When I was in high school, a classmate told me of his plans to get rich. He would start a business, and hire someone else to run it. The money would roll in, and he would not have to put forth any effort.
Little did I know that somewhere in Indonesia, another student would have the same plan, except with higher ambitions. He would occupy the Oval Office in the White House, and let other people do the work, while he vacationed, played golf, and gave speeches. Success would come without him having to put forth any effort.
The recent [year 2014] Republican victories in the national [congress] and state elections are going to reveal even more of Obama’s character flaws, and will do so in a way we have not yet seen. To understand this, we have to backtrack to the beginning of his administration, and then jump forward to today.
When Barack Obama first took over the White House in January, 2009, his party had full control of both houses of Congress, including a filibuster-proof Senate. Logic would dictate that such absolute power would reveal his character, and it did.
He moved immediately to enact what is incorrectly called, the Affordable Care Act, his signature health plan which is proving unaffordable to the nation.
It was not just that Obama used one-party control to enact this law. It is the way in which he did it, that revealed so much of his character defects. There were the back-room dirty deals, special exemptions for political allies, and the utter incompetence of those who implemented the law, such as Kathleen Sebelius who managed to mismanage the project from start to finish.
Even more revealing of Obama’s character flaw, was that he actually did nothing. The man who had vowed to scrutinize the federal budget, line by line, to eliminate waste, handed over the crafting of his namesake law to congressional Democrats, committees of cacophony who inserted so many incongruous provisions into the law that it became a wish list of socialist pipe dreams.
Obama was a bystander in the process.
No one, including the president, knew what was in the law, a fact affirmed by the classically ridiculous assertion of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, that we must enact the law to discover what is in it.
When its content was indeed discovered, the law was found to be such a boondoggle that Obama had to embark on a long series of executive orders, many of which were illegal, to violate or postpone its provisions. The ACA was nothing like what its proponents had hoped, and everything that its critics had warned of. Only its critics had bothered to read it. No one who voted for it, nor even the president himself, actually bothered to read the law.
This, then, is the character of the president.
He is not a leader, he is an armchair general, who cannot be bothered with performing even the elementary functions of his office. His governing principle is leading from behind, both in domestic affairs and foreign. He is bored and depressed by national security briefings, and so does not even attend them. He probably does not even read the cover sheets. Obama is like my old high school classmate, seeking all the benefits of success without actually doing anything.
Here we are today, but with a situation very different from 2009. Instead of controlling both houses of Congress, Obama’s party will soon control neither. He is reduced to threatening to take executive actions which he claims are legal, but there are no legal ways in which he can achieve his goals. He can no longer lead from behind. He can no longer outsource accountability for his failures. Success will no longer just come rolling in.
What, then, will he do?
The first hint came to us in Obama’s post-election press conference, in which he denied the undeniable. He essentially brushed off any personal accountability for his party’s losses, even though he had earlier said that it would be his policies that would be on the ballot. He attributed his party’s losses to voters who stayed home, but as Kirsten Powers (a Democrat) pointed out in a Fox News panel discussion, the voters who stayed home were disillusioned Democrats, who no longer support Obama.
Another hint arrived with the disclosure that Obama has secretly been seeking to cooperate with Iran against ISIS. While it is sometimes necessary to join forces with horrible dictators to defeat an even worse one, that is not the case with Obama’s courtship of Iran. Iran may actually be the worse enemy, one which soon will likely have nuclear weapons, and which will assuredly use them at the earliest opportunity, against our allies and against us.
We have already seen hints of Obama’s sophomoric petulance, such as his thinly disguised middle finger gesture (literally, there are photographs), his chin-in-the-air arrogance, and his narcissistic desire to be adored, even worshipped, by his mindless audiences. These are clues to a potentially sinister and dangerous part of his character.
What we have not yet seen is what Obama will do when deeply disappointed, cornered, and exposed for what he is. He could become dangerous.
There have long been rumors— plausible ones— that Obama is simply a passive figure-head, a willing puppet for handlers who hold to a radical ideology. Obama has openly expressed disdain for American power and greatness, and he is clearly anti-capitalist. His initial aims for America were not to dominate the world as a force for peace, but to bow down before foreign powers and let them run the world according to socialist theories.
He may perceive that he can no longer accomplish those goals. He may perceive that he has discredited not only himself, but his policies and his allies in the Democrat Party. He may perceive that in January of 2017, a newly elected president will reverse all his executive orders, undo all his legislative accomplishments, and appoint conservative judges who will reverse years of leftist rulings.
History may record Obama’s presidency as the disaster it has been.
Faced with thorough humiliation and rejection, Obama will do one of two things. He will either cower and whine, as he has so often done, or he will lash out, seeking to bring about his goal of getting revenge on America for every perceived injustice his warped imagination can conjure forth.
Time will tell.
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This last year of his admin is going to be a bumpy one for our side, no doubt in my mind.
ReplyDeleteHere's wishing you and yours a holy, and merry Christmas, Robert!