My kingdom for an excuse

When George W. Bush made mistakes, and he made quite a few, conservatives were quick not to rush to his defense but to criticize him.  At least that was the case when they thought he was doing something wrong (remember the not so conservative Harriet Miers?).  Not so, liberals with Obama.  They defend Obama to the point of absurdity.  But it is more than just a defense of the indefensible, it goes as far as lionization of the president in his defense.  Still, to this day they do it, even in their "criticisms" of him.

Witness Ron Fournier's recent article in National Journal.  From the outset, he positions his criticism, as the title suggests as that of a man blinded by righteousness.  And Fournier means Obama's own righteousness.  He's making mistakes because he's too smart and to blinded by doing the right thing.

Days before Vladimir Putin's troops invaded Ukraine, National Security Adviser Susan Rice dismissed suggestions that Russia was about to pounce. "It's in nobody's interest," she said. Days later, President Obama declared the invasion to be illegal. "In 2014," he said, "we are well beyond the days when borders can be drawn over the heads of democratic leaders."

Two things strike me about those quotes. First, they were right. From the viewpoint of the United States and its allies, invading Crimea made no sense, legally or strategically. Second, it didn't matter: Putin plays by his own set of rules, and it's dangerously naive not to realize that.

Ukraine is illustrative of a flaw in Obama's worldview that consistently undermines his agenda, both foreign and domestic. He thinks being right is good enough. From fights with Congress over the federal budget and his nominations, to gun control, immigration reform, health care, and Syria, the president displays tunnel-vision conviction, an almost blinding righteousness. I'm right. They're wrong. Why isn't that enough?

With a scant mention that Obama isn't always completely right, Fournier skips ahead to explain the impact of Obama's self satisfied certainty.  In other words, Obama's simply hurting himself by being completely right, or mostly right, and not condescending to work with others.

With such certitude, Obama finds it hard to see why anybody would oppose him, which makes it almost impossible to earn new allies. He's also slow to realize when some fault lies with him. The result is Obama's legacy of "Right, but …" moments.

Fournier provides a litany of items on which he believes Obama was/is right but wasn't being political enough to bring his rightness on issues like immigration reform or health care reform.

Except Obama wasn't right on a lot of these issues. The public opposed a lot of these items, not just Republicans. The problem is having lionized Obama for so long, liberals now cannot even defend him properly because they start from a flawed premise that Obama's only flaw is that he can't deal with idiots. Clearly the real problem though is that the president, and many liberals just can't deal with reality.

Thursday Hillary Bash - National Journal Edition

Ed Morrissey ar Hot Air beat me to this story, but let's face it, he is full time, better funded, and let's face it, more talented than me.

Hillary Clinton may have missed her window thanks to Obama's tenure.  That seems to be the case the liberal National Journal is making, or at least hinting at now. The question asked - is she peaking too soon?

Crack organizers from President Obama's campaigns are the latest political honchos to join the Clinton-for-president movement and, like others involved, they say they are just trying to make things "Ready for Hillary" if she decides to run. But the bandwagon effect is fueling an "inevitability" narrative that damaged Clinton in 2008, and is allowing her no reprieve from politics.

The Ready for Hillary super PAC announcement of a partnership with 270 Strategies, coming on top of earlier testimonials from prominent Democrats, feeds the impression that the non-existent Clinton campaign is a runaway train about to reach top speed (albeit without an engineer at the controls). Former Clinton campaign aide Mo Elleithee says the actual significance of the new partnership is merely that "there are a lot of people that want her to run. That's all it means. She is not in this race yet, and there's no guarantee that she ever will be."

The early and intense focus on Clinton recalls 2008, when she was wrongly assumed to be the prohibitive front-runner for the Democratic nomination. The constant spotlight now means Clinton remains a political target even as friends and associates say she is trying to focus on advocacy, speeches, and writing a book about her tenure as secretary of State. "What they're doing is fantastic," Elleithee says of Ready for Hillary, but "I do think it is adding to the hyper-politicization of every move she makes." He says her advocacy for women, children, and families, a lifelong crusade, is more important to her right now than politics.

As Morrissey points out, Clinton may look even more like yesterdays news by 2016, even as nostalgia for her may grow as the Obama presidency plays out. But there's another possible dynamic at work. There is no evidence being proffered that she has indeed reached a peak. She may still be ascending.

A better question might be is her trajectory one guaranteed to supersede other potential contenders? If the economy stays tepid at best, might a popular Democrat governor like (now Senator) Mark Warner be most appealing to Democrats?  If the hope and change isn't complete yet, might someone like Andrew Cuomo or more likely a Deval Patrick have a better shot?

Clinton is by no means inevitable, but as conservatives have been surprised by expected weak opposition in the recent past (both Bill Clinton, and Obama), who the candidate becomes, is probably less important than the connectivity of the message they craft versus the message of their Republican opponent composes.