New column at FoxPolitics – Why Obama does what he does

New column up at FoxPolitics.net. I’m trying to figure out why Obama does the things he does, and I think I’ve got it: his entire professional frame of reference is George W. Bush.

Excerpt:

For example: the lessons of 1993. He hasn’t absorbed the failure of Bill and Hillary Clinton’s first two years in office. HillaryCare; gays in the military; the middle-class tax cut that wasn’t.

The Clintons overreached. Didn’t pay enough attention to the people pulling those election-day levers. They tried to shove too much down the taxpaying public’s throats all at once, and got their butts kicked for it the very next year.

Obama knows that, but he doesn’t know it. He remembers 1993 and 1994, but he doesn’t grok it. He never internalized it. There’s a difference between knowing something, and understanding it. Being able to apply it.

By the time Obama hit the national scene, President Bush was in his second term. And now he’s the President. He has to figure out what to do. Where to stand. A direction. And his only reference – the entirety of his professional context – is George W. Bush.

Go read it all, and tell Jo I sent you.