That Relentless Feeling of Constantly Falling

posted at 4:08 pm on January 4, 2010 by Howard Portnoy
[ Obama ]   

The title of this post is a reference to how one astronomer early in the space program described weightlessness. Another equated the sensation to that disturbing twilight state between wakefulness and sleep that sometimes prompts you to grab the edge of your mattress.

I wonder if Barack Obama has begun to experience a relentless feeling of constantly falling. Despite his repeated protestations that he would close Gunatanamo by the first of the year, that he would play the prophet Isaiah to Iran’s looney secular leader, that he would spend us out a recession, the world as president that he envisioned must have evaporated by now even for him.

And in place of the hosannas he was certain would be sung at his never-ending coronation as World’s Greatest Everything have been the relentlessly grim falling poll numbers. They arched upward slightly after the Senate made its Christmas Eve deadline of passing its version of the health care reform bill, but then reality set in once again. The War on Terror that had never existed reared its ugly head, he and his Homeland Security Secretary both dropped the ball in their initial responses to the narrowly averted disaster, and those dreaded poll numbers are back down to an even 49 percent aggregate.

But Obama has advisers, and they always know what to do. And the thing to do in this case, they decided, was shoot the messenger. As reported at Politico, Democrats have trained their rifles on the pollster Scott Rasmussen, the reasoning being that his data at best must be “the result of a flawed polling model and, at worst, designed to undermine Democratic politicians and the party’s national agenda.”

That’s gotta be it. What else could it be? Well, let’s examine the data. Rasmussen has the president today with an approval rating of 47 percent while Quinnipiac fixes his positives at 46 percent. Is the ineluctable conclusion to draw that Quinnipiac also has it in for the Dems? And how about Gallup? Those guys have been around forever, and they have Obama at 49 percent — only two ticks higher than Rasmussen. Are they also using flawed data-collection models?

First, the administration went after FOX News Channel, and that worked like a charm. Obama — a first for a president — has even called out specific FOX commentators by name. Good thing that doesn’t look petty or demean the office.

Here’s a thought: Maybe one way for Obama to overcome that relentless feeling of constantly falling, and certainly this would be novel for him, would be to try leading the country that elected him as its leader. Try being honest with the American people. Admit that the term “saved job” is a fictional construct of your administration and not a genuine measure of economic health. Admit that if we have in fact turned a corner economically, as you insist, it is not because of your stimulus. Or at least admit that you erred in your prediction that the stimulus would prevent the rate of unemployment from going above 8.5 percent.

When Congress presents you with a health care bill in February, as they likely will, tear it up. Tell the electorate that this bill is not the fix to a damaged health care system that the country needs but a recipe for disaster. Then listen — for the time — to the minority party and give serious consideration to their ideas, many of which are very good and will cure current health-care ills without costing an arm and a leg or taking the country in a direction it doesn’t want to go on.

Or . . . you can continue listening to the voices that have been advising you since the start. In which case that feeling of constantly falling is to going to grow more intense until at last the ground comes up to meet you.

Cross-posted at Zombie Contentions

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