Vacationing.
Posted on 04/15/2011 8:08:52 AM PDT by OldDeckHand
Presidential résumés have run the gamut -- from commanding general of the United States Army (Ulysses S. Grant) all the way down to collector of the Port of New York (Chester A. Arthur). Unfortunately, since George McGovern ruined the presidential nominating system in 1971, there has been a new potential item for the presidential CV: navigating the byzantine process of primaries and caucuses better than any competitor.
Not all eventual nominees have managed to do this (e.g. Gerald Ford was nearly outflanked in 1976, so was Ronald Reagan in 1980), and with only two presidents has this been a prime "qualification" for winning the nomination. The first was Jimmy Carter, whose insurgent campaign in 1976 exhibited an advanced understanding of the new, open process that now governs the selection of party candidates. The second was Barack Obama, whose campaign team grasped the seemingly inscrutable complexities of the new system better than anybody ever has. Breaking down the popular vote in the 2008 Democratic battle, it was a basically a tie; Obama defeated Hillary Clinton for the nomination because he out-organized her, especially in caucus states like Colorado, Idaho, and Minnesota.
(Excerpt) Read more at weeklystandard.com ...
I genuinely think that if he was a white guy from Chicago named Barry Olsen, his approval numbers would be in the mid to low 30s. His only politically redeemable quality is that he's black with a strange name.
....all the way down to the unemployed community activist (0).
Has anyone determined if “O” is good at ANYTHING?
He can be rightly judged an incompetent President, in that he is incapable of governing or running the Executive Branch of government.
You bring up a good point. And it’s true of many other politicos.
When Ted Kennedy first ran for the Senate, for example, his opponent charged that if his name were Edward Moore rather than Edward Moore Kennedy, that nobody would take his qualifications in running for Senator seriously.
Ditto Hillary Clinton. There’s no way Hillary Rodham begins a political career and becomes a serious presidential candidate in her own right, if not for her connection to Bill Clinton.
I’m sure there are many other politicos who got high positions because of family or other connections, not because they themselves are so brilliant, have the answers to the nation’s problems, etc.
Apparently not as bad as the GOP >,>
Not so sure about that. Sometimes there's such a vacuum that anyone the press thrusts into power will make it.
Obama was/is a creation of leftist media. They did it for him. However, I'm not so sure they can do it again because more people are onto the KGP-type tricks.
Another incompetent boob who made it to office was the Peanut Farmer. The vacuum post-Watergate made it possible.
0bama is a genuis at marxist politics.
And, as much as he may suck at politics, he’s still kicking the GOP’s arse all over the map.
“Has anyone determined if “O” is good at ANYTHING?”
Yes. Charming the ignorant, liberal white folks.
Vacationing.
Hollywood except all our lives and well being is at stake.
The point of the article is that he's playing his various policy cards poorly. That is entirely undecided; if he loses in 2012, he played them poorly. If he is able to demagogue himself into a second term, he may be a lot of things, but a "poor politician" isn't one of them.
AA will out. If you’ve never had to do anything but show up, you not only don’t develop the necessary skills, you don’t even know that you need to develop them.
Truth be told, Present Stroker could screw up a wet dream.
Right. He has an innate talent for THAT!
But, to be perfectly honest, it doesn’t seem to be a real challenging feat, since it has been do so consistently and so well by other Liberals for as long as I can remember.
If we had an honest, skeptical media, Obama would never have won that election, or at least he wouldn't have won by 7-points.
I will admit that Obama (Axelrod) did run an almost flawless campaign, and McCain ran a perfectly dreadful campaign But, McCain also faced a deluge of criticism everyday in the media. Obama didn't. He never demonstrated any real political skill, primarily because he didn't have to. He was, quite simply, our first affirmative action candidate that also enjoyed the "Not George Bush" trump card.
In 1972, unemployment was higher by two full points than where it was when Nixon assumed office, and we had just gone through four BRUTAL years of war - a war that Nixon had won largely on a platform of his "secret plan" to get out of Vietnam. Not only did we not get out, we doubled down. And yet, Nixon was such a brilliant politician, that against the backdrop of rising unemployment and a ridiculously unpopular war, he CRUSHES McGovern. That's political skill.
Obama, MUCH like another horrifically bad politician - Jimmy Carter - was elected primarily because he was from a party that wasn't the unpopular party. Carter didn't represent Nixon's Republican party, and Obama didn't represent Bush's Republican party. That was all the "political" skill either one needed to win.
Sometimes people get elected in spite of their political skill, or lack thereof. I think Obama is one such person.
“Obama hit his high point at Iowa’s Jefferson Jackson Dinner in November, 2007.”
Republicans should play sound-bite after sound-bite from that speech, which takes the form of “We were promised X, but we instead we got Y.” Obama made virtually an identical list of promises and has proceeded to break every single one. And on most measures—unity of the country, ability of citizens to afford basic necessities, ability of citizens to save, unemployment etc.—things are FAR worse today than in November 2007 when he was insisting the country was on the wrong track and needed to change. So using Reagan’s simple question “Are you better off today than you were four years ago?” most voters in 2012 will be forced to say “No.” And no longer will they be able to blame GWB for the abysmal state of politics and the economy.
A quibble here. At the time, Collector of the Port of New York was an extremely important (and lucrative) position. 75% of the revenues of the entire federal government were generated from this source, and Arthur was responsible for managing the activities of the several hundred employees engaged in collecting tax revenue. A far cry from being a community organizer.
Agitating?
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