OBAMA’S REPORT CARD III
OBAMA’S REPORT CARD III
By
Ken Eliasberg
Before critiquing specific aspects of Obama’s first-year efforts, let me give you the bottom line. Over the years I have done a number of columns on who the Dems are — i.e. what the left is really all about — none either more precise or more profound than the two I did for this paper in June of 2007, the first, entitled Dem’s Policies — Socialism and Surrender: Defense of Policies — Hot Air & Hubris (6/14/07) and Dems Policies and Defense Thereof II (6/21/07). Obamais those policies writ large, i.e. socialism and surrender - his domestic policy is essentially little more than governmentalizing our free enterprise system, and his foreign policy is appeasement (and thus surrender). As previously indicated, I want to look at Obama from several different perspectives, to wit: his approach, his style, his substance, and his competence.
First, his approach — let’s talk! Obama has been engaged in a 1-year talkathon, which, as I have also previously pointed out, is understandable. Why? Because that is all that Obama has ever done — TALK. He talked his way through academia, Chicago community organizer (community orgnanizing being a euphanism for a rabble rousing talker), the Illinois State Senate, and, finally, for about 18 months in the U.S. Senate. He has never had a real job, never handled a pay roll — in short, never really done anything but talk. And he does it so well; he is a charming fellow (particularly when put up against cranky, annoying, unaccomplished creeps like Hillary Clinton and John McCain). But more to the point, it has worked for him. He talked himself from Community Organizer to a blighted Chicago urban area to community organizer of the world. Who can argue with that record. So who can blame him for thinking that he can talk the world into a more harmonious state? Only those familiar with the reality of geopolitics, i.e. talk is not what gets things done in the real world — or in any world for that matter. Recall that old saying — I can’t hear what you say above the noise of what you do. In that context, Obama has been a huge failure — no one (at least no one in my life time, and I have lived through a great number of political blow hards) has talked more than Barack Obama. It got to a point where you could not turn on your T.V. without bumping into Obama. I believe that he had over 400 appearances, presentations, interviews, etc. in just one year — that’s more than 1 a day. He was in a perpetual campaign mode for the entire year, making even the Clintons look like they were seriously concerned with governing (rather than politicking). What has this talk accomplished? Next to nothing (thank God). And, by the way, once again, this was not the fault of the Republicans, who, for once in their life did something smart — they got the hell out of the way. Recall that bit of sage advice to the effect that when your enemy is in the process of committing suicide, don’t get in the way. It was his own Party over which he tripped on the way to America’s destruction.
By the way, his lack of practical experience is compounded by the fact that he has chosen to surround himself with academicians and politicians, neither group being invested with any significant degree of experience in the private sector. In fact, the Obama administration has way fewer private sector people in either cabinet or czar positions than any previous administration. Academics are virtually useful at doing anything but hypothesizing and doing so with a decidedly left-wing tilt. Politicians are similarly devoid of any experience other than living off the government — so what we have too many of are quacks and hacks.
An amusing aside here is that Obama is now blaming his lack of success on not adequately communicating his message. For God’s sake, if we had him in our home any more often than we have him there over the past year he would have to start paying rent.
Next his style. He is smooth — to the point of being elegant. He is a likeable guy — at least as likeable as you are apt to find a politician. But that is problem - he is all style and very little substance. Again, who can blame him: As he advised Harry Reid after Reid complemented him on completion of one of his Senate speeches, “I have a gift.” And indeed he does, but as has oft been noted, there is such a thing as too much of a good thing. And Obama has milked that cow dry.
His elegance notwithstanding, his political style is that of the power hungry Chicago thug. Chicago politics may be the dirtiest in the country (the only thing that I know of that comes close is some of the politics practiced in parts of Louisiana — particularly New Orleans). As practiced, Chicago politics is really nothing more than a criminal enterprise — you may have heard the old joke about the political activist who remarked that, on his death, he wished to be buried in Chicago so that he might remain politically active.
His substance — a left-wing ideologue! While Obama has disavowed his being an ideologue, that assertion is belied by his history. He was mentored by people like Frank Marshall Davis and Bill Ayers, both of whom were (and in Ayers’ case remains) communists. In his book (and here I’m assuming that it is his book although this has been disputed, i.e. there are those who think that it was ghost written by Bill Ayers, see, e.g. Jack Cashill, American Thinker: Who Wrote Dreams From My Father?, 10/9/08 and American Thinker: Breakthrough on the Authorship of Obama’s ‘Dreams’ 6/28/09) he admits that his choice of friends in college were those connected to the left-wing — the very far left wing. Thus, in the book, he makes this statement:
“To avoid being mistaken for a sellout, I chose my friends carefully.The more
politically active black students. The foreign students. The Chicanos. The Marxist
professors and structural feminists and punk-rock performance poets. We smoked
cigarettes and wore leather jackets. At night, in the dorms, we discussed
neocolonialism, Franz Fanon, Eurocentrism and patriarchy.”
And everything associated with his avowed desire to fundamentally transform America can only be explained in his obvious desire to achieve a degree of wealth redistribution that might have made even FDR blush.
So what do you get when you package his style and substance? A criminal enterprise trying to jam a government takeover down your throat! It is a mixture of thuggery and ideology — where Marx meets the Mafia; a melding, if you will, of Stalin and Luciano. Actually, it is more dangerous than the Mafia; the latter never entertained a project as ambitious as taking over the world’s only — at least for the moment — super power (to be continued).