Obama's Formula For Disaster

My column for The Week can be read here. It opens:

President Obama got a heaping serving of good news in Monday’s Washington Post poll. He remains strongly personally popular, and the public’s heavy mood of pessimism has lifted somewhat: 42 percent now say the country is on “the right track, ” nearly triple the number who thought so before the election—and the best number in five years.

It seems unlikely that this jump represents a reasoned response to the president’s actual policies, which have had little time to effect voters directly. Indeed, the poll only asked about one specific policy issue, the budget deficit. There, respondents gave Obama an approval rating 14 points lower than his overall score.

No, it’s not the policies the public is applauding. It is the energy, the perception of activity, a feeling (understandable enough) that something is finally being done! Once again, the American people are confirming the astute observation of Franklin Roosevelt that voters will forgive the errors of activist government more than “the constant omissions of a government frozen in the ice of its own indifference.”

And so they will. At least until the full costs of the errors of activist government come home.