There was a fun article by Dana Milbank in the Washington Post today, claiming that Obama is enjoying himself these days, and that it’s better to be lucky than smart. In Obama's luck gets better, Milbank writes:
Obama suddenly seems to be enjoying himself quite a bit, and no wonder: He just might be the luckiest man alive.
Although the observations are true – the Republican presidential candidates are clowns, a fact which have been noted by observers from Fidel Castro to Daniel Radcliffe, and Obama is in a good mood - I respectfully disagree with the analysis.
First of all, Obama has not been that lucky in all of his opponents. Does anyone remember Hillary Clinton? She was very, very good, and was projected initially to win. Obama campaigned brilliantly against her – but so politely that she joined him as SoS (and I think she has done fabulously).
Second, Obama has been unlucky in many other areas. FOX News campaigns mercilessly against him. A large section of the population believes he is Muslim; that he was not born in the US; that health care is equal to a death panel (I spend a lot of time overseas and I can assure you that the rest of the world was dumbfounded at people campaigning against their own interests). The Congress has been horrible – Senators refusing to OK the most benign of appointments, and the House! And some things were truly bad luck – the Greek crisis, and to some extent, the BP oil spill (although both were caused by cultures of greed, I don’t think Obama could have done much – perhaps he could have reorganized the departments in charge of inspecting oil drills, but he did have a lot of other things to do when he arrived in the White House).
Third, the “bad” things that have been happening in the Republican party – which make Obama look lucky - were simply inevitable and a result of their own policies. They have long been a coalition of the very rich manipulating the uninformed, who cling to guns and religion and hating the Other. So in order to win the nomination they need to race to the right and the bottom. But even the conservatives have finally noticed that the very rich aren’t really representing them – and so despite whatever the Republican establishment says, the conservatives simply don’t want to vote for Romney.
Instead the Republicans remaining to run things are so incompetent that they are screwing up their own elections – for example, they took a couple weeks to reverse their results in Iowa; their Missouri results don’t really count. Those are the elections. The campaigns themselves are not competent either. Gingrich is not even on the ballot in Virginia, his own state! (Although to be fair I believe Gingrich was never really serious; his campaign is performance art – of course he’d be happy to take the nomination if he got it.)
The incompetence is not a surprise. They are so anti-competence that they have been systematically driving away capable people. We’ve seen, just in the last week, Romney’s “I don’t care about poor people” and the blow-up at the Komen foundation. Yes, these were unpleasant and unkind things to do and say. They are also stupid.
The good things that have been happening are mostly the result of Obama’s administration working slowly and steadily and intelligently on issues. Careful planning, the weighing of alternatives, and yes, sometimes some luck. So we see that the Osama bin Laden is dead, GM is alive, kids are covered, and those with pre-existing conditions are covered. The improvement in the economy is not an accident.
To quote Samuel Goldwyn, “The harder I work, the luckier I get.” Obama has been working hard on the positives, while the other side has been full of arrogant incompetence.
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