Friday, June 1, 2012

Inside 1600: An Embattled, Weary Presidency

Our sources in Washington tell us that the White House is dispirited, embattled and hopelessly frustrated.
And today's dismal job figures are doing nothing to alleviate the pain.
White House pollsters and Democrat strategists have delivered bad news to the president: His numbers are slipping and the situation looks precarious at best.
States that weren't supposed to be in play (like Iowa and Wisconsin) are now not only in play but they're teetering.
Even the president's personal popularity (long considered a mainstay) is now on shaky ground.
The American people are developing Obama fatigue. And they are less and less confident every day that we are headed in the right direction.
In truth, the New York Times itself has admitted that the president's operatives and long-time Chicago loyalists are at wits end as to what to do or how to react.
Obama has gotten a free pass for so long that he and his cohorts don't know which way to turn in the face of such adversity. They should have seen it coming but they miscalculated from the start.
They thought the GOP presidential hopefuls would destroy one another. They never expected Romney to nail down the nomination quite so early. They thought Mitt would be so badly wounded by months of party infighting that he would enter the race a mere ghost of his former self. They thought they could easily out fundraise Romney and the GOP. They were wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong.
The president is said to be depressed. By some accounts he is often uncommunicative and holed up in the White House study on on the second floor private quarters.
More than one report has identified the Svegali figure of Valerie Jarrett as the de-facto president. Jarrett has reportedly bullied White House staffers, dressed down leading Democrat senators and House members, run roughshod over cabinet
officials and is pictured as giving marching orders to the president himself. She's been called an "elbows up" personality who takes no prisoners. Scary!
She has also been called "the most powerful woman in America." And she continues to have the ear of the president and the First Lady. Supposedly NOTHING reaches the president's desk and no one gets in to see the president without Jarrett's approval.
Some say the president is alternately despondent and angry.
They say he wants to lash out but his options are limited. He can't jettison the Chicago gang because he owes everything to them and he's still tied to the hometown regime: ward-healers, union bosses, bare-knuckled political operatives and 1960s style social deconstructionists.
And maybe he's simply not seasoned enough, not experienced enough to break free or to even know that he needs to break free to have any chance at all of surviving.
So Obama & Co. are flailing.
Attacking corporate America didn't work.
Neither did charging Republicans with launching a "war on women."
Neither did the attack on Bain.
And the assault on religious freedom roused a sleeping giant: the Catholic Church and its prelates.
Now the attack on Romney's record as governor has fizzled and the new jobs reports have put the focus back where the Obamatons don't want it: the economy.
No place to hide.
Suddenly, Mr. Cool is on the hot seat.


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