WONDERFULLY STATED – AT 9:27 A.M. ET:  As we wait for the second GOP presidential debate tonight, Michael Barone gives us an insightful view of how things have changed under Barack Obama.  From the Washington Examiner:

In this presidential cycle voters in both parties, to the surprise of the punditocracy, are rejecting experienced political leaders. They're willfully suspending disbelief in challengers who would have been considered laughable in earlier years.

Polls show more Republicans favoring three candidates who have never held elective office than 14 candidates who have served a total of 150 years as governors or in Congress. Most Democrats are declining to favor a candidate who spent eight years each in the White House and the Senate and four as secretary of state.

Psephologists of varying stripes attribute this discontent to varying causes. Conservatives blame insufficiently aggressive Republican congressional leaders. Liberals blame Hillary Clinton's closeness to plutocrats and her home-brew email system.

But in our system a widespread rejection of experienced leaders ultimately comes from dismay at the leader in the White House. In 1960 Richard Nixon, after eight years as vice-president and six in Congress, campaigned on the slogan, "Experience counts." No one is running on that theme this year.

Nixon could, because over the preceding quarter-century most Americans mostly approved the performance of incumbent presidents. Presidents Roosevelt, Truman and Eisenhower still look pretty good more than 50 years later.

Barack Obama doesn't. His deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes recently said that the president's nuclear weapons deal with Iran was as important an achievement of his second term as Obamacare was of the first. Historians may well agree.

These two policy achievements have many things in common.

Both were unpopular when proposed and are now.

Barone ends his piece this way:

And so a president who came to office with relatively little experience has managed to tarnish experience, incumbency and institutions. A fundamental transformation indeed.

COMMENT:  Please read the entire piece.  It's one of the best summaries of the damage Obama has done that I've seen.  I hope the American people understand enough to make a major change next year.  I think they do.

September 16, 2015