We Know Him

Peggy Noonan is certainly no friend of the President. But as a columnist for The Wall Street Journal, she is one of the most astute observers of the political scene. As she watches the evolving Presidential campaign, she suspects that despite some early polls that show President Obama in the lead, despite a main stream media that is deeply committed to his reelection and aggressively averse to in-depth reporting of news that might hurt him, Obama may be in trouble. She writes:

It's interesting that the Obama campaign isn't using what incumbent presidents always sooner or later use, either straight out or subliminally. And that is "You know me. I've been president for almost four years, you don't know that other guy. In a high-stakes world do you really want someone new?"

You know why they're not using "You know me"? Because we know him, and it's not a plus.

There is a growing air of incompetence around Mr. Obama's White House. It was seen again this week in Supreme Court arguments over the administration's challenge to Arizona's attempted crackdown on illegal immigration. As Greg Stohr of Bloomberg News wrote, the court seemed to be disagreeing with the administration's understanding of federal power: "Solicitor General Donald Verrilli . . . met resistance across ideological lines. . . . Even Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the court's only Hispanic and an Obama appointee, told Verrilli his argument is 'not selling very well.' " This follows last month's embarrassing showing over the constitutionality of parts of ObamaCare.

All of this looks so bush league, so scattered. Add it to the General Services Administration, to Solyndra, to the other scandals, and you get a growing sense that no one's in charge, that the administration is paying attention to politics but not day-to-day governance. The two most public cabinet members are Eric Holder at Justice and Janet Napolitano at Homeland Security.

Holder is presiding over a serious scandal. No, not the Secret Service Scandal or the GSA Scandal, but "Fast and Furious"—a story about gun-running sponsored by the Justice Department for reasons that are not sufficiently clear—that has gotten relatively little coverage in the MSM because it is potentially explosive for this President. Napolitano presides over the TSA which, like most big government agencies, emphasizes process over common sense (why else do a pat-down search of a little boy with MS) and is generally disliked by by the flying public.

Noonan is right. We know Barack Obama, and what see is all flash and lots of style, but little competence at governing and almost no attempt to lead all Americans in a bi-partisan manner. We see a President who continually tries to change the subject—the "war on women," "fairness," "corporate greed," "millionaires and billionaires," but never says anything substantive about our nation's crippling debt and looming entitlement crisis, and NEVER proposes anything substantive to address them in a meaningful way. We see a President who divides us during difficult times (a cheap, despicable political trick)—it's us and them, rather than all of us.

Peggy Noonan has it right. We see a President who is in bigger trouble than the pundits believe. And the trouble is of his own making.