During the last nineteen days of this campaign season, some really bad news is in the wind for one Barack Hussein Obama. That bad news is that Americans are starting to take notice of the fact that the buck does in fact stop anywhere but on Obama’s undoubtedly not been used in four years desk. Americans, while they may be prone to making huge mistakes every once in a while, like for instance believing that there is such a thing as a fiscally responsible Democrat, or a tax reforming hawkish Democrat, have never been a fan of people who spent every waking moment thinking of ways to weasel out of taking responsibility.
As a very young Woolworth Manager in a previous life, I was promoted to manage a store in Michigan where the previous manager had been fired for, “running the store into the dirt.” My boss, the District Manager, looked at me before he left and said, “John, they’ll give you about six months to get this thing running right. That’s the amount of time the corporate guys will tolerate your claims that you are still cleaning up Bozo’s mess. It might be true that those problems will still exist after that, but after six months, they’ll just be tired of hearing it. That might not be fair, but then life isn’t.”
That’s the truth of it. We all have excuse fatigue, and when you boil down Barack Obama’s campaign strategy, excuses are the only real things of substance he has to offer. The problems with this president run much deeper than his complete ignorance on the subject of economics, his big government bent, and his belief that the solution for problems caused by big government interventions of the past would be even bigger government interventions for the future. The problem with this president runs even deeper than his projection of American weakness around the globe causing the sacking of multiple U.S. embassies across Northern Africa and in the Middle East. The problem with this President runs even deeper than his maniacal insistence on interjecting governmental oversight and regulation into every aspect of what used to be a free society, including by the way things as mundane as what parents are allowed to feed their school children on a daily basis. The deeper problem with this President, are his attempts to weasel his way out of even the slightest bit of responsibility, for anything.
The economic woes, of an economy that is still in as terrible a shape as it was in January of 2009, had become Obama’s self professed responsibility at least a dozen times since his inauguration. The economy by the way has gotten no better, it is merely a case where Americans have gotten used to the constant malaise. In truth, it became his economy on the day he took the oath of office, not because anything was his fault, but because that was the day he formally swore an oath to start taking responsibility for America’s business. The, “it is all George Bush’s fault,” meme became tiresome to Americans as a whole right around July of that year. Think back to July of 2009, remember what the big debate and political discussion was then? I do, and it was all about Obamacare, and reading story after story telling an electorate that clearly did not want it to become law to not worry, the bill had died. The President had promised multiple times to refocus his laser like attention on the economy instead, and then like a bad Peter Lorrie movie, the creature was reborn, and the economy placed on the back burner, remaining George W. Bush’s fault.
Afghanistan and Iraq had been won already by the time Barack Obama was inaugurated in 2009, and somehow he managed to project enough American weakness around those areas to turn those cowed states into hot spots for Jihadists, and that somehow too was Bush’s fault. Fast and Furious, the operation in which stimulus money was spent on enough small armaments to arm a small South American Country, and then presented as a gift to Mexican Drug Lords, that too was blamed on George W. Bush. Shocking, I know. Solyndra, A123 Systems, Fiskar, and all those other losers of tax payer money used to promote the Green Fairy from the land of Unicorns to actual reality, that was the fault of his obviously not-as-smart-as-he-is staff. The poor sales of his spiffy new auto companies, which are both in deep financial trouble once again, despite the $50 Billion we gave them and the unions in order to just magic those troubles away, why it was the fault of the people he hand picked to run those companies and carry out his wishes.
This latest kerfuffle in Benghazi is merely more of the same. Putting aside for the moment that Barack Obama’s foreign policy ended in the only possible way that it could have, disaster, his actions afterwards are nothing more than a continuation of his same old tiresome pathology. His first impulse upon all hell breaking loose was not to be in any way helpful to the people whom he had so icily placed in harms way with his kumbayah school of foreign policy, nor was it to shore up the remaining embassies which were also in danger of being sacked, nor was it to send a message of strength to those who now view America as ripe for more attacks due to our being a weakened paper tiger. His first impulse was to extricate himself from responsibility. He did not want the optics of failure to get in the way of his approval numbers or to damage his electoral prospects.
Barack Obama likes being President. You get a pretty cool jet airplane to tool around the globe on. You get a nice big house and your office is actually in the same building. People give you deferential treatment, out of respect for the office you hold, even if they do not agree with you personally or feel that you should be listened to outside of the office you hold. You get to party with Hollywood stars, and sports legends come to your house in order to have a little basketball game. You get to play a hundred rounds of golf in a year, and your wife gets to take lavish vacations in exotic locations, while including a hundred or so friends, secret service protection, and somebody else pays for it all.
The part of the job that Barack Obama does not like is taking responsibility, for what ever happens that may have an impact upon his job. Part of being President is being a leader. Even in grade school, nobody liked the kid who got everyone else in trouble for crap that he pulled while he skated clean, smelling like a rose. Sooner or later that kid ended up being hated by all. The other trouble makers hated him, the kids who never got into trouble hated him, and the teacher’s themselves eventually came to hate him. Barack Obama’s first impulse in any situation is to get out of taking responsibility for anything. That is a dangerous man indeed to have as President. Other world leaders will soon notice this if they haven’t already. The latest collapse in the polls, which continued by the way past the all important second debate in which we were assured Barack Obama actually won, is the direct result of the American people noticing that they are suddenly tired of a President who offers nothing but excuses for why nothing is his fault.
I don’t need a President with style, cool, or hipster gravitas. I need a president with competence and a sense of responsibility.
