Fred Barnes recently offered Carolina Journal Radio listeners an assessment our 44th president’s opening year. Now Barnes’ Weekly Standard colleague William Kristol offers his thoughts on the same topic:
We survived 2009.
Without minimizing the damage that’s been done–yes, we’re aware of a minor piece of health care legislation whose passage looks likely–we can take some reassurance from this: The Obama administration (so far) hasn’t succeeded in doing too much damage to the American economy. Major parts of American society and the American polity are resisting the allure of a slide into European decadence. The climate change fearmongers are increasingly discredited, and Copenhagen was a farce.
What’s more, our soldiers’ remarkable achievements in 2007-08 in Iraq aren’t being frittered away, and General Stanley McChrystal is getting more troops to try to achieve a similar outcome in Afghanistan. The Iranian regime looks shakier than it did a year ago–though no thanks go to the Obama administration on this one. Gitmo is still open, and most of the detainees are still there. In foreign policy in particular, the Obama administration has been mugged by reality. The question, as the late Mike Scully once put it, is whether they will have the nerve to press charges.
The American public seem to have decided–personal goodwill toward the man notwithstanding–that President Obama is not doing a particularly good job, that more big government liberalism is the last thing we need, and that, yes, American exceptionalism isn’t a bad thing or an out-of-date idea.
Since this post focuses on Bill Kristol, you might be as amused as I was to revisit this video clip from October 2007, when Kristol handicapped the presidential race.