POTUS on Today:
During an interview that aired Monday on NBC’s “Today” show, President Obama said that he gets “better as time goes on” at his job and that he believes the grassroots movement that propelled him to victory in 2008 will help him win a second term.
“What’s frustrated people is that I’ve not been able to implement every aspect of what I said in 2008. Well, it turns out our Founders designed a system that makes it more difficult to bring about change than I would like sometimes. But what we have been able to do is move in the right direction,” Obama said.
“And you know what? One of the things about being president is you get better as time goes on,” he added.
The laugh line is POTUS saying he’s “get[ting] better” at the presidency “as time goes on.” Hey, at this rate he’ll be Lincoln by the end of his fifth term! But the real head-scratcher is the highlighted bit about Obama’s dissatisfaction with our institutional order, which he appears to view as a hindrance to the implementation of hopeychangism. It seems like Obama has been saying things like this at a regular frequency for three years, and besides getting the requisite knock by the likes of us, hasn’t really been asked to account for it.
I don’t think his comments betray the president as a secret Red or anything, but the plain meaning of them is that there are things about the separation of powers, and maybe other parts of the Constitutional order, that he would change. I’d like to see him asked to clarify at one of the debates in the general. Mr. President, if you could tweak the Founders vision anyway you wanted, what would you do?