I did some searchers on “dithering” in the New York Times and Washington Post archives. In the Times, there were eleven uses of the word post-Cheney out of a total of 47 in the past year. In the Post, there were 36 post-Cheney out of a total of 46 in the past 12 months.

Michael Gerson, Jackson Diehl, and David Broder have all accused the president of “dithereing” post-Cheney. Gerson also used the phrase about a week before Cheney’s speech. Ronald Krebs and Dana Milbank also wrote pieces accusing Obama of dithering before Cheney’s speech (Jim Hoagland also wrote a piece, praising the dithering). The phrase seems to have originated with Bob Schieffer on “Face the Nation” on October 4.

It’s interesting how these words take off and I think it’s likely that neocons settled on it and that Krebs, Gerson, and Cheney all using it within a week of each other was no accident (Diehl and Broder fall more in the category of useful idiots).

The word “dithering” appeared only once on the NYT’s editorial page, in a Maureen Dowd piece satirizing Cheney.

Update. This is apropos of John’s last post, for those to whom that isn’t obvious.

Update. Halperin fronts Broder channeling Cheney. The circle is complete. Tinkers to Evers to Chance.

I was going to write something about this syrupy ode to George Bush by Caroline Glick and this PUMA nonsense from the Hillbuzz, but Daniel Larison handles it so much better:

Yes, this is what you would expect from Glick (or from anyone, for that matter, who thinks that the last two years of Bush’s foreign policy were his worst), but it’s offensive all the same. As tempting and easy as it would be to turn this formulation around on one of the worst Presidents of all time, I don’t assume that Bush did any of the things he did because he didn’t have “American values” or didn’t love his country. I don’t assume that he trashed our relations with Europe, Turkey and Russia because he wanted America to be isolated or because he loathed these other nations. It is certainly true that he harmed American interests, weakened American power, wrecked our fiscal house and isolated us from many of our allies and potential partners, but the world is full of stories of people who harm that which they love. Bush’s problem wasn’t that he didn’t love America. The problem was that he had no idea what he was doing and substituted ideological fantasies in place of understanding.

Indeed, most of his catastrophic blunders came from an excess of sentiment and emotion concerning these things, combined with absolutely incompetent execution and an ideological obsession with American virtue and strength that ensured that his actions would be excessive, arrogant, ill-conceived and unrelated to the real world. Bush’s love of country was something similar to what the Apostle called in another context “zeal not according to knowledge.” The man was actually overflowing with saccharine, do-gooding, Gersonian sentimentality and he had no shortage of emotional, demonstrative professions of patriotic devotion. So what? What good did it do anyone? It might even have been better had Bush been less enthusiastic in trying to protect the United States, since he would not have been so ready to see dire threats around every corner where none existed. America needs fewer paranoid, jealous lovers, not more.

Can a brother get an Amen?

Why is this not a bigger story:

Late last night, the Congressional Budget Office released its initial analysis of the health-care reform plan that Republican Minority Leader John Boehner offered as a substitute to the Democratic legislation. CBO begins with the baseline estimate that 17 percent of legal, non-elderly residents won’t have health-care insurance in 2010. In 2019, after 10 years of the Republican plan, CBO estimates that …17 percent of legal, non-elderly residents won’t have health-care insurance. The Republican alternative will have helped 3 million people secure coverage, which is barely keeping up with population growth. Compare that to the Democratic bill, which covers 36 million more people and cuts the uninsured population to 4 percent.

But maybe, you say, the Republican bill does a really good job cutting costs. According to CBO, the GOP’s alternative will shave $68 billion off the deficit in the next 10 years. The Democrats, CBO says, will slice $104 billion off the deficit.

The Democratic bill, in other words, covers 12 times as many people and saves $36 billion more than the Republican plan. And amazingly, the Democratic bill has already been through three committees and a merger process. It’s already been shown to interest groups and advocacy organizations and industry stakeholders. It’s already made its compromises with reality. It’s already been through the legislative sausage grinder. And yet it saves more money and covers more people than the blank-slate alternative proposed by John Boehner and the House Republicans. The Democrats, constrained by reality, produced a far better plan than Boehner, who was constrained solely by his political imagination and legislative skill.

I seriously do not get this country. The subservience to the Republicans by the media at least made sense when they were in the majority and held the Presidency in 2001. But this is 2009, the Republicans have been routed electorally for the past few years, everything the Republican party believed in failed miserably the last eight years and they have been exposed as total frauds, they released a budget with no numbers on April Fools day, they have been whipping up teabaggers and gun nuts into a froth for months and screaming about death panels because they have no ideas or solutions, and when they finally do release their health care “plan,” it totally and completely sucks. It is nothing but fail, fail, fail, from the GOP, they just lost two more seats in the house, they are going through a horrible (yet delicious) civil war, yet according to the media, everything is bad news for Democrats.

You know what is bad news for Republicans? They used to be able to get elected and be incapable of governing, and as the House elections on Tuesday and the CBO score today show, now they are incapable of getting elected and governing.

And yet somewhere, Chuck Todd or one of the other Beltway drooling class is typing up their next thought piece explaining how all of this is bad news for Democrats, and David Gregory’s staff is probably getting touch with McCain and Boehner’s Chiefs of staff to see if they are available for Meet the Press on Sunday.

I can’t tell what is a bigger joke- the Republicans, or our failed media experiment. Three decades of screaming liberal media bias is about the only smart long-term thing republicans have done in my lifetime.

I’ll give you a question to discuss: does Obama’s waffling on the exact nature of the public option (which I agree is puzzling) make him look like Jimmy Carter, Richard, Nixon, Adolf Hitler, or all of the above?

Update. Mao, Stalin, Neville Chamberlain, Don Draper, and Felix the Cat are also acceptable choices here.

So far, I can recall Obama being compared to the following figures:

Hitler
Stalin
Pol Pot
Mao
Carter
Bush
Nixon
David Duke

I think now it is time to start the definitive list of people Obama has been compared to, good or bad. Include a link to the comparison.

Ross Douthat writes the definitive respectable conservative Obama Nobel piece:

But by accepting the prize, he’s made failure, if and when it comes, that much more embarrassing and difficult to bear. What’s more, he’s etched in stone the phrase with which critics will dismiss his presidency.

Slick Willie. Tricky Dick. Jimmy “Malaise” Carter. Dubya the Incompetent.

And now Barack Obama, Nobel laureate.

All right, I understand that every member of the wingerati has to take a shot at this topic. But why did he leave out Ford and Reagan? And “Dubya the incompetent”? Has anyone ever said that? Not much besides this column shows up in the google searches.

Update. Steve M from NoMoreMisterNiceGuy sums up:

Drama Queen Obama just made a statement saying that he doesn’t think he’s earned it yet? That’s like saying you think you haven’t earned a flaming turd on your doorstep! It’s a ridiculous award! They gave it to Al Gore and Jimmy Carter, fer crissake! If it actually meant something, Ronald Reagan would have won it—eight years running!

Typical Obama—he gives the queen an iPod and now he has the bad taste and lack of manners to turn this into an international melodrama. Now the world will be focused on him next month when all these silly Scandinavians convene in Oslo and Diva Barack isn’t there!

It’s all about him—it’s always all about him.

So not kidding.

Discuss.

***Update***

This seems like a good time to add a new tag but an old phrase for the blog: malkinfreude. Also added to the lexicon. Killed the lexicon; see above.

This presidency is over. How can Iran and Russia and North Korea and all the Hitlers of the world take us seriously now that the Olympic committee has laughed in the president’s face?

The bipartisan thing would be for Obama to resign now.

James Joyner explains how it is Obama’s fault Joe Wilson yelled out during the address:

While Wilson’s frustrated cry was inexcusable, however, it’s at least understandable. After all, Obama was indirectly calling him a liar. And being untruthful. From the speech:

Some of people’s concerns have grown out of bogus claims spread by those whose only agenda is to kill reform at any cost. The best example is the claim, made not just by radio and cable talk show hosts, but prominent politicians, that we plan to set up panels of bureaucrats with the power to kill off senior citizens. Such a charge would be laughable if it weren’t so cynical and irresponsible. It is a lie, plain and simple.

There are also those who claim that our reform effort will insure illegal immigrants. This, too, is false – the reforms I’m proposing would not apply to those who are here illegally. And one more misunderstanding I want to clear up – under our plan, no federal dollars will be used to fund abortions, and federal conscience laws will remain in place.

This, incidentally, was the from the prepared remarks, not off-the-cuff flourish. The president was deliberately poisoning the well, claiming that his opponents are dishonorable and ill-intentioned.

Kind of an awesome set of rules the President gets to work with. If you point out that people have been lying about death panels for the last few months, you are “poisoning the well.” If you don’t point it out, people believe it and the rumors and lies keep spreading.

Here on planet earth, the people who actually poisoned the well would be the ones who have spread all these BS rumors and lies. Not the guy standing over the well saying- “Hey. There is poison in there. Don’t drink it.”

Like the scribblings on a bathroom wall in an insane asylum:

If only he had cut the capital gains tax instead of a stimulus bill.

Unspoofable.

I haven’t shared this with you before, but I have a terrible fear that the in-school swine flu vaccinations will bring out the crazies. There’s so many ways to be crazy on this issue: you can be autism-vax crazy, you can be home-school wannabe crazy, you can be Obama-is-implanting-a-chip-in-my-child crazy.

And, remember, if a lot of nutty people resist the program, it just proves that Obama is the black Jimmy Carter. Time to bust out the cardigan!

Update. Good Lord, check out the comments on the article I linked to:

When is Obama AND HIS FAMILY going to have the H1N1 flu vaccine? They should be the first and it should be televised. He and the doctor administering the shots will also have to put their hands on the Quaran and SWEAR its the real untested vaccine.

That’s right kids. Step right up and get your Kool Aid. Can’t start the brainwashing to early. Because the govt is your friend and here to “help”. Google “squalene”

Update. This is part of why the anti-vax stuff pisses me off so much. It’s tough enough for parents to raise autistic kids. The last thing they need is a steady stream of misinformation claiming that their child’s condition is their own fault.

Via FDL, Nooners and Joe Scar think Obama secretly wants and needs a Republican Congress:

I just don’t buy the idea that Obama is likely to lose in 2012, regardless of what approval ratings say, with all due respect to the Tim Pawlenty juggernaut. It’s hard for me to see how after 12+ months of full-bore LaRouche style freakosity, the public is going to want to a put a Republican in the White House. Because I could be wrong, but my guess is the 2012 Republican primary is going to make the townhalls look like meetings of the Bloomsbury group.

Also, I was surprised to learn that, like Ann Landers and Dear Abby, Cokie Roberts and Peggy Noonan are twin sisters.

What a jackass:

Yesterday CNN’s Rick Sanchez aired a segment from a health care town hall where a weeping constituent explained to Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) that her husband’s health insurer refuses to cover his treatment for a traumatic brain injury. As the woman continued to cry, Coburn told her that his office would try to assist her individually.

So why is MoveOn.Org and the other groups pushing for health care reform making sure every single American with a problem is not sending Tom Coburn mail, emailing him asking for help, and calling his office to help him? Why is there not already a “Tom Coburn’s Medical Miracles” website up for people to write “Dear Tom” letters? Why can’t Democrats play this game like Republicans?

Christ on a crutch, the entire Republican health care proposal can be summed up as “Voting No and blaming Obama for not being bipartisan enough,” and the Democrats and their left-wing allies are just hopeless.

Matt Yglesias on the the failure narrative:

What Clinton tried didn’t work, in other words, so Obama’s trying it another way. Now the United States Senate looks reluctant to pass a comprehensive plan, so people think Obama is making mistakes. But looking back at American history, it’s not only Clinton who failed to accomplish comprehensive health-care reform—his effort joined reform charges by FDR, Harry Truman, Richard Nixon, and Jimmy Carter on the ash heap of history. Johnson, arguably the most accomplished legislator in American history, was too scared to try and brought us Medicare and Medicaid instead. It defies plausibility to suggest that president after president after president is blundering or inept. Rather, we should just admit the obvious—people keep trying and failing to reform the health-care system because reform is hard to do.

It’s hard because most people already have health insurance. It’s hard because the segment of the population most likely to worry about health care—senior citizens—already benefits from a generous Canadian-style system. It’s hard because the people worst-served by the status quo are also the people least likely to vote. It’s hard because the interest-group pressures—not just from insurance companies but also doctors, hospitals, pharmaceutical companies, vendors of medical equipment, and labor unions who’ve already secured generous benefits for their workers—are intense. It’s hard because the issue is complicated and it’s hard because we don’t have one “health-care system” that can be reformed; instead, the population is segmented into a series of very different situations.

All of this is very true. And there’s one other important obstacle: the Kristol doctrine that Republicans should oppose health care reform under a Democratic president because Democrats would get too much political benefit out of it. This is exactly why it would be idiotic for Democrats to punt on this. The same goes for immigration reform, by the way. Democrats have a choice between continuing to play ReaganBall, a game in which they will always be at a disadvantage, and changing the rules once and for all.

Remember when Obama was responsible for how the Dow was doing?