The last word on Obama

Well, the election is tomorrow. There was so much more I didn't have a chance to discuss about President Obama's failures over the past four years. But maybe the following words can act as a summary:

Peggy Noonan on Obama:

He had the confidence without the full capability. And he gathered around him friends and associates who adored him, who were themselves talented but maybe not quite big enough for the game they were in. They understood the Democratic Party, its facts and assumptions. But they weren't America-sized. They didn't get the country so well.

It is a mystery why the president didn't second-guess himself more, doubt himself. Instead he kept going forward as if it were working.

He doesn't do chastened. He didn't do what Bill Clinton learned to do, after he took a drubbing in 1994: Change course and prosper.

The Wall Street Journal on Obama:

. . . after Republicans gained 63 seats in 2010, Mr. Obama might have imitated Bill Clinton after 1994 and made real bows toward centrist governing.

But that is not who he is. After a two-year extension of the Bush tax rates after 2010, he made no budget concessions and assailed the Paul Ryan budget as literally anti-American. He personally blew up a grand bargain with Speaker John Boehner in the debt-limit fracas after spurning his own deficit commission.

All of these were deliberate political choices, part of his progressive gamble that it will all be worth it if he can win re-election. Higher taxes are already locked into place, ObamaCare's subsidies are ready to roll out, and the regulatory wave he has delayed past Election Day can recommence. He'll have put the government in such a dominant position that its new powers will take decades to roll back or reform.

. . . In his more candid moments, Mr. Obama has said he wants to be the progressive version of Reagan, that his goal is "fundamentally transforming" America. If he's re-elected, that is what he will continue to try to do.