Jim Geraghty writes for National Review Online that after eight years of President Obama, Americans in 2016 might be ready for something completely different.
The president who once declared “cynicism” to be his “real rival,” is leaving a more cynical electorate in his wake. In 2007 and 2008, Obama made a slew of relatively non-partisan government accountability promises — to reduce the number of campaign donors nominated to plum ambassadorial posts, not to hire lobbyists in policymaking positions, to disclose all meetings with staff and lobbyists, and to give the American public five days to opportunity to review and comment on potential legislation on the White House website before signing bills into law. Obama broke those promises, and the public now has good reason to doubt that any future president would keep them.
Since January 2011, the overall tone and style of American governance has been a Democratic president alternatingly blaming and ignoring a Republican Congress, periodically insisting he has nothing to do with mind-blowingly appalling scandals involving the Department of Veterans Affairs, Department of Health and Human Services, the National Security Agency, Internal Revenue Service, Environmental Protection Agency, U.S. State Department, the intelligence community, the Centers for Disease Control, and the U.S. Secret Service.
Should Americans feel better about 2016? The Democrats appear likely to nominate Hillary Rodham Clinton, who has been one of the most powerful individuals in Washington since 1993, and who had a hand in all of this administration’s foreign-policy decisions in the first term. It will be fascinating to watch the attempted populist tone coming from a woman who is the walking embodiment of America’s governing class, with her $250,000 speeches, Wall Street friends, and practically every group in America currying favor.
But there are reasons for the public to doubt how much a Republican president would change Washington. If elected, former Florida governor Jeb Bush would be the third member of the Bush family to be president in 24 years, and continue the GOP’s recent tradition of nominating sons of past elites –the other son of a president, the son of an admiral, and then the son of a governor. The last era of all-Republican government, from 2002 to 2006, left many conservatives and not-so-conservatives deeply disappointed, with a still-expanding government, embarrassing scandals, and the seeds planted for the housing bubble to burst. …
… If the adoration of Obama in 2007 and 2008 stand as a cautionary tale, then perhaps the current moment of cynicism represents the pendulum swinging too far in the other direction. America may not need a “Lightworker,” as a New Age columnist deemed Obama in 2008, but it needs a potential president it can trust and count on. Somebody who says what he means and means what he says. Someone who’s respectful of those who disagree but forthright and direct about what he (or she!) believes and intends to do in office. Someone who has a solid track record of making promises and keeping them, even when it isn’t convenient.
