The Book on Obama

By R. EMMETT TYRRELL, JR.

Supposedly this White House has just made a furious attempt to sink a book, Confidence Men: Wall Street, Washington, and the Education of a President, by Ron Suskind, which came out September 20. Jay Carney, the White House spinmeister, spoke ill of it. Numerous former White House staffers spoke ill of it. Carney said, "one passage seems to be lifted almost entirely from Wikipedia." Why would a respected writer want to do that? I suspect that the White House is going to be as effective in sinking Suskind as it has been in keeping President Barack Obama's polling numbers lofty.

The book tells us what we Obama critics have all been saying since early on. This President is the most incompetent and ideologically rigid president in American history. For my part I began the refrain in July of 2009 with a comparison to Andrew Johnson, who at least had the excuse that he was drunk most of the time that he was in the White House. I continued it in August of 2010 when I complimented Jimmy Carter by saying he is no longer the worst president of modern times (a compliment that has as yet gone unacknowledged, I might add). And I have continued with monotonous regularity, hazarding the prospect of becoming a bore. Yet I suppose one is never a bore when one calls a Liberal hansdoodle a hansdoodle even when he sits in the White House and has been called all manner of genius by our Liberal elites. Remember when the "historian" Michael Beschloss said Obama's "IQ is off the charts"? There will come a day when Michael explains that he was saying Obama registered "off the charts" at the opposite end of genius.

How are all the Liberal sages going to get out of their absurd exaggerations of Obama's modest gifts? Increasingly they admit that Obama has chosen the wrong policies, but he speaks so beautifully -- using a teleprompter for the most measly address. Ah, but he is so forceful. So is his former chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, when he dons his tutu. But he is curious, adventurous, a sponge for new ideas. Actually he has been a hopeless socialist, lost in Fabian abstractions.

Most of this becomes clear as you lug yourself through Suskind. Skip the first 150 pages. The author needs an editor. Settle with Suskind's discussion of the fights between the boys and the girls on the White House staff, and Obama's utterly insensitive meeting with the aggrieved ladies at a dinner he held to placate them. One, a notably dumpy economist with all the sex appeal of Paul Krugman, complains that "I felt like a piece of meat." She has the catchphrase wrong, of course, unless she was wearing a bikini. Yet it tells you how confused the Democratic feminists have become, even the economists.

Move on to Suskind's first quote from economist Larry Summers complaining to economist Peter Orszag that "We're home alone. There's no adult in charge." Settle on page 365 where the speculations of us Obama critics are pretty much vindicated. There is Obama's inability to make a decision, his "drift," his "loss of interest," and Summers once again. Orszag is quoted as telling Suskind, "Larry would say [to Obama], 'I'll make my argument first; you can go after me.'" Orszag then recalls to Suskind something Suskind was to hear from countless others, "I'm thinking, 'I can't believe he's talking to the president that way.' I just don't know why Obama didn't say, 'I made that decision a week ago. Just do what I say.'" Well, Obama probably did not make that decision a week ago. In another meeting, after "a dozen arguments," Suskind writes, "Obama, in a voice that was softly dispirited, said, 'Well, if you guys can't agree, I mean, we don't have to do it.'" As I say, this is from one page. The book continues, and makes very painful reading even for me in all my vindication.

Suskind contains his narrative to Obama's economic policy and, to a lesser degree, healthcare. There is nothing in the book about foreign policy or the way this President has conducted two foreign wars and a worldwide effort against terrorism. My agents tell me Obama's conduct of foreign affairs and of the war on terror are even more appalling.

Somewhere in the deadly proceedings Suskind calls in one of the President's still happy servitors, David Axelrod, who still can sing of Obama's "broad intellectual curiosity. He just fluidly moves from one thing to another." Ah, note those fluid moves, and Axelrod assures us that "Obama will be one of history's seminal presidents." I suppose that is true if our history is to include national decline. I, however, see a better future.