What a depressing presidency Barack Obama has wrought.
Waltzing into office five years ago with the media’s shameless aid on a high-school-style campaign pledge of “Hope and Change,” the former community organizer from Chicago spent his last press conference of the year apologizing for everything he’s done wrong — then announcing he’s “eager to skip town” to Hawaii for “a couple days of sleep and sun.” Well, 17, but who’s counting.
One truly has to wonder how the vaunted White House staff of advisers and sycophants came up with the battle plan for Friday’s presser, the last of a terrible year: “Hey, what if he goes out, lists all the things he did wrong, apologizes repeatedly, then promises to do better next year? Anyone? OK, how about he goes out and makes a few balloon animals. C’mon, gimme’ some help, people!”
Sure, he had a compliant press filling the White House briefing room, ready to lob softballs, but still, he’d have to explain a lot: The Obamacare mess, the NSA spying debacle, America’s appeasement of Iran, the gridlock on Capitol Hill that he engendered — the list goes on and on. Perhaps that explains why he was nearly 20 minutes late to his own press conference.
Right at the open, this: “When you take this altogether, has this been the worst year of your presidency?” a reporter asked.
Mr. Obama dodged, blaming Congress for inaction. But then he named two things his administration got exactly right. “We don’t always get attention for it,” he said before citing the “ConnectEd” program and a “manufacturing hub that we set up in Youngstown.” So there, America, it isn’t all bad news.
