Squaring the Culture

Courtesy of the National Republican Senatorial Committee:

I find the “no lobbyists” portion a trifle hard to take, not because President Obama is clean, but because simply noting that one lobbyist made it in doesn’t mean much. The more important fact is that the entire “no lobbyists” meme is thoroughgoing nonsense; a lobbyist is just a paid advocate, and anybody appointed to a government position who has advocated some political position or other is going to have the same impact as a lobbyist in the same position.

I also think that raising the AIG bonuses as a response to Obama’s claim never to bail out Wall Street again is a bit lame; it may have emblematic value in the public, but the real scandal is that Obama’s regime at several points has supported the sorts of Wall Street fat cats he claims to detest, and that he and the Democrats engage in the very same sort of nest-feathering as the folks he demonizes.

Still, this is a pretty good summary of the new President’s first 100 days. The public seems to think so, too. Notwithstanding the embarrassing “He’s So Fine” swooning of the press, Gallup’s April survey pegs President Obama’s approval rating at 56%, which is unusually low for a President after a mere 100 days in office. Of recent Presidents, only President Clinton landed lower after 100 days, and that was due to bad publicity over gays in the military and 86 civilians dying in a badly mishandled standoff with the Branch Davidians in Waco, TX. So far, polls show that people like President Obama personally but detest his policy choices, and the divergence of those two threads is going to disappear sooner or later.

I’ll let the Washington Times editorial staff finish for me:

The explanation for Mr. Obama’s low approval is that he ran as a moderate but has governed from the far left. The fawning and self-deceiving press won’t go there. On Sunday’s “Meet the Press,” host David Gregory asked a panel about critics who “would say one of the things that he’s done in 100 days already is expand the role of government, the size of government.” Historian Doris Kearns Goodwin claimed, “That’s what he ran for the presidency in the first place for.”

Perplexed about complaints over Mr. Obama’s expansion of government, Newsweek editor Jon Meacham asked: “does no one listen during campaigns?”

It was these pundits who weren’t paying attention during last year’s campaign. In all three presidential debates, Mr. Obama promised to cut government spending and reduce the size of the deficit. He blamed the economic crisis on excessive deficits. At no time did candidate Barack Obama say that more deficit-spending was the solution.

Mr. Obama’s popularity after 100 days is the second-lowest for a simple reason: He is more partisan and divisive than his predecessors – including Richard Nixon.

One Hundred Days, One Hundred Mistakes. The Official List, by Don Surber. Accept no substitutes, unless they’re funny.