By DOUGLAS MACKINNON
Posted 08/03/2012 05:33 PM ET
Posted 08/03/2012 05:33 PM ET
The social experiment that was Barack Obama's election and presidency is over. Way over.
As one who was born in the heart of Boston and worked the political
world of Washington for 20 years, I know quite a few Democrats. Some are
family, and many are close friends. Most voted for Obama in 2008. None
at this point is inclined to vote for him in 2012.
Why? Because they view him as an abject failure across the board and
have decided to put the welfare of their families and themselves before
the empty rhetoric of the Obama campaign before it's too late.
Because of my time in Washington and past positions there, I also
know and am friends with quite a few journalists. I speak with many on a
regular basis, and it's safe to say that the majority of them lean left
politically.
That said, in off-the-record conversations with my left-leaning
journalistic friends, not one believes Obama is going to win
re-election. Not one. While most believe Mitt Romney to be a weak
candidate, they are still convinced that he will comfortably defeat
Obama on Nov. 6.
These liberal and jaded journalists privately admit that Obama has
been exposed for what he is: an overhyped, self-invented candidate with
no real-world experience who has been frozen into inaction by the
enormity of the office he holds.
Obama has no domestic policy to speak of. He has no foreign policy to
speak of. He has no jobs program to speak of. His signature health care
plan is driving doctors out of the field, crippling small businesses
and putting thousands of Americans out of work.
The Obama of 2012 has nothing positive to run on. Nothing. And guess
what? He, more than anyone else in his White House or campaign, knows
it.
He knows his election and presidency were social engineering gone
wrong. He knows his biography is unraveling faster than the baseball
that Roy Hobbs crushed into the rain in the movie "The Natural." He
knows that he has run out of all options but one: Go negative on Mitt
Romney 24/7 and hope a heretofore compromised mainstream media will once
again unethically act as his surrogate.
Unfortunately for Obama, two massive holes exist in his "demonize Romney with an assist from the media" campaign tactic.
First, most Americans who are paying attention to this contest have
come to the conclusion that Romney is a very decent and moral person who
does have a fairly impressive business background coupled with some
other real-world experience.
Second, as mentioned above, more and more members of the Journalists
In The Tank For Obama club seem to be having second thoughts. As one of
my friends in that club said, "Hey, we have kids in school, have to pay
mortgages and want to keep our jobs just like everyone else."
In 2008, Obama won a fairly impressive victory against an incredibly
weak and inept Republican challenger. To pull off that victory, Obama
had pull a significant number of Republican and independent voters away
from John McCain. To his credit and to his ability to spin himself along
with the American voters' sense of fairness and history, Obama did just
that.
In 2008, Obama was an unformed piece of pottery clay molded into
shape by his own false rhetoric combined with a media narrative that
sought to canonize him in anticipation of having his face carved into
Mount Rushmore.
Today, in 2012, Barack Obama stands on his own — an unqualified man who did not have the gifts to grow into the presidency.
While noble in many respects, the social experiment that was Barack
Obama's election and presidency is coming to its natural and expected
conclusion.
• MacKinnon is a former White House and Pentagon official and author of the memoir "Rolling Pennies in the Dark."
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