From Fuad Ajami. One of the best-written pieces I have seen for a while. He is spot on. Nothing creates dislike for Obama and his policies like seeing him and them. When he was unknown everyone loved him. Now?
Fouad Ajami: The Obsolescence of Barack Obama - WSJ.com
Fouad Ajami: The Obsolescence of Barack Obama - WSJ.com
More at the source.Not long ago Barack Obama, for those who were spellbound by him, had the stylishness of JFK and the historic mission of FDR riding to the nation's rescue. Now it is to Lyndon B. Johnson's unhappy presidency that Democratic strategist Robert Shrum compares the stewardship of Mr. Obama. Johnson, wrote Mr. Shrum in the Week magazine last month, never "sustained an emotional link with the American people" and chose to escalate a war that "forced his abdication as president."
A broken link with the public, and a war in Afghanistan he neither embraces and sells to his party nor abandonsthis is a time of puzzlement for President Obama. His fall from political grace has been as swift as his rise a handful of years ago. He had been hot political property in 2006 and, of course, in 2008. But now he will campaign for his party's 2010 candidates from afar, holding fund raisers but not hitting the campaign trail in most of the contested races. Those mass rallies of Obama frenzy are surely of the past.