Andrew Sullivan offers a nice summation of the latest score in the ongoing match between Obama and the Republicans in his column today: “Ebola, ISIS, Putin: Meep Meep Watch”.
Cast your mind back, if you can bear it, to the frenetic last days of the campaign in the mid-terms. The world, the GOP kept insisting, was coming undone – and everything was Obama’s fault. Somehow, Obama had fumbled the response to Ebola, letting infected people into the country, and risking a huge and fatal pandemic. At the same time, ISIS represented a grave threat to American security, was expanding with no limits in sight, proving that Obama had lost Iraq or thrown “victory” away in an act of reckless disengagement. And for good measure, Russia’s Putin was running rings around the president, creating a new world order in the Caucasus, while Obama fecklessly wrung his hands.
… Funny, isn’t it, that almost all these themes evaporated after the election.
He goes on to show that policy-wise, on these three big issues of the election, Obama isn’t doing too badly.
Sullivan’s “meep meep” reference is to the old Roadrunner cartoons, where no matter how well-laid the plans of Wile E. Coyote to capture the bird, they end in his own comeuppance—punctuated by Roadrunner’s deadpan “meep meep” as he races off to his next adventure.
Let me add a few more items to the Obama meep meep list:
- U.S. GDP grew 3.9% in the third quarter and 4.6 % in the second quarter, expanding at its fastest pace in a decade and leading the developed world in the recovery.
- The latest Benghazi investigation, led by Republicans in the House Intelligence Committee, concluded after two years that the Obama administration did not deliberately mislead the public about the attack, and that the role of the anti-Muslim video in sparking the violence was an accurate reflection of the consensus of the U.S. intelligence services.
- Gas prices continue to fall averaging $2.80 over Thanksgiving weekend, down 50 cents from a year ago and the lowest price since 2010.
; )
Yup to all of it. Also, the stock market’s doing pretty well.
The healthcare exchanges are up and running without many glitches.
Judging by his willingness to use executive authority, Obama is not throwing up a white flag.
Jeff,
Are you attempting to create a new kind of integral — Jeff’s integral gotcha politics?
But while your piece only names Republicans as the … uh “evil doers” the clan of anti-ObamaApologists includes those of from left to right who read Obama as a clever but nontransparent and hard core political actor whose goals are difficult to interpret.
To paraphrase a line “I don’t think he’s evil … he is just not very integral”.
P.S.
Wasn’t Ken WIlber who suggested that maybe Obama was “in over his head”. That phrase is also the name of one of Robert Kegan’s books and it means one is Ken'”favorite psychologists” and it means one is not developmentally ready (in Kegan’s developmental stage model) for the challenges one faces.
Correction:
P.S.
Wasn’t Ken WIlber who suggested that maybe Obama was “in over his head”. That phrase is also the name of one of Robert Kegan’s books. It means one is not developmentally ready (in Kegan’s developmental stage model) for the challenges one faces.
– See more at: http://www.dailyevolver.com/2014/12/take-heart-comrade-obamapologists/#comment-249690
I don’t know that I have or would ever identify as an Obamapologist but after reading the article (link below) from THE DISH titled A GOOD CLOSER? My first intuitive grasp of this president “being in it for the long run” feels affirmed.
http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/2014/12/23/a-good-closer/