Dick Morris and Eileen McGann: Hoover + McGovern = Obama
[Dick Morris and Eileen McGann are the authors of 2010: Take Back America: A Battle Plan.]
Comparisons of Barack Obama’s presidency to Jimmy Carter’s miss the point. Carter’s presidency did little to change the basic party construct of the nation or to influence its ideology. Reagan’s presidency accomplished both.
But Barack Obama is destroying the Democratic party. It may not recover for a long time. In this, he most closely resembles a synthesis of the failed candidacy of George McGovern and the catastrophic presidency of Herbert Hoover. The damage he is doing to his party’s image and prospects closely resembles the harm Hoover did to the Republican party, from which it did not recover for 20 years after he left office.And the extent to which Obama is discrediting the Left parallels the damage George McGovern did to his ideological confreres in 1972, when he went down to flaming defeat....
In George McGovern, we all saw the incompetence of liberalism, its disorganization, its extremism, and its ultimate impotence. The best testament to his failure as a candidate is his own discovery of the virtues of private-sector capitalism in his old age. This gentleman — who was never anything less than that — clearly paved the way for Ronald Reaganand the conservative ascendancy.
This is likely not the legacy Obama had in mind when, with his massive ego, limited competence, and paltry experience, he took over the White House. Americans, in a fit ofnational delusion, made what they now realize was one of their biggest mistakes....
Read entire article at National Review
Comparisons of Barack Obama’s presidency to Jimmy Carter’s miss the point. Carter’s presidency did little to change the basic party construct of the nation or to influence its ideology. Reagan’s presidency accomplished both.
But Barack Obama is destroying the Democratic party. It may not recover for a long time. In this, he most closely resembles a synthesis of the failed candidacy of George McGovern and the catastrophic presidency of Herbert Hoover. The damage he is doing to his party’s image and prospects closely resembles the harm Hoover did to the Republican party, from which it did not recover for 20 years after he left office.And the extent to which Obama is discrediting the Left parallels the damage George McGovern did to his ideological confreres in 1972, when he went down to flaming defeat....
In George McGovern, we all saw the incompetence of liberalism, its disorganization, its extremism, and its ultimate impotence. The best testament to his failure as a candidate is his own discovery of the virtues of private-sector capitalism in his old age. This gentleman — who was never anything less than that — clearly paved the way for Ronald Reaganand the conservative ascendancy.
This is likely not the legacy Obama had in mind when, with his massive ego, limited competence, and paltry experience, he took over the White House. Americans, in a fit ofnational delusion, made what they now realize was one of their biggest mistakes....