Mort Zuckerman one year later: Obama has done everything wrong
Mort Zuckerman, head of US News and World Report and the New York Daily News, endorsed, supported, and voted for President Obama.
That was then. This is now.
I’ve read a number of pieces by former Obama supporters, but I’ve never read one that shows such a complete disillusionment with the man. Zuckerman doesn’t understand why Obama has acted this way (in this he’s hardly alone). He sees Obama’s failures as incompetence; he doesn’t get that he was a con artist, lying about his ideological agenda as well as his ethics. But Zuckerman certainly comprehends that an Obama failure has occurred, and that it’s not limited to just a few issues.
What’s more, Zuckerman does not mince words. His essay is very simply and bluntly—even awkwardly—written. It’s as though he’s talking to friends in private. His bewilderment and mounting anguish and anger are almost palpable:
In the campaign, [Obama] said he would change politics as usual. He did change them. It’s now worse than it was. I’ve now seen the kind of buying off of politicians that I’ve never seen before. It’s politically corrupt and it’s starting at the top. It’s revolting…
He has plunged in the polls more than any other political figure since we’ve been using polls. He’s done everything wrong. Well, not everything, but the major things.
I don’t consider it a triumph. I consider it a disaster…I’m very disappointed. We endorsed him. I voted for him. I supported him publicly and privately.
I hope there are changes. I think he’s already laid in huge problems for the country. The fiscal program was a disaster. You have to get the money as quickly as possible into the economy. They didn’t do that. By end of the first year, only one-third of the money was spent. Why is that?
He should have jammed a stimulus plan into Congress and said, “This is it. No changes. Don’t give me that bullshit. We have a national emergency.” Instead they turned it over to Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi…It’s very sad. It’s really sad.
He’s improved America’s image in the world. He absolutely did. But you have to translate that into something. Let me tell you what a major leader said to me recently. “We are convinced,” he said, “that he is not strong enough to confront his enemy. We are concerned,” he said “that he is not strong to support his friends.”
The political leadership of the world is very, very dismayed. He better turn it around. The Democrats are going to get killed in this election. Jesus, looks what’s happening in Massachusetts.
Zuckerman is looking at what happened in Massachusetts, and as a Democrat he gets the message. Is the President looking and listening? And when he looks and listens, what does he see and hear? Have the voters—and someone like Mort Zuckerman—become mere obstacles to him now, something to get around rather than to serve?
And was it always that way?
“Have the voters–and someone like Mort Zuckerman–become mere obstacles to him now, something to get around rather than to serve?
And was it always that way?”
Sure. Why do you think he’s appointed so many czars? and plans to use EPA for crapnfade?
Obama has done exactly what he said he would do.
All you had to do was to listen to his own words.
It was all there for those who would listen.
52% either did not listen or subscribe to his ideology.
For those who think that he will now do the pragmatic thing and move to the center for the remainder of his term, you need to go back and listen to what he said once again.
He will not change course. He will not surrender. It’s full steam ahead with the socialism for him and his.
It was a wonderful thing that Brown won last night, but make no mistake that that was but a skirmish is a much larger war.
Mort is part of the third wave of the Tsunami that will drive Obama under the 30% approval rating. The first wave was the conservatives (mostly Republicans) getting a backbone to oppose “the Won”. The second wave was the realization by Independents that they had been tricked, which is being realized in his sub-50% rating. The third wave is when the movers and shakers start to abandon him and run for cover. In Mort’s piece, he is searching for anything to convince himself that he was not completely bamboozled. He has not gotten to that point yet, but that point is coming soon.
Look for Hillary to be the next. She will need to keep her political viability by publicly breaking with Obama well before the November 2010 election debacle. Obama will find out the hard way that you should never fire someone that you can’t fire. She will need to see an uptick in Democrat fortunes in the next 3 months, or she will find a way to get fired (getting wronged always worked well for her in the past with her base). When he does so, she will take with her the 15% hardcore Hillary fans, instantaneously dropping
It’s politically corrupt and it’s starting at the top
A fish rots from the head down
money isnt the only thing that can trickle down
Although Obama pays lip service to the importance of bipartisanship, he has done absolutely nothing to employ it in the advancement of his staggering domestic agenda. Until yesterday, he had his 60 votes and planned to take full advantage of them to ram the health care debacle through. My small hope in the face of everything that has transpired over the course of the past year is that our shaky system would protect us from what can happen when you hand over the reins to someone like Obama and a supermajority in Congress. Maybe Scott Brown is the guy who can help pull the brake on the freight train until we can, with our votes, restore some checks and balances to the system.
Voters are people who pose an obstacle to Obama, and it’s always been that way. Let’s keep throwing them in his path.
That’s marvelous, horrifying, and true.
I like pablo’s analysis above. If Hilary bails out soon enough, she could mount a challenge in 2012. If she had been the candidate in 2008, she would have won by 20 points. Obama was anointed by the Inner Party, and now the Democrats are starting to pay the price.
roc scssrs: I’ve thought for some time that Hillary has been planning to abandon the Obama ship and run in 2012. Perhaps she even planned it from the first, when she took on a position in the Obama cabinet. But I also think that her participation in this administration and its terrible foreign policy may have harmed her in such a way that she cannot be elected president.
“… Have the voters–and someone like Mort Zuckerman–become mere obstacles to him now, something to get around rather than to serve?
And was it always that way?”
“Just as the democratic statesman who sets out to plan economic life will soon be confronted with the alternative of either assuming dictatorial powers or abandoning his plans, so the totalitarian dictator would soon have to choose between disregard of ordinary morals and failure.” – F.A. Hayek, “The Road to Serfdom”.
Not to say that Obama would or could assume dictatorial powers, but he does have something of that same first choice to make here. Will he become more pragmatic – or even more of an idealogue?
Anything is possible, but my money is on him remaining what he, at heart, is – a radical socialist. The result will be (I hope) failure and a guaranteed one-term and out for him. And a seriously weakened Democrat party, if it chooses to continue to follow his disasterous lead.
I don’t know, Obama may adapt and change tack, he may even be capable of growth and learning. We don’t know, because as I noted during the campaign, his track record is so threadbare that all the enthusiasm for the “possibilities” he represented was based entirely on faith. Faith, and selective interpretation of his own words and many signs such as his associates.
We shall see, unforeseen events and Obama’s own actions still do not foreclose the possibility that he may turn things around very significantly.
Now let’s be fair, Obama did change politics as usual. He has completely done away with working with or actually any regard for the party out of power. He brought vote buying out of occasional backroom deal to wholesale open sellout. At every turn he has turned a deaf ear to the people and doubled down on his “agenda.” Please pray tell what president has done these things in the last 40 years? Did Obama ever really say he was going to change politics for the better?
Hey Obama, can you hear us now?
Of course Democrats like Zuckerman think the voters are an obstacle. Despite the label they like to wave about, there is absolutely nothing democratic about the Democratic party. They are filled with hatred and loathing for white Americans, and patronizing contempt for nonwhite Americans. The BEST of the Democrats are the corrupt hacks in it to get rich — they at least have no desire to kill the goose whose golden eggs they wish to plunder. The worst are the sincere ideologues who genuinely want to “improve” the nation. They would happily make a graveyard of the country and praise themselves for their benevolence.
I don’t think that Obama will undergo a sudden political epiphany. Not only is he a rigid ideologue, I suspect that he is, as a person too brittle.
Based on his recent utterings, I think that he will try to forge ahead with Obama care.
Sounds like ol’ Mort is crying into his beer or scotch or wine….
Trimegistus : your remark about preferring the “corrupt hacks in it to get rich” reminds me of the old saw about “honest graft.” Your point is also well taken.
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I hope the part about what foreign leaders think of him goes mainstream.
Regarding whether he will tack toward pragmatism–it doesn’t matter. He is so shallow that pragmatic moves would be incoherent, just like beefing up troops in Afghanistan while announcing a withdrawal date. He is a leftist because that what his crowd finds cool and because he has always been too lazy to dig beyond their platitudes.
It always was that way. Obama never intended to serve the people. He always planned to fulfill his leftist ideology first, the people be damned. Thank God he’s also incompetent.
Pablo’s analysis has merit. If Obama loses the big media people like Zuckerman, he’s in serious trouble. While Zuckerman has always been more of a centrist than, say, Pinch Sulzberger, I have to believe that his opinion matters to those in the Democratic Party hierarchy. Lose the media shills, and the Emperor is suddenly exposed in all his nekkid glory.
Obama supporters didn’t see what we saw. We all saw Obama as he is – a con-man with a hard-left/hard progressive background.
Wake up and smell the coffee, blind faith libs. Your entire ideology will kill our economy and our standing in the world. Is that want you want – hope and change?
Well, you got it.
So now the libs are hoping for a pivot. Good luck. Any pivot Obama makes will be more con-artist bullshit.
I suppose I should be grateful that Zuckerman is meeting reality, but I’m not, because it’s people like him who made this happen. Now he realizes Obama is a disaster. Ordinary Americans have been trying to tell him this since well before the election, but he was too smart to listen. How can he be so dumb when he is so smart?
(with apologies to Walt Kelly)
Mr. Zukerman: Too little. Too late.
Hillary will be better.
For that reason, she will be worse.
I think turfmann and have pretty much nailed Obama; he’s just too much of an ideologue to change.
Quoting shamelessly from my own blog post “Don’t forget the money angle, Paul”…
What makes him so dangerous is this attitude makes it extremely difficult for him to compromise in the face of reality. Bill Clinton could see the writing on the wall and adapt to changing circumstances as easily as breathing. Obama simply cannot.
So, if you figure on him seeing the light anytime soon; well… don’t hold your breath.
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turfmann and Tim P, I mean.
(LORD, I wish this had preview 🙁 )
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To give him his due, he did say this today:
“President Obama warned Democrats in Congress today not to “jam” a health care reform bill through now that they’ve lost their commanding majority in the Senate, and said they must wait for newly elected Massachusetts Republican Scott Brown to be sworn into office.”
It was the right thing to do and say. As I commented in a post the other day, no single issue is important enough to justify cutting corners and destroying or severely weakening the Constitutional basis of our government. The voters will has to be respected. I admit that it surprised me he came out and made this statement as clearly as he did, but bully for him.
And impressively, there are quite a few other Democrats acting like responsible grown-ups. I’ve heard several (Jim Webb and others?) mention it would be wrong to try to do an end run around the election results before Scott Brown could be seated. It’s sad that it suprised me, especially based on pre-election rumors, but it was a pleasant surprise. I think I even heard Scott Brown say that the “interim” senator that he’s replacing said in their post-election phone conversation that he considered his job done and he was no longer a senator. That would seem to end all thoughts of doing a rush job in the next few days.
Having said all that, I’m glad of the outcome of the election. Giving some measure of credit to responsible Democrats doesn’t interfere with my relief that the unthinkable became reality. A Republican in Ted Kennedy’s seat! It’s just amazing. And, although it’s still too early to tell, it may just have headed off a national train wreck.
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Yeah, he’s got a brass set, all right. Thinking we’ll have collective amnesia and just forget that he’s the one who’s been trying to “ram it through” Congress.
But he’s been telling amazing lies for quite some time, and getting caught has never stopped him, or even embarrassed him in the slightest. I think he’s a sociopath. At the very least, he has a narcissistic personality disorder.
It seems likely that by time Hillary finds a good way out of Obama’s administration, she will have shown herself so inept at foreign affairs that her chances for the presidency will be much reduced.
As for Obama himself, I doubt he is able to change. I expect to see some transparent shucking and jiving about “hearing what the people are saying” but in reality he’ll redouble his efforts to get just what he’s always been after. This is a man, please remember, who has ALWAYS ridden free at the expense of hornswoggled enablers; a man who has NEVER actually earned a living or produced any tangible thing of any use or value.
Isn’t it true that narcissistic or sociopathic behaviors are among the very toughest to change? Seldom, outside of movies, have we seen such brazen self-aggrandisement. The sheer scale of the lying, graft, greed, bribery, power-grabbing, cheating, trickery, bullying, extortion and contemptuous coercion has made it harder, not easier, to understand.
Americans are big on fairness and justice. They play fair themselves, most of the time, and tend to see the actions of others as honest and straightforward until proven otherwise.
I think it’s going to take a lot more abuse from Obama and his thugs and tools, before we can admit that we’ve been played for fools by one of the biggest scammers in human history. And in the meantime, he’ll go on yammering about how he’s going to save us all.
The one, very frightening, parallel I can draw in my own experience is Ted Bundy. Glib and self-absorbed to the last, he died still believing he had done the very best that could be done for everyone. God help us all while this Greek farce plays out.
Just shows you that IQ, experience, etc. are no insurance against one’s hopey changey emotions. The heart makes all of us stupid at times. If you looked at Obama’s track record before he ran for POTUS, what do you see? A well spoken poseur bathed since childhood in the waters of Leftism. And every financial responsibility he oversaw or promoted turned to crap. That’s his record. And what did all of these geniuses judge him by? His beautiful clouds in the sky talk. Fools.
There have to be about 50 million people in the U.S. who knew who and what Obama was before he was elected. If by no other means, then by watching the way he messed around with the Democrats Byzantine caucus system. Althouse wrote a post about it. Her kid was in TX and witnessed some of it.
HOWEVER – ah-hem – my point was that Morty and his fellow ink-stained wretches’ entire stock in trade, other than their value as a boredom-reducer in the podiatrist’s office, is that they know what’s going on and they’re going to let us in on it. These marathon mea culpas don’t exactly support that construct.
Also, there has been a lot of talk lately about how the blogosphere is poaching on the MSM, without which the bloggers wouldn’t have any solid, costly, time-consuming research to go on. It seems to me that the blogosphere has been running upstream against the current of the MSM using hard data often provided by the MSM. What’s that say about bias and competence?
Obama doesn’t care about anything but his idealogue agenda. He is getting back at the big fat white cats who for generations, kept his brothers down, and other little people. Getting back at the injustices. I mean his speaches tell you how pissed off he is. There is not an ounce of positives ever, unlike Ronald Reagan and his speeches. Look at what he is doing, and will do, and that will prove it. Practicality and common sense. That’s my credentials. Great blog.
Obama has done something wrong! his support of coakley is very unlikely. however, he is trying to make things into proper perspective. some critique would say: dont trust too much to them, they’re too good to be true.
what i am wondering is how did a highly educated Nobel prize winner, a REAL Nobel prize winner not know what obama was going to do? If a home-maker like myself figured it out through listening, that’s number one, and reading and investigating on the computer, how did this very educated people miss it. It? the fact that obama is a person with Marxist/Muslim leanings and has basic shame for this country and a racist background to some extent, and with his upbringing could we expect anything other than what we got? I think not…
Remeber he supports ACORN and the ALINSKY teachings, that pretty much says it all, if you are listening….it pays to listen and investigate.
I like pablo’s analysis too, although I think Hillary would be wise not to break with Obama until after the mid-term elections, for several reasons.
First, she mustn’t break with him too soon, or Hillary fatigue will set in before November 2012.
Second, it’s in her interest that the Dems get torched in the mid-term elections. She can then cast herself as the reluctant white knight (?) drafted to ride in and save the Dems from a second electoral disaster in 2012. (Yeah, I know it’s rubbish, but these are Dems we’re talking about here, so rubbish isn’t a bug, it’s a feature.) That way she scores party loyalty points, and the electoral fiasco will be there for all to see — and won’t have her fingerprints on it.
On the other hand, if she breaks before the midterm elections, Obamanauts — always in denial – will say that the train wreck in November occurred because she broke with him. (See comment above re rubbish.) That’ll sink her chances of getting the nomination.
I agree that she cannot be elected President, but not for these reasons. After all, Robert Byrd lived down Klan membership, Ted Kennedy lived down drowning a girl, Bill Clinton lived down getting BJs in the Oval Office and then perjuring himself, and most telling of all, the Democrat Party lived down being the party of slavery and then segregation. With the complicity of the MSM, all things are possible for the Dems. (So if for some reason the MSM supported Hillary, they’d portray her as having privately fought the good fight in the Administration to overcome the influence of evil advisors — Rahm, David Axelrod, how you doin’? — who misled the brilliant, well-meaning, trusting, but less than experienced Messiah into adopting disastrous policies.)
But there’s one thing the MSM can’t help with: Hillary will never, ever get the black vote from Obama. No way. Even if Obama burned a cross on the South Lawn before holding human sacrifices there, he’d still have the black vote. The blacks and hard-core left-wing voters will never forgive Hillary for scuppering Buraq, as they will see it, and losing their votes will present her with an insuperable obstacle in 2012.
First, intelligence isn’t a scalar; it has to represented by a tensor. It’s perfectly possible to be clever and insightful about one thing, and utterly hopeless at another. For example, linguistic and mathematical ability would be a case in point.
Second, contra popular supposition, Nobel Laureates are not in general brighter than other scientists similarly situated (for example other faculty members at top research universities). (I don’t think any of them would dispute this.) Getting the Nobel Prize often depends inter alia on choosing a research area that panned out well, much like wildcatting for oil. Being in the right place, at the right time — not to mention popularity and politicking – counts for a lot. Nobel Prizes, Academy Awards, and Heisman Trophies have a lot in common.
Bottom line: as my father used to say, Nobel Laureates put on their pants on leg at a time, just like everyone else. They can be brilliant, silly, pioneering, blind, ingenious, and moronic by turns, just like everyone else. A good reason not to outsource one’s thinking to them, or indeed anyone else.
(To be vaccinated in perpetuity against Nobelophilia, consider the history of Julius Wagner-Jauregg, who won the Prize in Medicine for electroshock therapy (!) and became an ardent Nazi supporter (!!).)
What a crap. How can you call it a blog. Change the style, so it will be a bit better