Astonishing: Obama has “no regrets” about Solyndra loan

See Obama’s answer to George Stephanapolous in an interview on ABC. The president affirms that he doesn’t feel any regrets about wasting a half billion dollars of taxpayer’s money on this doomed company, this company that he was told was in deep trouble, because, he says, the larger policy of government assistance for companies developing new technologies is so important. When Stephanapoulos asks him about his advisors who warned him that Solyndra was not a good bet, he lies and says the loan went through the normal review process.

I’m amazed. How can Obama think that it helps him politically not to admit any mistake in something that was so obviously a mistake and worse? Whatever his own motives and calculations, this much is clear: he is locking himself into a hard-left position, backing maximum taxing and maximum spending even when the spending is shown to be a waste—and even as the country has turned strongly against that position. As Noemie Emery said in her recent huge article on Obama at the Weekly Standard, this is not going to end well.

The New York Times had an editorial a week or two ago on Solyndra (I thought I had posted something on it, but am not finding it) that took exactly the line that Obama took in his ABC interview: that there was NOTHING wrong with the loan, because the program that the loan is a part of is a good idea. What can one say? The entire left is doubling down. It’s an unprecedented circumstance in American history, and it’s not going to end well.

One more thing: Obama in this interview looks good and sounds good, is confident and forceful. People who think this incumbent president is going to be easy to beat are deluding themselves. No matter how catastrophic his leadership, he has a lot going for him. It is vitally important that he be defeated, but if he is defeated I will regard it as a remarkable, almost providential event, not as an expected conclusion.

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Pete M. writes:

You wrote:

“One more thing: Obama in this interview looks good and sounds good, is confident and forceful. People who think this incumbent president is going to be easy to beat are deluding themselves. No matter how catastrophic his leadership, he has a lot going for him. It is vitally important that he be defeated, but if he is defeated I will regard it as a remarkable event, not as a foreordained conclusion.”

There are usually two contradictory polls regarding Obama. The first asks does a person think Obama is taking the nation on the right track (or is doing a good job). The second is how likable is the President.

Obama loses on the first poll but wins on the second one. Therefore it is not a foregone conclusion that people will vote against him based necessarily on his track record since they personally like him. The second poll may offset and mitigate the first one.

Another poll that may spell bad news for the Republicans is that any Republican candidate usually trails Obama by several percentage points. Even though there has not been a head-to-head battle between Obama and a Republican candidate, no Republican candidate yet has been shown to clearly lead Obama in the polls! This should worry Republicans.

Finally, in a bad economy, people may trust the Democrats to worry more about a person’s financial straits. How many people really believe that the Republicans, the corporations, the banks and Wall Street are looking out for them?

LA replies:

There was a recent poll, discussed by Dick Morris, that showed Obama for the first time losing personal favorability as well as job approval.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at October 04, 2011 02:12 PM | Send