LOOK IN THE MIRROR, BARACK, THE MIRROR - AT 11:37 A.M. ET:  Victor Davis Hanson explains to President Obama who the president should blame for his current troubles.  Guess the answer:

Liberal columnists decrying the Obama administration’s supposed lack of partisan fortitude and eagerness for a nasty fight for health care seem oddly detached from reality. The opposition to Obamacare would have gone nowhere had the president offered a concise plan, had his team kept repeating four or five logical and easily understandable talking points, and had he prepared a few pat answers to the more controversial elements of the plan, from the public option to so-called “end of life” panels to treatment of illegal aliens and the real cost.

That hits it.  And...

Instead, Obama and his advisers, in lazy fashion, outsourced the plan to the partisan left-wingers of the Democratic party who are key House chairs. They in turn offered up a 1,000-page legalese mess, which the administration’s key players never read, and which Obama arrogantly thought he could wing through in a few weeks with his “hope and change” / “trust me” cadences.

The result...

Now the problem is not just that health care is going down, but that in the process the administration has tarnished the blue-chip Obama brand, and we are in a sort of emperor-has-no-clothes moment.

COMMENT:  All right, great argument.  I buy it.  But there are two questions now to be answered:  1)  What will Obama do in response to his problem?  Remember that the presidency is, indeed, a bully pulpit.  The president has greater opportunity to turn things around than any other official, witness Bill Clinton's turnaround and eventual reelection; and 2) How will the GOP react to Obama's decline?  If it doesn't react with creative plans of its own, it can arrange another Democratic victory by default.

August 23, 2009