The President Is A Failure

I've said it so many times, in so many different ways, but Stephen Hayes shines here:

The scandals and policy failures have had a devastating effect. With two years left in his presidency, Obama has no agenda. The major new investments and initiatives that he spoke of after his election never happened. Gun control measures he pushed went nowhere. Immigration reform​—​at least the comprehensive variety that Obama demanded​—​is dead. As the investigations of old scandals continue, new ones have taken their place on newspaper front pages across the country: the chronic failures of the VA and, most recently, a serious cover-up involving the Secret Service.

When he’s not on the golf course, the president seems to spend most of his time fundraising for vulnerable Democrats, threatening executive action on those things he can’t accomplish by leading, and working to minimize crises of his own making.

This is a failed presidency...

The top concern of Americans today, more than six years after Barack Obama vowed to “make government cool again,” is that they don’t trust their government. When Obama took office, 43 percent of Americans told Gallup that they were satisfied with the way the country was being governed, while 56 percent said they were dissatisfied. Today, just 27 percent say they’re satisfied and 72 percent say they’re dissatisfied.

A CNN poll taken in July found that trust in government is at an all-time low, with just 13 percent saying they trust government all or most of the time. Keating Holland, the director of polling at CNN, framed the results this way: “The number who trust government all or most of the time has sunk so low that it is hard to remember that there was ever a time when Americans routinely trusted government"...

Here, then, is the great irony of the Obama presidency: Barack Obama will be a transformative president, but not in the way he imagined when he spoke to the Reno Gazette-Journal a year before he took the oath of office. Rather than restore faith in government, the Obama presidency has all but destroyed it. 

Despite himself, Obama has made the case for limited government more powerfully than his opponents.

Is there anything he can accomplish besides fundraising?

Those same people who decry money in politics--and that's you, friends on the left--are the biggest crony capitalists around.  If you want to get corporate money out of politics, the only way to do that is to take away that which the money can purchase--and that's the ability for government to do someone's bidding.  Take power away from Washington, restore the federal government to one of limited, enumerated powers, and there will be no reason for corporations to buy influence--because there will be no influence to buy.  Keep consolidating power in Washington, and look what happens.  Are you proud of the way your government is operating today?  No?  Then why would you want more of it?

Barack Obama's presidency is the poster child for conservatism.