I will not be dealing today with the murder of 4 innocent Israeli Jews by savage Palesimians. I need a day to calm down and temper my rage. Palesimians are a scourge of the Earth, and their ceasing to exist would improve this world. For those trying to separate the good from the bad, the good ones will condemn this murder, as well as Hamas and Hezbollah itself. Cue the chirping crickets.
Now on to President Obama. My remarks are not about his speech yesterday. The speech itself was not bad. Mr. Obama is way too dispassionate for me, but his remarks about President George W. Bush were gracious enough. My criticisms of him today are based on his overall presidency since taking office. Yesterday had some positive overtones, but unless it becomes a trend, it remains an aberration. His overall presidency is failing.
Right off the bat I want to make it clear that Barack Obama is my president.
I did not vote for him. I am totally comfortable in having not voted for him. I disagree with most of his agenda and am supporting candidates who will work to defeat that agenda and implement policies more to my liking.
Yet he is still my president. I don’t want to see him fail, especially on the world stage.
Given that he is a liberal and I am a conservative, he will not listen to me. Yet the Americans in the middle who decide elections are not happy with him. The left can complain that the voters are not sophisticated enough to understand his brilliance, but snobbery like that doesn’t convince the masses. It only makes them more entrenched in the other direction.
Barack Obama is failing, and this must stop for the good of the country.
I am not ready to declare him a failed president. He has plenty of time to turn it around.
Before he can turn it around, he must take steps to show that he gets it. His biggest flaw is his unwillingness to adapt.
The first thing Mr. Obama needs to do is to stop whining. He needs to man up and grow a pair.
George W. Bush inherited a slowing economy and a collapsing stock market. By the time he was sworn into office, the NASDAQ had lost 90% of its value and the DOW was plummeting.
There was not a single time when he blamed Bill Clinton. George W. Bush simply put his head down and did his job. This was before 9/11. With a razor thin majority, he got his tax cuts passed. Growth was stimulated.
One can vociferously disagree with his policies, but at least he enacted them. Had he spent every waking minute blaming Bill Clinton, he would not have been able to get anything done.
Every time Barack Obama (and his many subordinates) blames George W. Bush, the people see him as smaller and smaller. He has had the job for almost two years. It is his job to fix the problems.
Those on the left romance the economy as eight fabulous years of Clinton followed by eight awful years of Bush. This is false. Both presidents had exactly the same circumstances. They had bad conditions in year one, very good conditions in years two through seven, and a bad eighth year. To blame the 2008 financial crisis on President Bush and then use that to invalidate the virtually perfect economy of 2001-2007 is as wrong as blaming Bill Clinton for the 2000 economic meltdown and invalidating the years 1993-1999.
Barack Obama is failing because he will not take the steps necessary to fix the economy. I agreed with George W. Bush’s economic plan and disagreed with Clinton’s plan. However, there is no denying that both men immediately went to work on the economy. One cannot deny that both men made improving the economy their top priority upon being sworn in.
The second thing hurting Barack Obama beyond his whining is his stubbornness. He campaigned on a bad economy but got elected and focused on healthcare. He bragged that his plan would lower the deficit while reducing costs and improving coverage. Yet now Democrats are being told not to say this on the campaign trail. His plan is troubled by the fact that the numbers do not add up. He knew this. He didn’t care. He rammed the plan through against the will of the people. The people begged him to focus on jobs he did not.
More importantly, time is finite. Every minute spent on healthcare was a minute not spent on the economy. The rationale of now or never on healthcare is understandable. However, the drastic economic situation should have forced him to adapt and rearrange his priorities. The American people were not talking about healthcare. They wanted jobs. He didn’t listen.
The third problem is his seeming unwillingness to adapt. When the Republicans lost Congress in 2006 it was not because of the economy, which was humming on all cylinders. The public was frustrated with the War in Iraq. President Bush fired Donald Rumsfeld (who I liked), hired David Petraeus (a phenomenal leader), and instituted the surge. It took losing an election, but President Bush got the message, adapted, and won Iraq.
In 2008 President Bush signed the original bailout package of 800 billion. I was against it on free market principles. I disagreed with him. Yet he put aside his own longstanding free market beliefs himself and signed a bill that was contra to those beliefs because he felt that this was an unprecedented situation. That is adapting.
Barack Obama could say that the extraordinary situation America is now facing has forced him to change course (he can still Blame Bush if he needs to on this one). Therefore, while it totally goes against his philosophy, he is enacting business tax cuts. Income, capital gains, and other business taxes will be sharply reduced. The Bush tax cuts will be extended (although making them permanent would be better). He can even cite President Bush enacting the stimulus as a precedent for his shifting position. He can still claim to be against the policy, but blame the terrible times for forcing him to do it. It would be smart policy and smart politics. He can then take the credit when the tax cuts (as they always do) work.
The stimulus bill Obama signed has failed. Again, it is too soon to say his presidency has failed. Yet this specific policy has had enough lag time. President Obama condescendingly declared that spending is stimulus. This is not true. The stimulus consisted of big money payoffs to unions and other liberal interest groups. It did not lead to shovel ready jobs. Temporary census workers now know what temporary means.
The jobs are not coming back because employers are afraid to hire. They are hoarding cash because they believe correctly that Mr. Obama is raising their taxes (letting the Bush tax cuts expire) and increasing their costs (especially healthcare).
This leads to the fourth and last problem with Mr. Obama. He is incredibly pompous. In short, he is a typical pointy-headed academic. He can spout theories, but has never actually run a business or held any executive position. He is so positive that he is right that it leads him to demonize those who disagree with him.
Disagreeing with his healthcare law means being against any kind of healthcare solution, rather than just supporting-a different one. Disagreeing with him on border security means one is anti-Mexican rather than concerned about sovereignty. Questioning his budget busting liberalism brings out cries of racism, rather than admitting that conservatives find him no more insufferable and wrongheaded than John Kerry, Al Gore, or Michael Dukakis.
Mr. Obama got elected for the same reason that every president since the modern television era has gotten elected. He was the most likable candidate.
He was likable when he ran for president. I disagreed with him, but found him to be an affable enough fellow. He was more likable than Hillary (a relatively easy task), and came across as more optimistic than John McCain, who often seemed dour.
Barack Obama is not likable when he demonizes political opponents. He is not likable when he is condescending toward the voters. He is not likable when he keeps blaming his predecessor (who to this day is as gracious as ever).
President Obama cannot blame the culture of Washington. Every president has that. He is no different. Yet his unwillingness to work with the other side has only hardened their opposition. Had he truly reached out, they would have been committing political suicide opposing him. His inflexibility allowed them to respond in kind.
Barack Obama must stop whining, stop being stubborn, learn to adapt, and stop demonizing those who disagree with him.
He needs to order his subordinates to knock it off, since it reflects badly on him. He absolutely has the power to make them stop.
In short, it is time for the childish temper tantrums to stop. He needs to enter adulthood.
This means learning to be flexible in a heartbeat. Flexibility does not mean compromising beliefs and principles. It means not letting the perfect be the enemy of the good.
He protested that he was not an ideologue. The fact that he even had to say that meant that the perception had taken hold. Richard Nixon said he was not a crook. These are defensive comments.
The economy is not recovering. It may not be completely cratering, but the “recovery” is a myth.
This does not even begin to get to foreign policy, where all the same flaws in Mr. Obama’s character apply.
It does not begin to get to racial issues, where too many times he has injected himself into situations and further polarized the discussion, rather than defuse it. Again, Mr. Obama simply needs to end his rigidity, which leads to predetermined and often erroneous conclusions.
Barack Obama is not a bad person. He is not evil. I do not hate him.
I just wish he would be more of a leader. Leaders do not focus on the past. They focus on the future. Somewhere from being a candidate to winning the election, “Yes, we can” turned into, “I could have but my predecessor prevented me.”
Ronald Reagan was a leader. Ronald Regan did not become Ronald Reagan by bashing Jimmy Carter. Reagan became the man many lionize today because he had a clear, positive vision for America. Then he took steps to implement it. He had setbacks, and lost congress in 1982. Yet he retained his optimism and made people feel good through his efforts. His words were matched by his deeds.
Barack Obama has the potential to succeed. The issue is if he is capable of making the hard personal choices to reach that potential.
He wanted all of us to change. It is he who has to change. He is very good at lecturing everybody else. If he can look inward, admit his flaws, and change himself for the better, he can still have a successful presidency.
It is up to him. The clock is ticking for him and all of us.
eric