The Week Obama Jumped the Shark

At Commentary, Peter Wehner runs down the president’s assorted recent miscues:

• Goofy ahistoric lectures on the Supreme Court from a man who sold himself to the public as “a constitutional law professor.”
• Claming that ObamaCare was passed by “a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress,” when it barely squeaked through, with no Republican support.
• “Then there’s Obama’s confusion about judicial activism,” Wehner adds, before concluding:

What the president said, then, was so ill-informed, so ignorant, that people assumed he must know better. There’s no way we can know. But whatever the case, this has been quite a bad stretch for the president. His comments about the Supreme Court, when combined with his astonishingly dishonest attack on the House GOP budget (see here for more), portray a president who is living in a fantasy world — a place where facts and history are inverted, lies become truth, where everything is subordinated to ambition and you simply make things up as you go along. Nietzsche referred to this mindset as the “will to power.” In American politics it’s known as The Chicago Way.

I don’t know what the political effect of all this will be. But intellectually, this is the week where Barack Obama jumped the shark. In a deep, fundamental way, he is no longer a serious man. Nor an honest one. His public words are now purposefully bleached of truth. And that is a painful thing to have to say about an American president.

While he’s not too keen on the sovereignty of the Supreme Court, fortunately, the president obviously respects the independence of his self-described “non-official campaign staff” the Fourth Estate:

“This bears on your reporting,” President Obama said to journalists. “I think that there is oftentimes the impulse to suggest that if the two parties are disagreeing then they’re equally at fault and the truth lies somewhere in the middle. And an equivalence is presented which I think reinforces peoples’ cynicism about Washington in general. This is not one of those situations where there’s an equivalency.”

“As all of you are doing your reporting, I think it’s important to remember that the positions that I am taking now on the budget and a host of other issues. if we had been having this discussion 20 years ago or even 15 years ago … would’ve been considered squarely centrist positions,” Obama said a few moments later.

And in turn, the AP isn’t afraid to Speak Truth to Power:

“Why is Obama so rattled?”Andrew Malcolm asks at Investor’s Business Daily. While Malcolm has plenty of thoughts on the topic himself, Elizabeth Scalia (aka the Anchoress) responds, “Seems to me, [Obama is] having a hard time hiding his anger. And the angrier he gets, the more he struggles. Any creature trapped in a net knows that flailing about only further ensnares. No-Drama Obama needs to chill; if he can’t relax, he’s toast.”

Or as the Professor responds, “He knows he’s in over his head, and he’s lashing out.”

Related: “Don’t get distracted by all the fancy tonguework,” Michael Ledeen writes. “Election Year 2012 is all about power (his) and freedom (ours).”

More: At the Tatler, “Former Obama Con Law Student Embarrassed by His Former Teacher’s Ignorance.”