also to tell a story to the American people that gives them a sense of unity and purpose and optimism, especially during tough times.”
