Obama's Failure

I was at a party yesterday talking to a couple of older Chapel Hill women wearing batik and other old school fabrics, and talk turned to politics.  To rile them up, I said outright that "Obama has failed."  It worked, and they pointed out that Obama had pushed through major legislation, including health care, stimulus, and financial reform, despite the fact that the Republicans were being the party of no really effectively.

This is all true, and these would be momentous accomplishments indeed for any legislator.  But Obama is not one anymore, he is an executive.  His job is not to get laws passed, but to manage the country to a better place, to execute and get things done.  The government cannot itself create enough jobs. He needs to bring his stakeholders along to where he wants them to go, and he has not done that.  He has been outfoxed by Karl Rove, Glenn Beck, Sarah Palin, and a bunch of other jackass freaks.  The business world has put on a very effective capital strike, holding lots of cash on their balance sheets and not hiring people because they are so scared. 

Obama hasn't convinced enough Americans that he's doing the right thing.  We may hope that the health care reform will end up being transformative enough to justify the tremendous sacrifice that has been made for it.