James Taranto: W II

[James Taranto is a columnist and editor for the Wall Street Journal.]

President Obama has been widely mocked for the following comment:

"Here's my assessment of not just the vote in Massachusetts, but the mood around the country: the same thing that swept Scott Brown into office swept me into office," the president said in an exclusive interview with ABC News' George Stephanopoulos."People are angry and they are frustrated. Not just because of what's happened in the last year or two years, but what's happened over the last eight years."

It's a reasonable surmise that by"the last eight years" Obama actually means"the Bush administration"--and if so, this is just the latest variant of the president's favorite excuse,"I inherited this mess!" But we'd like to mount a qualified defense of the statement as a bit of political analysis....

• Ideological overreach. Bush's proposal for partial privatization of Social Security had a lot in common with ObamaCare. It was not a response to an immediate crisis. Its passage would have realized a generations-old ambition of the president's most ideological supporters. It proposed to change a system that, in the minds of most voters, seemed to be working well. Its opponents argued persuasively (which is to say, they largely succeeded in persuading voters without an ideological ax to grind) that it was too risky....

• Overconfidence. Both Bush and Obama mistook their election victories for an unqualified mandate. Both made the mistake of assuming their congressional majorities were permanent. Both have been criticized, with some justification, for stubbornness and an inability or refusal to listen. Both ended up looking weak by virtue of having overestimated their own strength.