Mark Steyn: Is Obama tanking already?

Monday, February 16, 2009

COMMENTARY:

Few pieces of political “wisdom” are more tediously recycled than a well-retailed bon mot of British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan. Asked what he feared most in the months ahead, he gave an amused Edwardian response — “Events, dear boy, events.”

In other words, you can plan all you want but next month, next year some guy off the radar screen will launch a war, or there'll be an earthquake, or... something. Governments get thrown off course by “events.”

It requires a perverse kind of genius for the 44th president not to have waited for a single “event” to throw him off course. Instead, he threw himself off: “Is Obama tanking already?” (Congressional Quarterly) “Has Barack Obama's presidency already failed?” (the Financial Times). Whether or not it's “already” failed or tanked, the monthly magazines still gazing out from their newsstands with their glossy Inaugural covers of a smiling Barack and Michelle waltzing on the audacity of hope seem like musty historical artifacts from a lost age. the rest

Obama Levitates: But the train goes off the rails.

Added: Taxpayer revolt: Porkulus protest in Seattle, Obama to sign theft act in Denver