The Hebrew Hammer Strikes Again

This guy! NOT this guy!

It is perhaps a bit disconcerting when the only guy who seems to "get it" about the President is someone who stands in 180 degree opposition to him. Reading two columns back to back that laud the President, you get the feeling that perhaps you are being had. But I cannot escape the conclusion that I largely agree with him:

If Barack Obama wins reelection in 2012, as is now more likely than not, historians will mark his comeback as beginning on Dec. 6, the day of the Great Tax Cut Deal of 2010.

Obama had a bad November. Self-confessedly shellacked in the midterm election, he fled the scene to Asia and various unsuccessful meetings, only to return to a sad-sack lame-duck Congress with ghostly dozens of defeated Democrats wandering the halls.

Now, with his stunning tax deal, Obama is back. Holding no high cards, he nonetheless managed to resurface suddenly not just as a player but as orchestrator, dealmaker and central actor in a high $1 trillion drama.

Compare this with Bill Clinton, greatest of all comeback kids, who, at a news conference a full five months after his shellacking in 1994, was reduced to plaintively protesting that "the president is relevant here." He had been so humiliatingly sidelined that he did not really recover until late 1995 when he outmaneuvered Newt Gingrich in the government-shutdown showdown.

And that was Clinton responding nimbly to political opportunity. Obama fashioned out of thin air his return to relevance, an even more impressive achievement. 

I'm sure Dobber would call me naive, but I think the Hammer is onto something here. I think the President played this the only way he could in order to extract an advantage. It may be a gamble, and it may not ultimately pay off in the way the Hammer (and I) predict, but it was the most clever play the President had in his arsenal. And I think it's downright funny how he is being second-guessed by the Left, which really should only help to secure his re-election chances in 2012.