-By Warner Todd Huston
Matthew Continetti gives the President a D plus in his grade for his first term in office and with a grade that low, let’s hope it is his only term in office.
Continetti notes that Obama awarded himself a “a good, solid, B-plus” not long ago but when he visited the cacklers at ABC’s The View he decided that he shouldn’t assign himself a letter grade because his term is “incomplete.”
Actually, as Continetti points out, his first term is essentially finished, at least legislatively. Congress won’t be doing much more serious business until after the coming election, so his work is practically done. Since the work is basically done, Continetti feels a letter grade is quite apropos and he gives Obama a D plus.
“One arrives at such a low mark only after a thorough–and scientific–examination of the president’s record of broken promises and unfulfilled expectations,” Continetti writes.
Obama’s failures are chronicled in Continetti’s grading, from foreign policy, to jobs and the economy, to the healthcare debacle that few Americans want, but the more interesting point Matthew makes is in what he thinks Obama has done for conservatives.
Obama’s single achievement is something he scarcely intended and likely will lament for the rest of his days: the reinvigoration and reorientation of the right to first principles in the aftermath of the Bush presidency. Prior to Obama’s ascendance, the right was riven between big-government conservatives, libertarians, social conservatives, interventionists, activists, and intellectuals. The right was more interested in its divisions than its commonalities. Years of power had made us sloppy and complacent and sometimes corrupt.
Then came Obama to unite the right, says Continetti.
Maybe he’s right. Let’s hope he’s right. Conservatives have always spent far more time in purity tests amongst themselves while allowing the left to steal march after march and drive their armies to victory while conservatives are still at home base bickering.
This election coming will be the tell. Can we get the right together long enough to depose this most destructive president in American history. Continetti is confident but time will tell.
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“The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”
–Samuel Johnson
Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer. He has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and before that he wrote articles on U.S. history for several small American magazines. His political columns are featured on many websites such as Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com, BigHollywood.com, and BigJournalism.com, as well as RightWingNews.com, RightPundits.com, CanadaFreePress.com, StoptheACLU.com, AmericanDaily.com, among many, many others. Mr. Huston is also endlessly amused that one of his articles formed the basis of an article in Germany’s Der Spiegel Magazine in 2008.
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