David Leonhardt of the NYT strikes a similar note in his column to Ben Smith's brief post: the last four months have made the first sixteen months of Obama's administration look a lot better than they looked likely to in January. As is standard, Leonhardt pulls in a few quotes from academics to make his point, including this one:
“If you’d asked me about this administration after Scott Brown was elected, I’d have told you it was going to fizzle into virtually nothing,” said Theda Skocpol, the Harvard political scientist. “Now it could easily be one of the pivotal periods in domestic policy.”
It's honest of Professor Skocpol to admit she got things wrong. But if I had asked her that in January and got that reply, I'd have said she was wildly over-reacting. Most reasonably objective commentators, including this one, thought it a setback but by no means a fatal one. Perhaps Leonhardt left out her next sentence: "But hey, what do I know?"
It does seem that Obama can never win with the commentariat. Leonhardt's article ends with him talking of Obama's failure to date to match the time in office of FDR, LBJ and Reagan!
Posted by: peter | May 22, 2010 at 07:50 AM