Two weeks into his administration, it appears that the anointed one, Barack Hussein Obama, has fallen to Earth. Indignant as they are, even his loyal followers are about to realize that he’s far from the answer to their prayers that they’ve been conned into believing.
During his rather rude and meager inaugural address - where he sought to publicly embarrass President Bush, Obama bragged that he planned on setting the highest standards by ushering in “a new era of responsibility." Meanwhile, the Messiah’s picks for Cabinet exposed the upstart genius for his lack of ingenuity, and ability to execute a basic vetting process for forming a legitimate and uncompromised government.
People like Nancy Killefer and Bill Richardson were exposed as liabilities and dismissed quickly by the media, but they at least escaped the embarrassing scorching that Tom Daschle and Timothy Geithner faced. Daschle was a sure win for Obama since he was largely respected on both sides of the aisle - before it became known that he didn’t pay $128K in taxes; Daschle was forced to withdraw in a somber speech five feet from the President. It was an awkward TV moment for a would-be-all-knowing President.
Geithner is a different story. He won the nomination, but at what cost? He can be seen limping around the Capitol, clearly bleeding, compromised, and illegitimate. This economic crisis was caused by cheats, liars, and incompetents, and yet Americans are expected to believe that an individual of the same character as the villains that got us in this mess is somehow supposed to save us. Fat chance. Some of us see a hourglass floating above Geithner’s head with the sand of time running out. Even Larry Kudlow believes that this Treasury Secretary’s days are numbered.
Being weaker than weak, and trying to separate himself from the perceived inflexibility of his predecessor, Obama summoned the network anchors to the Oval Office so they could film him pouting and admitting he made a mistake. But he made four mistakes, not one. And Americans need to see competence and leadership, not a man falling on his sword admitting his mistakes – particularly those that are probably typical to the selection process. Worst of all, pandering to a ruthless media will be his undoing. Winning point with Katie Couric doesn’t mean, winning points with Americans.
So much for the ongoing Cabinet process; all we can wonder is what’s next.
Another distasteful move by Obama was his decision to go on Arab Television – Al Arabiya. Obama’s fateful words “All too often, America starts by dictating…” didn’t sit well with American viewers. The concept of blame America first is right out of the liberal manifesto penned by the Democratic National Soviet Committee. Obama doesn’t seem to see the correlation between the good and evil that has been waged over the past eight years, starting with several planes hitting the World Trade Center, Pentagon, and crashing in a field in Pennsylvania which took hundreds of innocent lives, and ruined many more. Then you can throw into the mix the thousands killed by Saddam Hussein and Taliban extremists all over the Middle East. Yet Obama excuses all of it to start an apology campaign at the expense of innocents and American strength.
The reason this is so dangerous is that Strength through Weakness is the liberal’s relativistic world view. This falls along the same crazy thinking that inspired Obama to tell viewers that he would sit down with Iran’s sinister President Ahmadinejad, and work out a deal and compromise. Obama comes from a world of Utopia dreamers, and not the land of realists that we’ve been blessed to keep us safe this past eight years. Obama plans to turn us from the lion on the block to the wishy-washy Charlie Brown version of a our former selves. Frightening thought since weakness emboldens tyrants.
And whose bright idea was it to diminish the President’s stature by getting him to engage in a war with Radio Talk Show personality Rush Limbaugh? Talk about bizarre and unfitting behavior. That’s the ideologue in Obama – thinking his victory was more than it is, he launched his own war of words against conservative talk radio. And it seemed that by any objective evaluation – Rush won that one (with half his brain tied behind his back). Fact is, Obama helped the GOP find a focal point that’s long been absent from dialogue.
Last but not least, is the creation and politicking for the support of a massive $900 trillion dollar spending package, code-named – stimulus, that is made up of ideological treats and treasures, National Review has a lowdown of some of the more obvious problems with the bill here.
The American response to a bill that has such an emphasis on “nice to haves” and pork spending at a time of crisis has been astounding. Republicans have been unified but fairly weak, and Democrats like Senator Ben Nelson (NE) have had to step in and insist that the irresponsible spending schemes be removed, if passage is to be assured. Obama’s rhetoric has been very disappointing, calling on Congress to pass the pork package or else doom is certain. Americans were really expecting him to take a stand for common sense particularly during a week where he rightfully called for corporate greed-demons to stop collecting millions in bonuses on the backs of bailout packages funded by taxpayers.
Yet, mighty Barack instead of taking the same tact with his own party went on television to try to sell winterization as a job stimulus program. Tisk, tisk. The new President is either a buffoon or a liar. So what will it be?
What a glorious two weeks for the anointed one. I’m sure he’ll get his spending package approved by reigning in the politicos. And when that fails, then what? The blaming of Bush will only have so much mileage since the passage of this do-noting package was crafted, pushed, sold and voted on by Obama and his Democratic ideologues.
It’s going to be a long four years, but we only need to get to two to effectively turn the tide.
Colin McEnroe
