Presidents have a huge weight on their shoulders. That weight can come from many places. Sometimes it can be external, sometimes internal, sometimes self-inflicted.
If you are old enough to remember Richard Nixon and the Watergate scandal, you will probably remember a weary-looking Nixon, as the scandal dragged on and Nixon’s exits were blocked off.
Fast forward to today and you can see it Barack Obama’s face. His biggest and closest supporters are well aware of this, and things are not looking good.
And it isn’t only Republicans who are now criticizing President Obama’s aloofness. For the first time, halfway through the sixth year of his presidency, Democrats are beginning to speak out, in increasing numbers. The Sunday talk shows are the sounding chambera, and at the end of a bad week, we heard a lot about how Obama is detatched and out-of-touch. Several scandals have been blown off by the administration and Democrats in general, but the issues related to Veterans are sacred, and the VA scandal has broken through the Democrats’ veneer of teflon even for the Democrats most loyal to the president.
The key to their sudden care for the truth is probably their own vulnerability for the upcoming elections.
Among the disheartened was liberal CNN’s John King on the Sunday show, Inside Politics. King said “More and more Democrats in key 2014 races are calling for the president to get a spine, they say, and fire his Veterans Affairs secretary, Eric Shinseki. And what more and more Democrats are saying privately is scathing, calling the president and his team detached, flat-footed, even incompetent.”
Some say a secret flight to Afghanistan, for a photo-op, was a recognition that the president’s handlers saw it was an important thing to squash. That trip was followed by a wreath laying at Arlington National Cemetery.
John King said that since the HealthCare.gov launch debacle, Democrats have been saying privately that “they see a president who doesn’t want to take command, doesn’t want to act fast.”
Another damning comment from John King came when he said that some of Obama’s biggest supporters, who believe in Obama’s ideas about bigger government say that he “doesn’t appear to have its hand on the lever.”
Why would he, when his hands are on a golf club.
It was obvious to all that when Obamacare, started to fall apart, the president detached from it.
And that was his signature piece of legislation.
Perhaps it is best for us that Obama’s mind is more on the golf course more than on the affairs of state and his shaky legacy. Democrats seem to have been cut adrift – they are on their own. Obama has created an awful, sticky mess, but he isn’t doing anything to clean it up.
Things are only getting worse, and Democrats up for election can plainly see it. They have hitched their buggy to the wrong horse and he’s taking them down a dark alley.
It could be that Democrat politicians don’t want Obama butting in now. They may be better off on their own. Obama may only make their destruction at the polls worse.
