From Here to Eternity... Or Election Day, Whichever Comes First

    In James Taranto's Tuesday edition of his Wall Street Journal Online column The Best of the Web, Taranto quotes from a recent article by the Journal's Gerald Seib: "[S]ix months is an eternity in modern politics."  The phrase sounds very familiar to even the casual consumer of political media, but just how hackneyed the formulation has become may surprise even grizzled political veterans.  The Bible tells us in Ecclesiastes 3:11 that God has set eternity in the hearts of men, but clearly eternity is also set in the pens of pundits.  With barely a research effort to speak of, here's an abridged compilation of this most versatile of politics memes:

• "Sixteen months is an eternity in politics..." Ocala Star Banner

• "Fifteen months is an eternity in politics, so Sen. Lautenberg has plenty of time..." Rutgers

• "Fourteen months is an eternity in politics..." National Post

• "Thirteen months is a long time between now and election day. Thirteen months is an eternity in politics." New York Times

• "Twelve months is an eternity in politics."  The Sunday Times

• "...two weeks is a long time in politics, eleven months is an eternity." Canada Free Press

• "But ten months can be an eternity in politics..." Right Side News

• "There are also still nine months left in 2014 – an eternity in politics." Breitbart

• "Eight months is an eternity in politics..." PolicyMic

• "...seven months away, an eternity in American politics." Bloomberg

• "Six months is an eternity in modern politics..." WSJ

• "Five months is an eternity in politics." Free Republic

• "They say a day in politics is a long time. A little over four months would perhaps qualify as an eternity..." CVMTV

• "Three months is an eternity in politics..." Dogwood Initiative

• "Two months is an eternity in politics..." Democratic Underground

• "Now we’re under a month to go until the November 6 election, at which point today will seem like an eternity ago." Reuters

    To be clear, I could have gone higher than sixteen months, but since this is not a political campaign, I didn't have eternity to work on it.  And time also fails me to tell of the eternal nature of political days, weeks, and years.
    But the trail leading to the apex of hyperbole doesn't end here. Politico (as reposted by CBS News) managed to squeeze eternity into a single hour back in 2007:

• "An hour is an eternity in politics." Politico/CBS News

    The grand prize, however, goes to Michael Green writing in the Federal Political News from Joyce Communications in Nevada. Green bests Politico by a factor of sixty:

• "Much can change in that long a period, since a minute is an eternity in politics." Joyce Communications

    But on second thought, maybe Michael Green was on to something.  After all, many candidates watching returns crawl in on election night could certainly identify with the words of Franz Kafka: "L'éternité, c'est long ... surtout vers la fin." Eternity is long, especially near the end.

Syriaquestration: Governing by Hobson's Choice

    On Wednesday, I posited the following on Twitter:

Asking Congress for Syria authorization seems like foreign policy version of #sequestration. Obama admin can't *Imagine* Congress won't act.
— Jeryl Bier (@SpeakWithAuthor) September 4, 2013

    Thursday, James Taranto, in his Best of the Web column, also reflected on the president's actions regarding Congress and the authorization vote:

If we take Obama and Kerry at their word, then the president did not even consider the possibility that Congress would reject his request. Given the haste in which he made the decision and the desultoriness of his own effort to make the case for the request, that is a plausible reading of what happened. 

Failing to consider this contingency would be a stunning failure of planning... 

The other possibility is that Obama did not regard approval as a sure thing but figured that he'd win either way--that if Republicans balked, he could blame them for inaction in Syria, and if they went along with intervention, they'd share the blame for anything that went wrong...

    Taranto's take, which I excerpted here, is worth reading in full (almost invariably the case,) and I believe it supports my Syriaquestration thweesis (as long as I am coining words, why not two?)  The president and his spokespersons have often said that the sequestration, which the White House has only grudgingly acknowledged the president's role in proposing, was purposely designed to be so bad that no one would allow it to kick in.  As the country learned this spring, the president miscalculated.  Congress did not blink and the sequestration took effect.  The time-release poison pill was apparently not strong enough to kill opposition to the president's taxing and spending priorities.  So far, consequences of the sequester have been mixed, better or worse depending on which party is asked.
    Now the president has thrown down the gauntlet again, apparently not considering the possibility that Congress might pass on picking it up.  Or that Congress would pick it up, depending how you read the president's challenge.  That possibility has quickly almost become a fait accompli with many observers saying the president might not only lose on the Syria authorization vote, but lose "big", according to a Thursday night Politico report.  Whatever the president's reason or reasons for passing the buck to Congress, he may come to regret it.  Even if he was initially hoping Congress would vote down his proposal to get him off the hook for his "red line" remark, he and his subordinates in the last few days have portrayed the consequences of no military response as so dire that anything short of a disaster in Syria after a no vote would seriously damage the credibility of the administration.
    While there are similarities between the sequestration and Syriaquestration, and whatever harm has come from the former, the consequences of the latter are likely to be far worse, whatever the outcome of the current debate in Congress.  The president may learn too late that Hobson's Choice politics is a dangerous game, and the people of Syria, the entire Middle East, and the United States may all end up paying a high price for his ill-advised gamble.

Who is Responsible for the "Mess" Now?

    President Obama attended the dedication of the George W. Bush Presidential Library in Texas this week.  James Taranto of the Wall Street Journal attended the ceremony and recorded his observations is an article entitled "The Difference Between 43 and 44? Not So Much."  While making the case that more parallels exist between our last two presidents than President Obama would care to admit, Taranto recalls one of the talking points from the current president's first term:

The Bush-was-the-worst myth served a political purpose for Mr. Obama, enabling him to excuse his own shortcomings of leadership by blaming them on the "mess" he had "inherited." (Never mind that Mr. Obama was not some crown prince but an elected politician who aggressively pursued the office he now holds.)

    During the 2012 presidential campaign, I noted (as did Taranto) the stark contrast in the president's willingness to take responsibility versus his penchant for pointing his finger at others.  On October 16, 2012, I wrote:

    The president already suffers from a reputation for blame-shifting that from an analysis of his words as recorded on the White House website seems well earned.  The last time the words "I take responsibility" appear on the website is July 6, 2011, in the transcript of the president's Twitter Town Hall.  By contrast, during that same time period, the phrase "got us into this mess in the first place" appears 86 times, referring almost exclusively to the previous administration.  Even when the president speaks of "fault," it is often in the context of placing the word in the mouths of his critics, as in "They say the economy is bad and it's Obama's fault."

    It is interesting to note that the phrase "got us into this mess" has completely vanished from the president's vernacular.  The last time the phrase appears on the White House website is November 2, 2012... just before the election.  In nearly six months, the president and the White House press office have not used the phrase once.  One must conclude either we are not in a “mess” anymore, or, if we still are, the president recognizes at this point in his second term who bears the responsibility for keeping us there.

    By the way, the last use of "I take responsibility" on the White House website?  Still July 6, 2011, almost 22 months.  However, in a debate with Mitt Romney during the 2012 campaign, the president did say relative to the Benghazi, Libya terror attacks, "I'm the president. And I'm always responsible."  The date of his statement?  October 17, 2012, the day after Taranto and I published our articles.  Coincidence?  Let's just say I'm willing to take responsibility.