President SCoaMF, Martyr

M2RB:  The Scorpions, live in Red Square, Moscow

Ooh, babe, I just need you like never before
Just imagine you'd come through this door
You'd take all my sorrow away

There's no one like you
I can't wait for the nights with you
I imagine the things we'll do
I just wanna be loved by you

No one like you
I can't wait for the nights with you
I imagine the things we'll do
I just wanna be loved by you

No one like you


 

Listen closely and you can hear the sounds of slogging echo across the decades. They emanate not just from the failed president but from sympathetic journalists trying to absolve him of the responsibility for his failure.

 

Obama was not the first Big Brain, Holy Man, Man of Peace, Allow-Us-To-Shine-Your-Iron-Fist-With-Our-Velvet-Glove, Unicorns-Energise-The-World, We Can Work With Despots, Genociders, Israel-Haters, We Can Subjugate Western Civilisation and Laws to China In the Name of Business and The Builders of a Muslim Caliphate In the Name of Global Peace, Social Justice, Environmental Justice, Ecological Justice, Reparations, Biomass Credits, etc.  No, he wasn't the first.  He is merely serving the first one's second term.

 

Peter Baker of the New York Times informs us in a "news analysis" that "for Barack Obama, a president who set out to restore good relations with the world in his first term, the world does not seem to be cooperating all that much with his bid to win a second." Thanks a lot world, you ingrate!

The world's perfidy notwithstanding, "polls show Mr. Obama with a double-digit advantage over [Mitt] Romney on foreign policy," Baker notes. But in a cruel twist of fate, "in the latest New York Times-CBS News poll, only 4 percent of Americans picked foreign policy as their top election concern."

Fate is cruel to Obama in more ways than one:

"If anything, the dire headlines from around the world only reinforce an uncomfortable reality for this president and any of his successors: even the world's last superpower has only so much control over events beyond its borders, and its own course can be dramatically affected in some cases. Whether from ripples of the European fiscal crisis or flare-ups of violence in Baghdad, it is easy to be whipsawed by events."

All indisputably true. It's also true that into every life a little rain must fall, but that's not much of a defense for a poorly performing employee whose boss is considering whether to renew his contract.

Lately we've seen a spate of articles blaming Obama's failures on impersonal forces beyond his control. Thus Chris Cillizza in the Washington Post:

Lost in the chatter about whether President Obama will win a second term in November is an even bigger--and perhaps even more important--question: Is it possible for a president--any president--to succeed in the modern world of politics?

Consider this: We are in the midst of more than a decade-long streak of pessimism about the state of the country, partisanship is at all-time highs and the media have splintered--Twitter, blogs, Facebook and so on and so forth--in a thousand directions all at once. . . .

"Due to the evolution of our politics and media, we may never see a two-term president again," said Mark McKinnon, a senior strategist for President George W. Bush's 2000 and 2004 campaigns.

We are going to go out on a limb and predict that we will see another two-term president, though perhaps not this year.

"In the same years when presidential politics changed so greatly, governing did, too," writes the Times's Tom Wicker: "It got harder. . . . The rise of single-interest politics and independent legislators has made it more difficult to put together a governing coalition; sophisticated new lobbying techniques wielded on behalf of virtually every interest group further complicate the task. And a strong argument could be made that the major issues--energy and the economy, for instance--are more complex than they were."

Hey, wait a minute. Didn't Tom Wicker die last year?

Why yes he did. That quote came from a column he wrote in April 1980, the last time a Democratic president was in the midst of an unsuccessful re-election bid. And he's not the only one whose 32-year-old plaints sound awfully familiar.

Jimmy Carter was known for his bright smile 
.

"The Presidency today is entangled in the great crisis of all established authority...Executives of every kind--political, educational, ecclesiastical, corporate--are under incessant public attack...[The president's life] is under such relentless scrutiny that he can only seem ordinary, never extraordinary. No man is a hero to his valet, and America is now a nation of valets."

- Henry Graff, Columbia University historian (now emeritus), New York Times 25 July 1980

 

Graff did not mention Twitter, blogs, Facebook and so on and so forth.

"Watching President Carter try to juggle all the contradictory foreign and domestic problems of the nation during a presidential election and an economic recession, you have to wonder who can do it and who can govern America." 

 

- James Reston, New York Times, June 1980

Reston, who died in 1995, concluded:

"Carter's campaign theme is clear. It is that while the economic figures are not on his side, the economic 'trends' are changing for the better, and that, as he hopes to demonstrate in his meetings with world figures, he knows more about foreign policy than [Ted] Kennedy, Reagan or [John] Anderson."

Then again, it's easy to be whipsawed by events.

"The presidency has grown, and grown and grown, into the most powerful, most impossible job in the world."

 - Walter Shapiro, Washington Post, 13 January 1980

Shapiro's piece was titled "Voters Expect to Elect a Mere Mortal" and he made the rather pompous observation while simultaneously trying to argue that the problem wasn't that Carter was too small a man for such a large, powerful position, but instead the office had become to great for any one man to succeed in alone.

"Voters have lowered their expectations of what any president can accomplish; they have accepted the notion that this country may never again have heroic, larger-than-life leadership in the White House. . . . Some voters have entirely discarded textbook notions about presidential greatness and believe that Carter is doing as good a job as anyone could in facing new and difficult problems and in coping with an independent and restive Congress."

 - Walter Shapiro, Washington Post, 13 January 1980

In August 1980 (in a story not available online), Post reporter Robert G. Kaiser, now an editor, described the speech in which Carter accepted the Democratic nomination:

President Carter in 1980 had to try to explain why he had not become the sort of leader Jimmy Carter promised to be in 1976. . . .

Not surprisingly, this 1980 Carter sounded much more defensive. Carter's 1976 acceptance speech contained no negative references to . . . Gerald R. Ford. It was entirely a positive statement.

About a fourth of last night's speech was devoted to lambasting the Republicans and Ronald Reagan.

"If the Grand Old Party should win in November, I see despair . . . I see surrender . . . I see risk."

 - President Jimmy Carter, Democratic National Convention, 1980

He also sees repudiation, of course, which explains his defensiveness. . . .Carter's acceptance speech in 1976 was a magical moment, perhaps the high point of his political career. Carter spoke quietly that night in the lilting cadence of a Baptist preacher with a sure sense of himself and his message. . . .There was no magic in Thursday night's speech. Instead, a weary convention heard the sounds of slogging from a worried politician who knows he is in deep trouble.

Listen closely and you can hear the sounds of slogging echo across the decades. They emanate not just from the failed president but from sympathetic journalists trying to absolve him of the responsibility for his failure.

Taranto closes with a journalist’s 1980 speech comparing the Democratic presidential nominating convention addresses that Carter gave in 1976 and 1980. The journalist noted that Carter’s speech in 1976 was an “entirely positive statement” while his 1980 address evoked the “sounds of slogging from a worried politician who knows he is in deep trouble.” Many suspect that a note of “deep trouble” will be sounded by President Barack Obama in Charlotte this summer.

Taranto closes his piece by noting that history proved rather quickly that these were short-sighted observations.

“We learned in the 1980s that the presidency was still big. It was Jimmy Carter who turned out to be small.” 

- James Taranto

“In the same years when presidential politics changed so greatly, governing did, too.  It got harder. . . . The rise of single-interest politics and independent legislators has made it more difficult to put together a governing coalition; sophisticated new lobbying techniques wielded on behalf of virtually every interest group further complicate the task. And a strong argument could be made that the major issues–energy and the economy, for instance–are more complex than they were.”

- Tom Wicker, New York Times, 1980

They put Ronald Reagan in the White House, and eight years later no one was asking if the presidency was too big for one man to handle.

It turns out that it takes a particularly small man to make the office look overwhelming, and for the second time in 32 years, we've found one. 

"[I]f America cannot grapple with its deep and real problems after electing a new president with two majorities, then America’s problems are too great for Americans to tackle.” 

- Andrew Sullivan, Daily Beast

“Due to the evolution of our politics and media, we may never see a two-term president again.”

- Mark McKinnon, adviser to President to George W Bush, who served two terms.

Sounding a well-entitled-to-note-0f-exasperation and eyerolling:

“Have we become so shallow and vain as to think our generation and our time is more consequential than that which came before us."

There's No One Like You - Scorpions

Girl, it's been a long time that we've been apart
Much too long for a man who needs love
I miss you since I've been away
Babe, it wasn't easy to leave you alone
It's getting harder each time that I go
If I had the choice, I would stay

There's no one like you
I can't wait for the nights with you
I imagine the things we'll do
I just wanna be loved by you

No one like you
I can't wait for the nights with you
I imagine the things we'll do
I just wanna be loved by you

Girl, there are really no words strong enough
To describe all my longing for love
I don't want my feelings restrained
Ooh, babe, I just need you like never before
Just imagine you'd come through this door
You'd take all my sorrow away

There's no one like you
I can't wait for the nights with you
I imagine the things we'll do
I just wanna be loved by you

No one like you
I can't wait for the nights with you
I imagine the things we'll do
I just wanna be loved by you

No one like you