President

From charisma to populism—this is the slippery slope down which Barack Obama has been sliding over the past two years. In June 2008, Obama the candidate described his nomination as “the moment when .  .  . our planet began to heal.” In June 2010, Obama the president promised his partisans he would find an “ass to kick.” 

The news media hailed President Obama’s victory on the Wall Street reform bill signed into law earlier this week as another example of his legislative prowess.

Former President George W. Bush recently gave a speech before a business group meeting in Houston, Texas. In the speech, he explained how he came to endorse bailouts for financial companies, auto companies, etc., toward the end of his term. He said that his personal inclination was to avoid bailouts – that if people or companies do imprudent things they need to suffer the consequences – including bankruptcy. He felt our system depended on that.

President Barack Obama, at an exclusive fundraiser last night in San Francisco for Senator Barbara Boxer:

Let's face it this has been the toughest year and a half since any year and a half since the 1930s.

This puff piece in the Washington Post sure makes the president look good. The article by Ceci Connolly suggests that while almost everyone ruled out a Democratic health care victory (including Pelosi and Reid), Obama's perseverance and sheer will saved America. Yet the article, clearly sourced by White House staffers working to make their boss look good, does raise a question about the inner-workings of the Obama administration: Where has Vice President Biden been?

He is the most easily recognized member of America’s founding generation. His involvement in founding events was so pervasive that one of his biographers described him as the “central feature in every major event of the revolutionary era.” He was celebrated as a legend, even in his own time. 

Yet few really knew him, despite his fame. He was a very private man when it came to personal matters.  And his reputation sometimes seems to be built as much on myth as reality.  As a result, America’s first president, George Washington, is not only one of our nation’s most famous leaders, but also one of its most misunderstood.  

Today, his birthday, is a good time for a more thoughtful assessment of his record. 

It is my private hope that this evening's speech to a joint session of Congress will be President Obama's final State of the Union address. This is not because of any animosity toward the president, but because I support abolition of the State of the Union address.

Simply stated, it is an almost totally meaningless piece of political theatre which most presidents use to consume broadcast airtime and check all the boxes in their bag of tricks; and in recent years it has grown especially estranged from political reality. Almost as much time is spent on the president's entrance and exit from the House chamber, slapping backs, shaking hands, and exchanging bipartisan banalities with members. And Ronald Reagan, I regret to say, inaugurated the practice of recognizing "heroes" in the visitors' galleries, a ritual which has become almost as prolonged as it is patronizing.