Over at Power Line, John Hinderaker is not impressed by Obama's high standing in the polls:
What is really significant, I think, is that Obama's popularity is muted even though the ill effects of his policies have yet to be felt. Taxes haven't gone up yet; inflation hasn't hit; deficits have not yet proved (as they undoubtedly will) to greatly exceed Obama's estimates; years of slow growth and elevated unemployment due to statist policies are still in the future; and foreign policy setbacks are yet to come.
Let us file this work of prognostication away with such golden oldies as his takedown of Paul Krugman for worrying, in August of 2005, about an imaginary housing bubble:
It must be depressing to be Paul Krugman. No matter how well the economy performs, Krugman's bitter vendetta against the Bush administration requires him to hunt for the black lining in a sky full of silvery clouds. With the economy now booming, what can Krugman possibly have to complain about? In today's column, titled That Hissing Sound, Krugman says there is a housing bubble, and it's about to burst. . . .
[Snip]
Krugman thinks the fact that James Glassman doesn't buy the bubble theory is evidence in its favor, but if you read Glassman's article on the subject, you'll see that he actually makes some of the same points that Krugman does. But he argues, persuasively in my view, that there is little reason to fear a catastrophic collapse in home prices.
Krugman will have to come up with something much better, I think, to cause many others to share his pessimism.
And here he is in July of 2003 dressing down the journalist Robert Scheer, who dared to regard with skepticism Team Bush's rationale for war in Iraq:
When all the facts are known about Iraq's weapons programs--which will be soon--extremist critics of the administration like Robert Scheer will look very foolish indeed.
Sidekick Scott Johnson called the post from which this characteristically oracular pronouncement was culled "one of Power Line's greatest hits." The supercilious curl of the lip has yet to be straightened by these serial exercises in unconscious self satire.
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