Obama in 2008: All things are possible, including slowing the rise of the oceans and healing the planet (and bankrupting whole sectors of the economy, etc.).
Obama in 2012:
During the President’s Univision interview this afternoon President Obama was asked about his biggest lesson that he learned during his first term.
“The most important lesson I’ve learned is you can’t change Washington from the inside,” Obama said.
And when even former(?) JournoList member Ben Smith calls it “perhaps Obama’s worst gaffe since he met Joe the Plumber” rather than employing “the dark art of BenSmithing it away,” as Big Journalism’s John Nolte might put it, it’s quite a gaffe.
It’s also a reminder that Obama’s malaise mindset is a permanent part of his worldview, because it’s systemic to the core of post-JFK liberalism. Or to borrow a headline of mine from last year, Welcome Back My Friends, to the Malaise That Never Ends.
“Obama’s Learned He’s a Failure,” Jonah Goldberg responds:
Two points: 1) Given how he so often says he wakes up every morning thinking about what he could do to create jobs, it’s interesting that he says his inability to pass comprehensive immigration reform (even when he totally controlled Congress) was his biggest failure. But I suppose that can be written off as simple pandering.
2) His biggest lesson, meanwhile, is that “you can’t change Washington from the inside.” Wait a second. In the 2008 primaries, his whole argument with Hillary Clinton was over this exact question. She believed that you can change Washington from the inside and Barack Obama said you couldn’t.
Still More: Video flashback to Obama in 2008: “We will not take a dime from Washington lobbyists… We’re gonna change how Washington works…”
Meanwhile, an Onion article from the following year subtly foreshadows Obama’s non-official campaign staff’s dilemma in responding to today’s gaffe.
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