Establishment Journalist James Oliphant: Face It, Obama Is a Lousy Politician

The National Journal reports:

the plain truth is that President Obama was never the kind of man who could ride to his party's rescue in a midterm cycle like this. As he's made clear over the past six years, his political style isn't one suited to hot-blooded rhetoric and emotional appeals. He prefers, instead, deliberation, nuance, reason—and incrementalism above narrative. All are commodities with little currency in the hyper-polarized, Twitterized world of 2014. When Obama preaches at all these days, it's usually to the converted, as was evidenced by his final campaign swing to shrinking crowds in friendly states.

In an increasingly black-and-white political universe, Obama is now all gray, all the time. As a result, the man elected to be a post-partisan figure has become one, stuck in the unpopulated center, out of place in the binary equation of R's and D's. Those qualities were supposed to make him the perfect antidote to George W. Bush—but instead voters seem to have gotten what they wanted and then not wanted what they got.

Ouch.