November 14, 2010
HE'S HAD WORSE:
Expert: past 10 days have been worst of President Obama's 'political life' (Kenneth R. Bazinet, 11/13/10, NY DAILY NEWS)
After watching his party take a beating in the midterm elections, Obama wasn't able to secure even a symbolic victory on a trip that was expected to give him plenty of opportunities to claim a win."This certainly was the worst 10 days of his political life," said Baruch College political scientist Doug Muzzio. "Given that he's not going to be able to get any domestic achievements with the Republicans in control of the House ... if he doesn't do it in foreign policy that's a big problem for him.
"He came back with bupkis [Yiddish for 'nothing']."
Obama's inauspicious 10-day, four-nation trip included a failure to land an anticipated slam dunk free trade agreement with South Korea.
No ten days could ever be as definitively disastrous for the UR as the single day of August 28, 2008 was (although August 23 wasn't auspicious either and that gives him a five day stretch). But that evening of the 28th he gave not just a weak convention speech rhetorically but one that squandered an opportunity programmatically.
Up until then he had campaigned on nothing and it had worked quite well. He looked likely to be the next president. But in anticipation of that eventuality it was imperative for him to begin running on an agenda so that he could dictate the terms of his first couple years, which is genuinely the exclusive window for getting anything done in a presidency. Instead, he stuck to pabulum and left himself with an administration about nothing.