Column: Re-elect and we'll see how much worse it can be

Glenn Harlan Reynolds | USATODAY

An amusing Tea Party billboard features President Obama saying "Things Could Be Worse. Re-Elect Me And I'll Prove It!"

Well, it would be more amusing if it weren't so obviously true. By any reasonable measure, Obama's is a failed presidency. The stimulus failed to stimulate, with unemployment remaining vastly higher than administration economists predicted -- even without the stimulus, much less with it. (An awful lot of the stimulus money also seemed to wind up in the hands of Obama cronies and contributors, too.) And after a brief downtick last month, the unemployment rate is back up in October.

Promises to rebuild our diplomacy from the allegedly-dumb days of the Bush administration have also gone unfulfilled. The "reset" with Russia was a failure, allowing Russia to counter U.S. interests across the globe. Obama's support of the "Arab Spring" has backfired, with Sharia-fueled Islamist governments springing up all over.

In Libya, things are worse yet, with a deadly debacle in Benghazi that cost the lives of four diplomats, including our ambassador, and would have cost more except for two heroic CIA operatives who rescued as many as 24 people at the risk of -- and, in the case of two, the cost of -- their lives. This was followed by an administration cover-up -- still unraveling as officials desperately try to keep the lid on until after the votes are counted -- and an absurd, weeks-long effort to blame everything on an obscure YouTube filmmaker. Who, conveniently, is in jail on trumped up charges.

We're not doing any better with the ongoing fight in Syria; the Pakistanis don't like us because of drone strikes; in Afghanistan our troops are being shot by our Afghan "allies"; and Iran continues to press on toward becoming a nuclear power.

In domestic politics, Obama hasn't exactly covered himself with glory. He chose, mistakenly, to focus on health care instead of economic recovery, and we wound up with a bill packed with giveaways for special interests and still highly unpopular with the American people, rammed through using legislative technicalities. Even Democrat Douglas Wilder of Virginia, the first black elected governor since Reconstruction, is criticizing Obama.

Steve Contoro writes in The Washington Examiner, "Wilder, an emphatic Obama supporter in 2008, said his fellow Democrat should have focused more on creating jobs during his first term and faulted the president for failing to keep his campaign promise to bridge the partisan gap in Washington."

"I think he's governed left of center and didn't focus on jobs and economic recovery," Wilder told The Washington Examiner.

That's right. And his arrogance ("I won") and inflexibility have ensured that not much would get done. Obama hasn't even passed a budget and didn't even get any Democratic votes in the Senate) though we've somehow managed to run trillion dollar deficits every year anyway.Put it all together, and you've got the portrait of a failed presidency. It is time for him to go.

This shouldn't be surprising. When elected, Obama was inexperienced: Most of his career in government was in the Illinois State Senate, with only a couple of years experience in the U.S. Senate, most of which he spent running for president. He had no private-sector experience, no executive experience (beyond the Harvard Law Review) and little knowledge of the United States beyond the major metropolitan areas of New York, Boston and Chicago. It would have been a miracle if he had turned out to be competent.

In 2008, lots of people expected that miracle. It didn't happen. Barack Obama has failed. It is time for him to go.

Glenn Harlan Reynolds is professor of law at the University of Tennessee. He blogs at InstaPundit.com.

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