Fred Barnes in the Weekly Standard

Obama's Fall
How quickly the president and congressional Democrats have turned to tricks and ploys and sham events.

How the mighty have fallen! Only seven or eight months ago, President Obama and congressional Democrats were on their way to remaking America along liberal lines and positioning themselves for decades of political dominance. Their lopsided majorities in the House and Senate, plus the White House, gave them unassailable command of Washington.

Today, they still have those majorities and the presidency, but they’re no longer in command. Their hopes of enacting the most ambitious agenda of liberal legislation since the days of FDR and the Depression are over. Now they’re reduced to stunts, tricks, and gambits usually associated with embattled presidents and minority parties.

Obama’s invitation to Republicans to join him at a bipartisan health care summit next week has been dubbed the “Blair House stunt” by political analyst Jay Cost. (They’ll meet at the Blair House across the street from the White House.) It’s supposed to give Democrats and Republicans a chance to compromise on health care reform--on
ObamaCare, as it’s been nicknamed.

Fat chance. The invitation makes it clear that Republicans would be props in the televised summit as Obama and Democrats tout their own bill. Both houses of Congress have passed “comprehensive health care legislation,” it says. “…The Blair House meeting is the next step in the process.”

If that isn’t plain enough about what Democrats are up to, the strategy that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is currently pursuing on ObamaCare should remove any doubts. She has concocted a three-step process to pass the Democratic bill without any input from Republicans (as usual).

More here on the Weekly Standard blog.

Correct Policy - Disappointing Speech

Barnes: A Disappointing Speech in Support of the Right Policy

President Obama’s speech on Afghanistan was disappointing. Yes, the policy is right: more troops, a counter-insurgency strategy, a stronger alliance with Pakistan. But the personal commitment of the president to pursue the war against the Taliban and al Qaeda until they are defeated was not there. Obama did not take ownership of the war. It’s still the war in Afghanistan, not Obama’s War.

Maybe the president wants it that way. It may keep him from experiencing the fate of Lyndon Johnson, whose presidency suffered -- indeed was all but destroyed -- by his failure in Vietnam. But it will also keep him from gaining the vindication that George Bush has earned for his decision to order a “surge” that allowed America to prevail in Iraq.

I had hoped Obama would declare that nothing will deter him, as commander-in-chief, from prevailing in Afghanistan. But it turns out a lot of things might deter him. He listed a few of them: the cost of the war, its length (if more than 18 months from January 2010), the failure of Afghans to step up to the task sufficiently. He hedged.
Americans and our allies were looking for more, I believe. To have rallied the country and the world, Obama needed to indicate he would lead a fight to win in Afghanistan,
with the help of allies if possible, but with the armed forces of the U.S. alone if necessary. He didn’t say anything like that. He didn’t come close.

The result of the speech, I suspect, will be stagnant but still poor poll numbers here. He may have halted the downward drift of public support for the war for the time being. I doubt he persuaded any NATO countries to deploy more combat troops. Since he didn’t give a number -- 10,000 has been used by his aides -- he must not except very many to be offered.

I couldn’t be the only person who thought Obama once again both scapegoated and slighted George W. Bush. Early on in his administration, Obama recalled that he had agreed to a “longstanding request for more troops” in Afghanistan, implying that Bush had turned that request down. I don’t think that’s quite accurate.

And Obama praised the military for the success of the “surge” in Iraq without mentioning the person who -- against the advice of nearly everyone in Washington -- ordered that troop increase, Bush. Obama tacitly acknowledged the surge had worked, though he didn’t seem to remember that he’d insisted that it would worsen conditions in Iraq.

Despite the shortcomings of the speech, Obama made the right policy decision. He deserves credit for that. It won’t go down well with the antiwar, pacifist left wing of his party. That’s not only his base. It’s his political home. Up to now, the president hadn’t done anything to upset any of the constituency groups of the Democratic party. Now he has. Thank heavens for that.