He made it worse

As she often does, Peggy Noonan brings wondrous clarity to the Obama presidency in her Saturday column in the Wall Street Journal. (It's available a day earlier online.) She writes about the national debt, and the Republicans' insistence that raising the level must be accompanied by serious cuts, versus the Democrats' insistence that there be no cuts. She writes of the contrast between Bill Clinton, the amiable rogue, and Barack Obama, the cold fish who genuinely hates the other side. And she concludes with this devastating observation:

Two years ago I wrote of Clare Booth Luce's observation that all presidents have a sentence: "He fought to hold the union together and end slavery." "He brought American through economic collapse and a world war." You didn't have to be told it was Lincoln, or FDR. I said [then] that Mr. Obama didn't understand his sentence. But Republicans now think they know it.

Four words: He made it worse.

Obama inherited financial collapse, deficits and debt. He inherited a broken political culture. These things weren't his fault. But through his decisions, he made them all worse.

Blue skies! -- Dan Ford