Obama "has gone from a failing president to flailing at ghosts"

He's tried homey backyard settings, large campus ral lies and teamed up with a crass hip-hop show. Wherever he goes, he floors the rhetorical pedal, as when he likened his slow-motion polices to the time it took to "free the slaves."
Barack Obama has gone from a failing president to flailing at ghosts. Even allowing for desperate times, his desperate measures are a national embarrassment.

Emancipation? Give us a break.

With each passing day, his denunciations of dissent and inflated claims of economic progress turn off the independent voters who will decide the midterm elections. He is ignoring the sensible advice to listen to the majority of voters and build a governing coalition.

Instead, he recklessly bets the remainder of his presidency on maintaining the huge liberal Democratic majorities that helped him impose a string of unpopular policies on America. If he fails, and there is good reason to hope he will face a Republican Congress, he'll be the loneliest man in Washington.

He is losing much of his White House team, yet the obsequious hagiography continues. When Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel departed Friday, he claimed the last 20 months were "the toughest time any president has ever faced."

This is farce masquerading as fact, but there is no sign Obama is willing to bring in new aides who could help him chart a new course.

If anything, he is doubling down on his self-aggrandizing Big Government agenda, dashing hopes he would use the public revolt against him to finally become the centrist many Americans believed they were electing.

A friend said the other day that Obama's nonstop campaign speeches were useless because the country has tuned him out. Politically speaking, that's true.

The thrill is gone, and his efforts to gin up enthusiasm seem a pale imitation of 2008. It's all vapors now as he hectors former supporters to "buck up."

But it's impossible simply to ignore Obama. He is the president of a troubled nation, and he regularly reaches new depths of demeaning the office as he fights public will.