Reason Writers Around Town: Matt Welch and Nick Gillespie in the Washington Post Asking "What's Next, Mr. President—Cardigans?"

Writing in the Washington Post's Sunday Outlook section, Reason Editor in Chief Matt Welch and Reason TV/Online Editor Nick Gillespie give an appraisal of the president's suddenly imperiled domestic agenda, and ask whether he'll accelerate down the road toward Jimmy Carter, correct his course in the direction of Bill Clinton, or continue muddling along the road paved by George W. Bush. Excerpt:

Barely six months into his presidency, Barack Obama seems to be driving south into that political speed trap known as Carter Country: a sad-sack landscape in which every major initiative meets not just with failure but with scorn from political allies and foes alike. […]

The key to understanding Obama's predicament is to realize that while he ran convincingly as a repudiation of Bush, he is in fact doubling down on his predecessor's big-government policies and perpetual crisis-mongering. From the indefinite detention of alleged terrorists to gays in the military to bailing out industries large and small, Obama has been little more than the keeper of the Bush flame. Indeed, it took the two of them to create the disaster that is the 2009 budget, racking up a deficit that has already crossed the historic $1 trillion mark with almost three months left in the fiscal year. […]

In the same way that Bush claimed to be cutting government even while increasing real spending by more than 70 percent, Obama seems to believe that saying one thing, while doing another, somehow makes it so. His first budget was titled "A New Era of Fiscal Responsibility," even as his own projections showed a decade's worth of historically high deficits. He vowed no new taxes on 95 percent of Americans, then jacked up cigarette taxes and indicated a willingness to consider new health-care taxes as part of his reform package. He said he didn't want to take over General Motors on the day that he took over General Motors. […]

What the new president has not quite grasped is that the American people understand both irony and cognitive dissonance. Instead, Obama has mistaken his personal popularity for a national predilection toward emergency-driven central planning.

Read the whole thing, with accompanying timeline.

Update: Welch and Gillespie will do a live online chat about this story at the Washington Post's website at 11a.m. ET on Monday, July 19. Go here for details.