Back in what now almost appear to be the good old days under a good old Democrat, as I said here,
I used to say that if Bill Clinton became a hypocrite, it would represent a big improvement. (To be a hypocrite, you have to believe something while acting or speaking as though you don’t, and I was not sure that Clinton actually believed anything.)
In a similar fashion I now think that Obama would have been a much better president if he had been a hyper-partisan. If he had been concerned primarily, or even exclusively, with pursuing policies that would help Democrats get elected he would not have done as much damage to the country as he has in fact done.
If he had concentrated on rebuilding the economy and creating an environment in which business could create jobs he would probably have ensured his own landslide re-election and entrenched the Democrats in power for a decade or more. Instead, by not letting the crisis “go to waste” and taking off on a tear of deficit-increasing, non-productive federal spending in an effort to make himself a “transformative” president, he’s responsible for decimating the Democrats in 2009 and 2010, likely limited himself to one term, and made the “shellacking” the Congressional Dems took in 2010 the new normal, at least until his experiments have been curtailed or reversed.
