Obama’s Soft Despotism



The talking heads love presidential analogies. Is Obamacare’s roll-out Obama’s Katrina or his Iraq? Is Obama’s false promise that you could keep your health-care plan like George H. W. Bush’s “read my lips” pledge, or is it like Clinton’s “I did not have sexual relations with that woman”? Iran–Contra anyone?

These comparisons don’t take you far. The president’s troubles are unique to his particular vanities and blind spots.


Some of Obama’s most devoted admirers are at pains to distinguish his current fall from grace from George W. Bush’s. Chris Matthews, for example, argues that,
The problem with Katrina was apparent indifference. One thing you can’t hold against the president is indifference about health care. He’s the guy that rushed in, pushed through a program with pure Democratic support, and took all the risks involved in it. 
The accusation that Bush was “indifferent” to the suffering caused by Katrina is to take as fact the slanders of Bush’s detractors. Matthews also extends gracious allowances for Mr. Obama’s motives (though his suggestion that Obama “took all the risks” might not go down well with the 63 Democrats who lost their seats in 2010).

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