The President won’t let go of the car image–Republicans spending eight years crashing the economy and expecting him to pull it out of the ditch in two.
Now the highway metaphor is in a linguistic pileup as Martin Wolf of the Financial Times posits an ambulance picking up a roadside heart attack victim, taking him for treatment that results in “a protracted but partial recovery,” then two years later having him sue the paramedics and doctors for malpractice, insisting “he would be good as new…if he had been left alone.”
We are in “no good deed goes unpunished” territory here, victims turning on helpers in denial of their distress and the need to blame someone, a condition first described to me by a friend who grew up in the Dust Bowl during the Great Depression to see saved farmers turn on FDR and become solidly Republican to erase the memory of their helplessness.
The nation’s financial condition is not exactly a roadster, and the Federal government is far from an auto club, but Presidents can’t seem to resist seeing themselves behind the wheel.
After retirement, Eisenhower described his executive style as reasoning with competing interests to drive in the middle of the road “with all its usable surface and avoid slipping into the ruts and ditches on either side.”
A comfy image during post-World War II prosperity, but Obama’s road is cracked and twisty, with forward motion impeded by Republican linguistic improvised explosive devices like those used against our troops in the Middle East.
Andrew Sullivan maintains “Obama’s record is about as good as one can expect from a human being inheriting a catastrophe and acting with limited knowledge in real time…”