Paul Krugman's withering criticism of President Obama in today's New York Times opinion pages is not merely a cricitism of the specific decision to implement a pay freeze for US Federal workers, but about a steadily increasing sense of frustration and disillusion among the President's prominent supporters.
That most crude and unkind political commentator, Ann Coulter, wrote some time ago that Obama was elected merely as a 'fashion statement' for America's liberals and self-styled progressives. In other words, he was not a man of substance and proven ability (a theme going back to criticism of his lack of executive experience and vague image as a 'community organiser'), but someone whose background and persona projected the kind of image which his supporters, primarily among young college students, saw as a befitting image to crown the sense of achievment that the page had been turned on the Bush era for good. All of a sudden, those Bush billboards, asking 'Miss me yet?' do not sound as outlandish as they first did.
The problem is that the President's friends and foes alike seem to have taken the measure of the man, and are not impressed. Indeed, it seems hard to think of any president in recent times who has lost support so fast? It is true that Reagan had become vastly unpopular two years into his presidency and then managed a sharp reversal to win re-election by a landslide in 1984. But the sense of disillusionment surrounding Obama (and the sense among his opponents that he's fundamentally weak, a loser) seems quite different. And Obama obviously faces challenges - some of them to do with racist and xenophobic undercurrents in American society - that Reagan did not.
Boosted by the largest swing of seats in a Congressional election since 1938, the Republicans are scenting blood and have decided on what seems to be a strategy of total confrontation with the White House in every policy area. Moreover, independent voters who were crucial to Obama's win in 2008 have shifted from the Democrats to the Republicans to the tune of 36 percent between the 2006 and 2010 midterm elections.
It is perhaps ironic that at a time when the Republican Party seems to have fallen foul of what Medvetz describes as 'maximalism' (the pursuit of an extreme ideological agenda, rather than centrist position respectful of core ideological values) the White House should fail to capitalise on this and is instead running behind events and thus facing the real risk of electoral defeat in 2012.
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