The Patriot Post® · 'I Won' Is Not a Formula for the Future

Michael Barone: “It’s not in the printed text, but the most revealing words in President Obama’s seventh State of the Union address came near the end. After the scripted line, ‘I have no more campaigns to run,’ elicited Republican applause, Obama ad libbed, ‘I know, because I won both of them.’ Thus the last quarter of Obama’s presidency resembles the first quarter, when he shut off discussion with House Republicans by saying, ‘I won.’ But his second winning percentage was lower than his first – the only American president of which that can be said – and the House now has a record and the Senate a near-record Republican majority. … The bigger problem for Obama and the Democrats is that the perceived failures of the stimulus package and Obamacare have undermined the case for big government as much as the perceived success of the Reagan economic policies strengthened the case for cutting it back. ‘Because I won’ is a look back to the past, not a formula for the future.”