Barack Obama Is a Generic Brand

[Machiavelli]

Jonathan Bernstein
Bloomberg View
July 2, 2014

The Quinnipiac poll getting buzz today may be worthless, but the general topic of evaluating Barack Obama is another opportunity to make an important point: almost everything about Obama's presidency can be explained by saying he’s a Democratic president. He’s an interesting man, but as president he’s become about as generic as possible.

The positions Obama has taken, and his priorities, don't differ in any significant way from the kinds of decisions mainstream liberals might have come to.

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[massadvj]

But he rose to power not on the strength of his liberal policies, but because he sold himself as a "messiah" who would wash away the country's original sin of slavery and racism.  He is unpopular today because of his liberal policies, on that I agree.  But he'd have never been elected on the strength of those policies.  The American electorate does not buy into liberalism, socialism or progressivism.  Such ideas must be mixed with a spoonful of sugar first, and that spoonful was called "Hope and Change."