VOTERS DISLIKE SURPRISES:

Losing Control: Obama needs to reassert command of the agenda in Washington (Michael Hirsch, Feb 4, 2009, Newsweek)

Barack Obama began making his comeback Wednesday, apparently aware that he has all but lost control of the agenda in Washington at a time when he simply can't afford to do so. Obama's biggest problem isn't Taxgate—which resulted in the Terrible Tuesday departure of his trusted friend, Tom Daschle, and the defanging of his Treasury secretary, Tim Geithner. Nor is the No. 1 problem that the president can't seem to win a single Republican vote for his stimulus package. That's a symptom, not a cause. The reason Obama is getting so few votes is that he is no longer setting the terms of the debate over how to save the economy. Instead the Republican Party—the one we thought lost the election—is doing that. And the confusion and delay this is causing could realize Obama's worst fears, turning "crisis into a catastrophe," as the president said Wednesday.

Obama's desire to begin a "post-partisan" era may have backfired. In his eagerness to accommodate Republicans and listen to their ideas over the past week, he has allowed the GOP to turn the haggling over the stimulus package into a decidedly stale, Republican-style debate over pork, waste and overspending.

Of course, if it were that stale it wouldn't be working so effectively, would it? Mr. Hirsch misses the far more obvious reason that the UR has lost control of the agenda: he didn't run on one. If he thought spending a trillion dollars on Democrat's pet pork projects would be good for the economy he could have made that a central part of his campaign and let voters know he planned pushing for it to the exclusion of all other business once he was elected. Anyone recall pork being mentioned positively during the campaign? To the extent it was ever mentioned it was used as a weapon to attack Congress. All that's going on now is that the tables are turned.

MORE:
Generic Congressional Ballot: Support for GOP Rises on Generic Congressional Ballot (Rasmussen Reports, February 03, 2009)

Following the unanimous Republican opposition to the economic stimulus bill proposed by and House Democrats, the GOP has narrowed the gap this week on the Generic Congressional Ballot.

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone surveys found that the Democrats’ lead is down to four percentage points--42% of voters said they would vote for their district’s Democratic candidate while 38% said they would choose the Republican (see crosstabs). [...]

Over the past year, Democratic support has ranged from a low of 42% to a high of 50%. In that same time period, Republicans have been preferred by 34% to 41% of voters nationwide.

Obama losing the stimulus message war (JEANNE CUMMINGS | 2/5/09 , Politico)

At this crucial juncture in the push to pass an economic recovery package, President Obama finds himself in the most unlikely of places: He is losing the message war.

Despite Obama’s sky high personal approval ratings, polls show support has declined for his stimulus bill since Republicans and their conservative talk-radio allies began railing against what they labeled as pork barrel spending within it.

The sheer size of it – hovering at about $900 billion — has prompted more protests that are now causing some moderate and conservative Democrats to flinch and, worse, hesitate.

The anxiety over lost momentum seemed almost palpable this week as the president in television interviews voiced frustration with his White House’s progress and the way his recovery program was being demonized as a Democratic spending frenzy.

Obama Agonistes (R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr. on 2.5.09, American Spectator)

Egads, it is going to be a long four years! It is only two weeks since the Prophet Obama's inauguration, and already he has revived memories of Boy Clinton's first 100 days. Political observers with a sense of history might well ask whether the Obama Administration will approximate the adolescent incompetence of Clinton Administration or the Pecksniffian pratfalls of the Carter Administration. Presidential historian that I am, allow me to caution my fellow citizens that here in the vestibule of the Obama Administration it is probably too early to say. Yet with the economy in crisis and American national security in the hands of a starry-eyed novice, one can argue that we are in for a reprise of the Carter years complete with the self-righteous pout.

I had wanted to suspend criticism of our incoming president for a few months until his bungling became obvious. As I wrote during the campaign, it is inconceivable that a modern-day president with only four years in the Senate (and but three terms in a state legislature) could be equal to the demands of this high office. Still, I thought it would take a few months for President Obama to reveal his ineptitude. Well, it only took two weeks.

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Posted by Orrin Judd at February 5, 2009 6:48 AM