… after two terms of the Obama presidency, the Democratic Party is weaker than it has been since the 1920s
writes
Peter Wehner in the New York Times.
IT wasn’t supposed to end this way for Democrats.
Eight
years ago, Barack Obama won the presidency promising to transform
America. A supremely self-confident politician, Mr. Obama was the object
of extravagant hopes that he nurtured and encouraged.
… The man who seemed to hold such promise for his party ended up taking a scythe to it.
What happened?
For some of the president’s admirers, the answer is that America has
become benighted and bigoted. For others, the culprit is the Republican
Party, which obstructed Mr. Obama at every turn. And for still others,
like Mr. Obama, the problem is that his administration didn’t do enough
to advertise its greatness.
Even if you believe there are elements of truth in these explanations,
they still amount to excuses. The same country that twice elected Mr.
Obama did not suddenly become a nation of deplorables. In his first two
years, with Democrats firmly in control of the House and Senate, Mr.
Obama won the passage of his sweeping legislative agenda, including the
Affordable Care Act, the stimulus package, financial regulations, the
extension of jobless benefits and more. As for selling his policies,
President Obama was constantly making his case.
The decimation of the Democratic Party came because Mr. Obama turned out to be great at poetry and bad at prose.
Start with the economy. … the Obama presidency has been characterized by injurious incompetence,
in particular with regard to his signature achievement, Obamacare.
… Overseas, the Obama years have been defined by spreading disorder and
chaos, particularly in the Middle East and North Africa, with nations
collapsing and borders dissolving. More terrorist safe havens have been
established than ever before. Russia and China have become more
aggressive and significantly increased their geopolitical influence.
America is now held in brazen contempt by our enemies and mistrusted by
many of our allies.
Yet
in some respects the greatest failure of the Obama years is in the area
where many people thought he would excel. Mr. Obama made the
centerpiece of his 2008 campaign a promise to end a politics that
“breeds division and conflict and cynicism.” In February of that year, I
praised him
for “a message that, at its core, is about unity and hope rather than
division and resentment.” Yet he leaves office with America more
conflicted and cynical than when he took office. More than
70 percent of Americans
say the country is either more divided or no more united than it was in
2009. Race relations are the worst in decades, and our nation is as
polarized as it has been in the modern era.
It
would be silly to lay all the blame for this at the feet of Mr. Obama.
Republicans have been rhetorically reckless at times, and
President-elect Donald Trump has coarsened public discourse and set
Americans against one another in ways that were once unimaginable. But
Mr. Obama came first, and he played a role in where we are.
In
his farewell address last week, President Obama said that for the sake
of our democracy we need to heed the advice of the fictional character
Atticus Finch, who said, “You never really understand a person until you
consider things from his point of view.”
Yet
Mr.
Obama never seemed to consider things from a different point of
view from his own. He has shown withering disdain for his opponents,
constantly 
impugning their motives even as he testified to the purity of
his own. It was his arrogance that proved to be Mr. Obama’s undoing.
(Even leaders of his own party felt Mr. Obama’s derision, as if dealing
with them was somehow beneath him.) Mr. Obama dismissed those who
disagreed with him like a professor forced to deal with simple-minded,
wayward students. He warned us against retreating into our bubbles, but
he was never able to escape his own.
During
the Obama presidency, many people felt unheard and alienated. They are
the kind of Americans Mr. Obama had in mind in 2008 when he talked about
“bitter” people clinging to their “guns or religion.”
Barack
Obama is among the most talented campaigners we have ever seen. But as
president, he failed in a manner and on a scale that damaged his party,
undermined faith in the institutions of government and left the nation
more riven than he found it. For most Americans, the economy has been
listless. All this helped create the conditions that allowed a cynical
demagogue to rise up and succeed him, one who will undo the achievements
he most prizes.
In
many ways Barack Obama and Donald Trump could not be more different.
Mr. Obama is equable and graceful; Mr. Trump is erratic and graceless.
Yet one cannot make sense of the incoming presidency without
understanding the failures of the outgoing one.
