Will President Obama’s Legacy Be Worse Than President Carter?

It is probably a little premature to be discussing Obama’s legacy but I could not help noticing that his own party is starting to snipe at him. Democratic candidates are finding it very difficult to be loyal to the party and get elected in the Fall. They can see the writing on the wall. It is hard to talk about important political issues when they are spending most of their time trying to downplay the pratfalls of the Administration. The Administration has spent the last six years claiming that their policy failures were because they were stupid and not partisan. Now Democratic candidates have to go out and convince independents that Democrats are not as stupid as previously thought. Apologizing for policy failures is a ball and chain issue that keeps Democratic campaigns struggling with independent voters. Unfortunately Democratic candidates also have to explain why there are so few policy successes and it is not just the Republicans who are cynical. I think most people would not have any difficulty agreeing that killing Osama bin Laden was this Administration’s most important accomplishment over the last six years. The problem for the Democrats is that most people are hard pressed to identify the second or third most important accomplishment. I doubt anyone except the Democratic faithful or the chronically ill would try to say that the Affordable Care Act was a success. The health care lies by the President are still a bigger deal with most voters than the meager results. Arguably the biggest issue should have been the economy. Some years back the Clinton campaign probably won the 1992 presidential election by focusing the public on the saying, “It’s the economy, stupid“. Remarkably this Administration is still looking for a success in the economy that they can lay claim to. After six years most people still see an economy that looks like it is stuck in stall mode with a seriously ugly long term unemployment problem. Our foreign policy is a mess. What was our policy in Benghazi, Syria, and the Ukraine? No one seems to know. How is it that Sarah Palin seems to have a better grasp of Putin’s political objectives in the Ukraine than the State Department? This sure looks like a broad policy failure. You cannot get around the facts that the Administration has been short on accomplishments and long on scandals. Now the Administration is stumbling its way through the VA scandal in a way that is beginning to incense Democrats. After six years of one scandal after another even Democrats are beginning to wonder if this Administration will ever get its wheel out of the rut? The frustration level of the American people is rapidly approaching the level I last saw when President Carter was in office. For an administration unaccustomed to serious questions from their friends, this could get ugly.