To paraphrase General George S. Patton, Americans love a winner.  And that completely explains Barack Obama’s approval ratings! ZING!  Man, this poor guy has the touch of death.  He has killed everything he has ever endorsed.  Socialized Healthcare, The Chicago Olympic bid, Cap and Trade, Copenhagen, reducing obesity in America, the election of Democrat party candidates in Democrat Party strongholds, The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien: all matters that Barack Obama has come out in support of and all doomed failures .  And the stink of failure is starting to stick to him.
Giving off that “Chief Engineer of the ‘Titanic’” vibe is bad juju for anybody but it is particularly lethal when you work in a field that only attracts megalomaniacs, sycophants, popularity seekers, and those with a near psychotic drive to be liked and powerful. And the only way to control those people, all of whom will not eat you alive because it is obvious to them that you will cast them into outer darkness if they do not please you, is to show them you can bend the world to your will. If you hadn’t guessed already, watching everything you put yourself on the line for fail does not show the political hoi polloi that you are the inevitable winner/ dispenser of favor they had better back.
Failing to get what you want is also dangerous with regards to the public at large. Americans don’t like being reminded that they are governed. They like to grumble about the crooks in Washington and pay attention to anything else. But they hate it when those crooks in Washington look like they can’t get along or agree on where the nation should go. This is because America grew up in the Industrial Revlution and loves efficiency above almost anything else. They may be able to understand and even enjoy a little good old Tammany Hall style kickbackery and corruption. Most Americans could probably accept that stealing from the public is unavoidable, especially when the congressmen they elect run on the “bringing home the bacon” platform. But Americans will not stand having their corrupt government waste their time failing to do what it set out to do. Americans may hate what Congress passes but they will not be deprived by a failed leadership of the huge amounts of bills they expect Congressmen to vote on and then use as fodder for their next campaign.
Poor President. If only he had managed to crush the resistance of a conservatives, moderates, almost half of Congress, and the Supreme Court he might now still be hated but at least he wouldn’t look like that most pathetic sight in politics, the guy who can’t get his way.
One guy who did manage to look like a winner this week was the newly deceased JD Salinger. While I never liked “Catcher in the Rye” apparently enough people did to make his dying at the very respectable age of 91 a huge national story. Salinger became a winner by creating one of the most self-absorbed, self-righteous, and irrational characters ever, a teenager named Holden Caulfield, a character who instantly connected with the most self-absorbed, self-righteous, and irrational demographic ever, teenagers. Somehow Caulfield’s obsessive rants about phonies resonated with a group filled with perpetual phonies, fakers who fake everything because they don’t know who they are yet. Salinger wrote a book and created a character that embodied the spirit of the worst generation, the Baby Boomers. And for that he is a winner. True, a winner who won by connecting with people who felt like losers. But still a loser who could get more support than the President of the United States.

-Bob

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