Obama’s State Of The Union Speech: Business As Usual And It’s All About Me, Your Savior
Obama’s State Of The Union Speech: Business As Usual And It’s All About Me, Your Savior
By
Ken Eliasberg
Permit me to interrupt my report-card effort on Obama’s first year in office, but his recent State of the Union speech warrants some scrutiny. Actually, the speech is really part and parcel of his first year — an exclamation point, if you will, at the end of the sentence of his unaccomplished first year. Unaccomplished only in the sense that nothing good for America transpired; on the other hand, if you grade the year on his effort to dismantle the country, it was a most accomplished year, or, at the very least, a darn good try (although you can’t please everyone; many on the left feel that this effort to “nannyize” us was insufficiently vigorous. see, e.g. the recent column in this paper by our f resident-left-winger, Ralph Shaffer and friend, entitled “First Black President” Denied Re-Nomination? To the new radicalized left, nothing short of a complete government takeover would represent success. So poor Obama finds himself taking fire from both sides of the aisle, and the sad part of his dilemma is that they are both right — in the words of Lyndon Johnson, Obama is all hat and no cattle.
I should be surprised by the most recent effort of our Charmer-in Chief, but I’m not. The theme of this gesture — and believe me, folks, the speech was, as is almost always the case with Obama, nothing but a gesture — it was little more than his saying that I’m right, my opponents are wrong, and I shall not give an inch in pursuit of my effort to “transform” (i.e. socialize) the American economy and imperil its national security. While demonizing Banks, the Supreme Court, and implicitly men (for the allegedly discriminatory conditions in the work place — a throw away line from the ‘70s) Obama offered nothing new. As a column in USA noted, he provided a laundry list of our problems without even a hint at a possible solution for any of them.
You have to admire the guy’s chutzpah — after taking a shellacking of monumental proportions (i.e. the Massachusetts election, the Supreme Court decision on free speech (which Obama managed to tastelessly denigrate), and what appears to be the final bankruptcy of Air America — a few more one-week trifectas like this and Obama could be a lame duck in his second year (which he may be anyway)), following what would seem to be an equally disconcerting rejection of his agenda in Virginia and New Jersey, he displayed no flexibility whatsoever in his response. None of the pragmatism that Bill Clinton displayed after his 1994 setback (of course, Bill Clinton is the consummate politician (i.e. one who confuses prostitution with accommodation); Obama, on the other hand is, notwithstanding his protestations to the contrary, an ideologue (one, who finding himself in a hole, refuses to stop digging).
This line of thinking was better conveyed in the following quote from an insightful column entitled The Electorate vs. Obama’s Agenda by Charles Krauthammer at realclearpolitics.com on 2/5/10:
“‘I am not an ideologue,’ protested President Obama at a gathering with Republican House members last week. Perhaps, but he does have a tenacious commitment to a set of political convictions.
Compare his 2010 State of the Union to his first address to Congress a year earlier. The consistency is remarkable. In 2009, after passing a $787 billion (now $862 billion) stimulus package, the largest spending bill in galactic history, he unveiled a manifesto for fundamentally restructuring the commanding heights of American society - - health care, education and energy.
A year later, after stunning Democratic setbacks in Virginia, New Jersey and Massachusetts, Obama gave a stay-the-course State of the Union address (a) pledging not to walk away from health care reform, (b) seeking to turn college education increasingly into a federal entitlement, and (c) asking again for cap-and-trade energy legislation. Plus, of course, another stimulus package, this time renamed a ‘jobs bill.’
This being a democracy, don’t the Democrats see that clinging to this agenda will march them over a cliff? Don’t they understand Massachusetts?
Well, they understand it through a prism of two cherished axioms: (1) The people are stupid and (2) Republicans are bad. Result? The dim, led by the malicious, vote incorrectly.”
Krauthammer goes on to elaborate on these themes — again in a simple but insightful manner — and we’ll take a look at that portion of his presentation down the road. For present purposes, suffice it to say that the 2 points just cited — citizen stupidity and Republican malevolence — summarily captures the thinking of the Democratic Party and many, if not most, of their constituents, i.e. you’re too dumb and mean spirited to know what’s good for you, so we’ll do it for you.
The good news, if any can be found in Obama’s efforts (which pretty closely conform to those desired by the left, in general even though, as noted, many of them are disappointed in him for his failure to more energetically pursue their socialistic objectives) is that (1) his energy plan (cap-and-trade) is pretty much dead, (2) his health care reform plan is on life support (and, with any kind of luck, some one will pull the plug), and (3) it is difficult to imagine that the left can do much more to destroy our educational system which, thanks to their efforts over the last 50 or 60 years, is pretty much beyond being restored to its once preeminent position (although I would never discount their willingness to try, and, unfortunately, our disinclination to stop them).
All in all, it has been a disastrous year for all concerned, including Obama, who has used up most of the good will which he purchased with little more than his facile conversational skills, which were greatly enhanced by the unpleasant qualities of his opponents, i.e. Hillary Clinton and John McCain. Continuing with the good news, again, if there is any, is that while we have not reversed the losses of previous years, we have been fairly successful in keeping the barbarians outside the gates — at least for the moment.
It’s apparent that either Obama is (1) tone deaf, (2) completely out of touch with what’s happening on the ground in America,(3)so enveloped in his narcissistic cocoon, that he is oblivious to what appears to be the contemporary political condition and the possibilities which it makes available, or (4) he is so filled with hubris that he just doesn’t give a damn. I’ll give him this — he sure can give a speech; I only wish he said something that offered some constructive ideas re solving some of America’s pressing problems. Thank God he can only speak — he can’t do anything. But no one says nothing more soothingly and elegantly than our Charmer-in-Chief. He may charm the birds out of the trees, but I’m afraid that he cannot charm our enemies out of the caves in Aghanistan in which they are plotting to kill us nor can he charm the economy out of the depressed circumstances in which it finds itself, but he is never without words (and excuses — not explanations, excuses) - to be continued.