Please don’t make the obvious joke: Mel Brooks had the best shot at it many years ago. But the Washington Post story on Peter Hoekstra’s NCLB-emasculation bill is a telling indicator of the president’s declining moral and political authority within his own party. In 2000, he convinced voters he was a “compassionate conservative,” and his (deserved or undeserved) claim to being an education reformer was a critical part of that image.
At this point, he has convinced voters and members of his own party that he lacked the other, crucial C: competence. Within the party, that’s a matter of political competence. For GOP members of Congress, the fallout is that they are paying far more attention to their constituents than they are to the White House.