Obama can’t make a sale like Clinton

Jonah Goldberg
National Review Online

Whatever happened to Barack Obama’s magic? asked Jonah Goldberg. When he was campaigning for the presidency, wooing voters with gauzy promises of “hope” and “change,” Obama seemed to be one of the greatest salesmen in recent political history. In office, though, he’s been remarkably prosaic—unable to convince the American people of anything.

Unlike his fellow Democrat Bill Clinton, Obama has no natural connection to everyday people; indeed, “he doesn’t seem to care what the people think,” lecturing them with the hauteur of a professor stuck with a class of stupid and unruly students. True, he’s “had remarkable success cramming his agenda through Congress—often thanks to the sorts of backroom deals he swore to oppose—but he hasn’t made a sale outside of the Beltway.”

Americans still oppose the health-care reform he crammed down their throats; they rejected his sales pitch on cap-and-trade; they don’t trust his economic policy or his foreign policy, either. As a result, the president now has “an adversarial relationship with the people he’s supposed to represent.” No wonder Democrats are running scared.