Daniel Henninger:
The ObamaCare train wreck is plowing through the White House in super slow-mo on screens everywhere, splintering reputations and presidential approval ratings. Audiences watch popeyed as Democrats in distress like Senators Kay Hagan, Mary Landrieu and Mark Pryor decide whether to cling to the driverless train or jump toward the tall weeds. The heartless compilers of the Washington Post/ABC poll asked people to pick a head-to-head matchup now between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney. Mitt won. This is the most amazing spectacle of mayhem and meltdown anyone has seen in politics since Watergate.
No question, it’s tough on Barack Obama. But what about the rest of us? For many Americans, the Obama leadership meltdown began five years ago.
In fall 2008, the U.S. suffered its worst financial crisis since the Depression. That wasn’t Barack Obama’s fault. But five years on, in the fall of 2013, the country’s economy is still sick.
Unemployed middle-aged men look in the mirror and see someone who may never work again. Young married couples who should be on the way up are living in their parents’ basement. Many young black men (official unemployment rate 28%; unofficial rate off the charts) have no prospect of work.
Washington these days kvetches a lot about what Healthcare.gov is doing to the Obama “legacy.” Far worse than ObamaCare, though, is that the 44th president in his second term presides over a great nation that is punching so far below its weight that large swaths of its people have lost heart.
For five years, news stories have chronicled the social and economic deterioration in America of people with no jobs or weak jobs.
Here’s a headline over a Gallup report: “In U.S. Fewer Believe ‘Plenty of Opportunity’ to Get Ahead.”
Two from The Wall Street Journal recently: “Parents Serving as Emergency Support for Adult Kids,” and “Workers Stay Put, Curbing Jobs Engine.”
On Tuesday, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development put out a report saying the U.S. has become a threat to global recovery. The OECD ratcheted down growth estimates almost everywhere for the rest of this year. For the euro-zone nations: -0.4%; for “emerging” India it’s down to 3%; South Korea: 2.7%.
As to the U.S., the OECD says growth for the rest of the year will fall back to 1.7%. That is about the average rate of U.S. economic growth for the entire Obama presidency.
That reminds me of a joke:
A Israeli doctor, a French doctor, a South African doctor and an American doctor were playing golf and trying to out-brag one another.
The South African doctor bragged, we took a heart out of a car accident victim, put it in a sick man and just 6 weeks later he’s back at work!
That’s nothing said the French doctor.
We took the testicles off a dying man, put them on another man and he was back at work in 4 weeks!
The Israeli bragged that his team took a part of a man’s brain out of his dying body, put it in a man who had suffered a stroke and he was back at work in only 2 weeks.
The American doctor said, we are way ahead of all of you!
We elected a man with no heart, no balls and no brains.
Now ALL of us are out looking for work.
Uncertainty has been the hallmark of Obama’s domestic financial policy.
Sure a few economic pundits try to downplay it.
But, even without it Obama has lost us how much on Tesla?
How much on ”green jobs?”
How much on redefining ”full-time job” as 30 hours or more a week?
Obama has added more uncertainty with his do-overs on ObamaCare.
His ”fixes,” simply mean smart people wait.
Who knows what he will do tomorrow?
What new changes here and there?
This is a terrible thing for an economy.