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Obama’s
 
Failure
 
of 
 
Credibility
 
 By
 
 Daniel Greenfield 
 
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
The cause of Obama’s freefall in the polls can be reduced downto one simple word, “Credibility.”
Credibility
is the
board game
 of politics and the rules are fairly simple. Politicians begin theirterms with a certain amount of credibility points that they canspend either on policies that will benefit the public or their ownpet projects, hopefully both.The politician gains credibility points if things are going wellfor the average American, and loses credibility points whenthings go badly and his policies fail to make things any better.That of course is how politics works. You either deliver or you don’t. And if you don’t, youmight get to keep your job if you’re lucky, but don’t count on much support from anyone butyour hard core backers. Because while American politics are on life support, they haven’t goneso far down the toilet that people will forget their own
economic problems
just to cheer apolitician for nothing more than having a big smile and appearing constantly on TV. Not for longanyway.As Obama has now discovered, the American people can be excessively tolerant, but they aren’tstupid. And instead of realizing that with the
Wall Street
and auto union bailouts, he was actuallyspending credibility points without the average American having anything to show for it, Obamaand his lackeys actually thought that getting into the White House meant an endless free ride.Now they are slowly beginning to realize they were wrong.The American people gave Obama a lot of credibility
points
to start with, partly because of hisoptimistic can do rhetoric and because of the historical aspect of the election. The formerprobably weighed more heavily than the latter because Americans love to hear from a man whovows to tackle and beat tough problems. On and on they listened to promises of massive jobcreation, only to see job losses pile up. They might have been more understanding if Obama hadactually looked like he was trying to create jobs, instead of mainly working to protect the jobs of his supporters at the cost of spending huge sums of taxpayer money.With ObamaCare, the administration was out of credibility chips, yet like a gambler in Vegastossing away his last dime, somehow thought the free ride would never end. But with no realcredibility left, the combined opposition and concerns quickly threw up a wall that the ObamaAdministration and its media allies proved unable to steamroll. The missing factor again wascredibility. And the longer the debate dragged on, the less credibility chips Obama had left untilhe was playing well in negative numbers territory.
Obama’s worst sin in the health care hard sell was playing the American peoplefor suckers
 
Obama’s worst sin in the health care hard sell was playing the American people for suckers. Hadhe given real estimates of ObamaCare’s costs, admitted that middle class tax hikes would benecessary to pay for it, that medicare recipients would suffer, that people might not be able tokeep their doctors and that some rationing would be involved—support for ObamaCare wouldprobably be better than it is today. Instead Obama not only lied, but he lied about things thatanyone who has actually had health
insurance
or can do simple math could see were not true.And that more than anything else torpedoed ObamaCare, because it was a failure of credibilitythat made Obama seem either completely incompetent or a pathological liar. For nowincompetent appears to be the opinion du jour, but that can quickly change if Obama continueslying so indefensibly that even an AP fact check can’t help but after a few embarrassed coughs,determine that Obama is just wrong.Meanwhile with the unerring instinct that fanatics have for playing Sisyphus, Obama’ssupporters have responded to every setback by going on the attack. Which may be sensiblebehavior in the opposition, but is destructive for the dominant party in a democratic system. Eachtime Democrats go on the offensive, the only thing they do is stir up controversy. Each time theytry to demonize their opponents, they only bring more attention to what their opponents aresaying. After giving millions of dollars in free publicity for Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck,Obama’s media defenders helped boost Joe Wilson’s campaign war chest and national profile.
Governing by attack may work in Venezuela or Russia
The end result of their efforts turned the story from “Obama Gives Health Care Speech” to“Congressman Shouts Liar at Obama.” Dogmatic leftists unable to let go of their attack doginstincts counted that as a victory, when they should have been really tearing their hair out. Notbecause they made Joe Wilson more popular, though that may come back to bite them in the end,especially if more Republican congressmen and contenders decide that confrontation is a shortcut to a national profile and grass roots support, but because it once again made Obama’smessage controversial.Every attempt to shift the issue to personal attacks on critics of ObamaCare, has only madeObamaCare more controversial. Yet the left is stuck in war mode, gleefully recycling theircampaign tactics, without being able to realize that their campaign ended at
the White House
.Governing by attack may work in Venezuela or Russia, but that requires having your own secretpolice and being able to murder protesters and political dissidents. In a Democracy it simplymakes you look shrill, incompetent, and yes controversial. And the public is less likely to supportpolicies that are seen as controversial, and more likely to begin reading the fine print.The Obama Administration has sought the authors of their own failure in some “Vast RightWing Conspiracy”, without grasping that the source of the stench of failure is in themselves. TheObama Administration squandered its credibility early and often, failing to connect with theconcerns of the average voter, and using promises about jobs and the economy as
windowdressing
for Van Jones’ loony green jobs plan for destroying capitalism and as payoffs tocontributors and supporters. And right when
the public
was most desperate for results, Obamaand his Oompah Loompahs instead rolled out a massively expensive
health care
program thatwas exactly not what the American public wanted to deal with right now.
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