The Real Obama, Master of Failure

By now we’ve all heard the view of Team Obama as a disciplined machine working according to a secret plan laid out by an evil genius to make the United States a socialist workers’ paradise. We’ve heard about Obama, the greatest politician of all times, the silver-tongued antichrist who is slowly, inexorable putting a dagger into the heart of capitalism, Christianity, freedom, and America itself. Ha! Let’s talk about the real Obama, the tone deaf politician Obama, the man with no political instincts. Let’s talk about Obama the failure. . .
To begin, let us recognize that Obama has advantages that few prior presidents ever had. He has the good will of being a Democrat at a time when the Republican brand has been so tarnished by it’s prior leaders that most people would rather identify themselves as child molesters than Republicans. He has the good will of most Americans, who want to see the nation’s first black president succeed. He has a sycophantic media that shares his every belief and has lost any pretense of being impartial, and who willingly shade the truth to support him and his causes. Finally, on the most practical level, his party has control of both the House and the Senate, and in such overwhelming majorities that the Republican Party is all but irrelevant. In other words, he is essentially unopposed.

With all of these advantages, he should be both supremely popular and should easily be able to get his agenda through the Congress, no matter how radical. Yet, something has gone wrong. Consider Obama’s major legislative goals:

• Stimulus I: Obama’s first act was to sign a huge “stimulus” bill into law, a bill that was drafted by the Congress long before he became involved. Still, we have to call that a Pass. . . but there’s a caveat. The bill did nothing to help the economy. Unemployment is the worst it’s been since the Great Depression, the economy continues to worsen, and the stimulus has become an albatross for supporters. It’s so bad that Obama had to send Joe Biden to assure the country that the stimulus really is working, despite the total lack of evidence.

• Stimulus II: D.O.A.

• Cap and trade: Cap and trade, one of Obama’s big initiatives, limped over the finish line in the House, possibly ending several careers. The plan is considered a non-starter in the Senate. D.O.A.

• “Card Check”: The unions wanted Obama to push through the Employee Free Choice Act, which would have taken away the choice of employees to remain union-free. This law would have allowed the Federal government to essentially impose a union on companies while the employer “negotiated” with the employees. Neither the House nor the Senate is willing to bring this one to a vote. D.O.A.

• Assault Weapon’s Ban: Team Obama promised their gun control friends they would get the assault weapon ban re-instituted. . . until Eric Holder announced they would do no such thing. D.O.A.

• Banking Regulation: Team Obama was handed the worst banking crisis in American history and carte blanche to re-make and regulate the industry as they saw fit. Not only that, but everyone, even the banks, agreed it was necessary. Barney Frank’s still working on it, but the will to pass this has been lost as a result of the health care debate. Stalled.

• Health care reform: The big red cherry on top of the Obama’s “socialist agenda” was supposed to be health care reform. Obama promised his supporters that the government would run health care. That was a non-starter. So he promised a “public option.” That died too. Now he’s promising “health care co-ops”, which the left hates. He promised price controls on drug makers, he got some price cuts for Medicare patients. He promised to extend coverage to 46 million Americans, now he’s talking about a couple million -- after ten years. He promised subsidies for most Americans, now he’s talking about hardship exemptions. And he can’t even get those things passed. ObamaCare: D.O.A. A face-saving version of health care reform-lite: Stalled

• Iraq: Obama was going to pull our troops out of Iraq on Day One of his Presidency. They’re still there, he’s just redesignated the combat troops as advisors. Fail

• Guantanamo: Obama was going to close Guantanamo on Day One and give these poor terrorists more legal rights. Not only did that not happen, but he tried to make them non-persons with no legal rights. . . something dictators do. Fail

That’s quite a poor record for our secret communist, genius President and his master plan. I guess his plan didn’t prepare him to deal with a willing Congress? In reality, he and his team have mishandled every one of these issues.

But those are just the beginnings of his failures. Let’s consider foreign policy, where he can do as he pleases without consulting a pesky, interfering Congress:

• Afghanistan: Obama told us he would fix Afghanistan, which Bush had neglected. He even tossed out the generals Bush had chosen so as to make sure he had the right team in place. We are now told by the generals (and our allies) that Afghanistan is a loss. Fail

• Iran: Obama would sit with Iran and stop them from wanting the bomb. They flipped him the bird of non-peace. They even put down a revolution as he watched, cluelessly. Fail

• North Korea: Obama would abandon this six-party talks stuff and fix this sucker right up. Nothing changed, except that North Korea started lobbing missiles in the Pacific. Fail

• China: Obama would change our relationship with China -- no more dumping, safer products or no imports, and he wasn’t going to put up with their currency manipulation. Unless you count begging the Chinese keep buying our bonds, there’s been no progress here. Fail

• India: Obama would get India onto the non-proliferation train and get them to sign up to climate change legislation. They told him no, and he praised them. Fail

• The Arab-Israel Conflict: Obama planned to use his “special” background to show the Arabs our sincerity (and our desire to leave them alone) and thereby solve this deep-rooted conflict. So he gave a speech telling the Arabs that Americans are jerks, and . . . um, that’s it. Now the Israelis are building more settlements and getting ready to bomb Iran, Obama sent more troops to Afghanistan, and he’s agreed to send more American anti-missile hardware to the Middle East to compensate for his sell out of the Eastern Europeans. Fail

• Honduras: Obama tried to bully little Honduras. They told him to take a hike. He did. Fail

• Eastern Europe: Obama sold out Poland and the Czechs by cancelling a missile shield that was supposed to draw them closer to us to protect them from the Russians. Fail

• Russia: Obama sent a re-set button to Putin, who punched it and reset the present to the Cold War. Now Putin’s helping Iran finish their nuclear dreams and he’s stationing troops in Venezuela. Fail

Hmm. That’s not very good for a messiah, who promised to bring peace with the mere joyous chords produced by his voice. At least he’s got good political instincts, right? Actually, he and his team have been remarkably tone deaf:

• Nominations: Obama’s nominations have repeatedly blown up in his face. Right out of the gates, several were caught not paying their taxes. And his claims to not allow lobbyists into his government were shown to be false. Post racial Obama appointed Van Jones, a racist communist, and Justice Sotomayor, a racist embarrassment. His attorney general choice infuriated the left because of his prior advocacy of torture, and then everyone else when he called us cowards on race.

• CIA Investigations: Obama’s plan to investigate CIA agents has drawn fire from both the right and the left, and recently from every head of the CIA dating back decades.

• Budge Buster: Obama immediately dwarfed the biggest complaint against Bush (that he vastly increased the deficit), when Obama gave us our first trillion dollar deficit -- and then tried to blame everyone but himself. Mr. Fiscal Irresponsibility also disappointed everyone when he signed a budget containing 9,000 earmarks after promising to end the practice.

• Stupid Cops: So in the middle of this melt down, Obama chose to wade into the race debate by slandering a white police officer who had acted reasonably and correctly. That killed his claims to be post-racial, and made everyone wonder why he felt the need to get involved in a local matter. Can you say, "bad judgment"?

• Fishy-Snitch: As the health care debate unfolded, Team Obama put out the word that neighbor should turn in neighbor for expressing impure thoughts, thus adding Team Obama to the infamous pantheon that includes the Stasi, the Gestapo and other secret police.

• Demonizations: And throughout his entire presidency, particularly health care, Obama has shown a knee-jerk tendency to react to opposition by demonizing his opponents. Be it evil insurers or greedy doctors or “those who would oppose us”, or the crowds of crazy, misled, angry, unhinged, racists who stood up to him in such vast numbers at town halls, tea parties, or the tea party protest on the Mall, Obama always made it clear that he does not see good faith in disagreement.

So much for the healer, for the man who would bring us all together. And this misconduct has been reflected in the polls, where Obama’s support has fallen steadily like a ski slope. He is now one of the least-liked, least-supported presidents since post-Watergate Nixon.

And while we’re talking about Obama being tone-deaf, let’s finally put to bed this idea that Obama is a gifted speaker. If he is such a great speaker or reader or whatever, tell me one thing he has said that’s memorable? Give me any line from any of his speeches that you remember. Even the left doesn’t quote his words. . . because he’s never said anything interesting.

Finally, even if he can’t get his legislation through, even if he can’t get anyone else in the world to obey his wishes, and even if he can’t convince the people to support him, at least his friends are benefiting from his presidency right? Wrong:

• The anti-war people got nothing. Iraq and Afghanistan are continuing as before.

• Gay groups got nothing. Obama’s justice department is still defending the Defense of Marriage Act, and Obama even refused to extend full benefits to gay partners of federal employees -- something he could have done without anyone’s approval.

• His friends at ACORN lost their role with the census and just got defunded by the Congress, all without a peep of protest.

• Immigration groups got nothing. In fact, the backlash from the health care bill may have set their cause back for a generation.

• Gun control groups got nothing.

• Minority groups got nothing.

• Only the unions got a few crumbs. They didn’t get nationalized health care like they wanted. But they did get one union member appointed to the New York Federal Reserve Board, though that means nothing to such a large body. They also got effective control of GM and Chrysler, but that’s probably a bigger problem than it’s worth -- not to mention they lost half their jobs in the process.

So where is this success I keep hearing about? Has he just not broken out the secret plan yet that will make him omnipotent and let him unwind capitalism, steal our freedoms and make America into Nazi Germany? Or is it possible he’s just not that competent and that Team Obama is just a group of poorly-skilled amateurs posing as professionals?