Anyone who understands President Obama’s behavior the last few months is invited to step forward, and anyone who has a benign explanation for it need to step in front of him. It is so bizarre and unprecedented that amateurs and professionals alike are offering psychological diagnoses. Has any American leader ever responded to failure, adversity and crisis with this kind of a disgraceful combination of defiance, bitterness, and detachment? I can’t think of any.
It is said that during the darkest days of Watergate, President Nixon sank into depression. Franklin Pierce coped with the stress of watching the Union unravel over slavery by staying smashed as much as possible. Woodrow Wilson’s battles with Congress probably helped provoke the stroke that incapacitated him. None of these are really comparable to the current President sinking to gratuitous campaign mode, calling Republicans derogatory names and impugning their motives and humanity, while openly alternating between obsessive fundraising and vacationing the rest of the time as the world is desperate for American leadership.
Say what you will about Bill Clinton, and I often do, but the man never capitulated, gave up, or stopped battling no matter how much (legitimate) fire he was under during the Monica scandal and his impeachment. At very least, one would think Barack Obama would see the need, as past Presidents have, to model virtues like diligence, responsibility, fortitude, courage, and perseverance for the nation, especially the young.
Nope.
In truth, Obama stopped behaving like a President long ago. He doesn’t have the stomach for true engagement with Congress, and sees the Presidency as a pinnacle from which to bark orders and to “go it alone” rather than engineer compromises, like every other successful leader of a democracy. In this destructive and ineffective leadership approach he has been encouraged by a complacent media that does neither him nor the nation favors by ratifying incompetence, and a loyal segment of the public that simply refuses to hold this President—he’s black, and that’s all that matters—to any standards whatsoever. I saw a poll two days ago showing that 54% of the public disapproves of Obama’s handling of the Presidency (anyone else with his record would be at about 25%), and that 58% felt that he was incompetent. I want to talk to the 4% of those polled who approve of incompetence.
Now Obama threatens to gut the enforcement of U.S. immigration laws by executive fiat, no matter how reckless, ill-advised and divisive such a unilateral move will be, while sending a message to the world that courting big bucks donors in California is a higher priority than engaging with Congress, telling the I.R.S. to stop stonewalling, placing constant and meaningful pressure on Putin, and standing up for Israel….which is to say, doing the vital job he was elected to do.
Yesterday, Charles Krauthammer summed this strange and dispiriting spectacle up this way, focusing on the President’s inaction regarding the Ukraine crisis:
“The arc of history may indeed bend toward justice, Mr. President. But, as you say, the arc is long. The job of a leader is to shorten it. Otherwise, why do we need a president? And why did you seek to become ours?”
I have the answer to that, and readers here know what I’m going to say: he sought to become ours because he had no idea what the job entailed, but had been convinced by a lifetime of fawning by others that he could handle it, despite no relevant experience or management skills. His response to his own failures, rather than to learn, change, and improve, was to blame everyone and anyone else (his enablers are blaming the job, which has suddenly become impossible), and to check out. Two years before the end of his term.
If I were conspiratorial of mind, I would suspect that Obama is trying to force House Republicans to impeach him. That would be one way to rev up the “base,” including those 4% who like incompetence, and really rip the nation in two, especially by race. My respect for this man has fallen so far, especially recently, but I just can’t believe he would stoop so low. Obama has already taken unconscionable advantage of the fact that he is impeachment-proof, willfully violating the Constitution, changing some laws by fiat, refusing to enforce others, intentionally violating still more. He knows that the Republicans got clobbered at the polls the last time they impeached a Democratic President, even though he deserved it. Obama knows that impeaching the first black President would be spun as racism. He knows that nobody but lunatics want Joe Biden in the White House. But his current conduct has propelled the government into new and desperate territory. What is Congress supposed to do with a President who refuses to do his job?
Partisan fundraising is not an item on the President’s job description. I have long advocated that the political parties reimburse the Treasury for every cent spend on such frolics—Air Force One costs, Secret Service expenses, everything. Engaging in this extra-curricular activity in times of world crisis, however, is dereliction of duty. Did the Founders have this in mind when they designated “high crimes and misdemeanors” as the criteria for removing a President from office?
Of course not. It never occurred to these honorable men that the nation would ever have a leader so lacking in character, leadership skills, common sense and love of country that he would behave like this President is behaving now.
Ethics Alarms 
It’s hard to improve on that. When an electorate commits itself to voting for those without character and qualifications- but solely on one who promises them pie in the sky- then it sets itself up for more than disappointment. It sets itself up for national ruin.
Lictionronically, resigning at chess, as you have depicted, is usually considered the mark of a true sport, who does not play to the bitter end when he knows his position is hopeless. That said, the president does not get to simply lay his principal piece down and say he is not going to play any longer. Anyone else doing so would be dereliction of duty and grounds for removal.
The president knows that’s not going to happen, but he also knows his party is looking at a beating in the midterm elections if things continue the way they are. So he is rallying his party faithful in the hopes that they can hold onto just enough seats to keep the Senate and prevent him from becoming a completely isolated lame duck for the last 2 years of his presidency, which would almost certainly set his party up to lose the White House in 2016.
I’d like to see the rest of the poll that says 4% approve of incompetence. I’d love to believe no one is that stupid, but I sit one cubicle away from a secretary who interjects herself into any conversation even mildly critical of the president by telling the parties not to criticize HER president.
If you tip your king before you are hopelessly beaten, or because, though a better player would fight on, you have neither the skill nor fortitude to do so, you are a weenie. Back when my game was in shape, I sometimes offered to switch sides once my opponent resigned. If the player was weak enough, I could still win.
Chess always has a “Nuclear Option”.
Amen and amen. My point is that there is a certain irony to the image because the president, rather than being a good sport and stepping aside when hopelessly beaten, is doing just what you set forth above. Yup, he is a weenie.
“None of these are really comparable to the current President sinking to gratuitous campaign mode, calling Republicans derogatory names and impugning their motives and humanity, while openly alternating between obsessive fundraising and vacationing the rest of the time as the world is desperate for American leadership.”
Everyone when beleaguered and shown their utter failure of their methods does one of two things: 1) Fixes them with humility, 2) Retreats to their comfort zone.
“If I were conspiratorial of mind, I would suspect that Obama is trying to force House Republicans to impeach him.”
One thing I’ve learned of late, is that when the Democrats and Leftists in general accuse the other side of something pernicious, odds are they are already engaging in it. The favorite accusation? Republicans only care about rich cronies at the cost of the little man. Yet history demonstrates the colossal marriage of Corporations and Wealthy people to Democrat Party interests and governmental largesse. Another favorite? Republicans want a segregated and class-based society, divided on lines of race, gender and income. Yet every Democrat policy creates that result.
I recall now Hillary’s accusation of vast right wing conspiracy in the 90s and am now comfortably certain that there is a vast left wing conspiracy. Mass Media (Reporting and Entertainment) + Education + the Legal Industry + Bureaucracy is almost wholly Democrat interests and under their control. Yeah… don’t tell me they don’t have a game plan.
Don’t tell me Obama isn’t just a piece in their chess game and that he wouldn’t be following the guidance of handlers on your wild theory. I see it remarkably believable. And that is sad that I’m at that point also.
Well, yes, but presumably one who has risen to the most powerful leadership position in the world has moved beyond reacting to adversity by curling up into a ball and sucking his thumb. Or so I thought…
Except if he was an election winning rockstar.
Screw his leadership abilities, he got the Party the presidency… That’s what mattered.
He didn’t move beyond it because he never had to move beyond adversity before. Unfortunately, where he is now he can’t just ignore the other side or dig up dirt on his opponent and make him go away. That goes double for foreign policy, where Putin and ISIS are making him look like he’s out to lunch. James Carville may have unwittingly given the GOP the line they need to slam the whole Obama presidency when the other night on Fox he said that Obama frankly doesn’t care what anyone else thinks. A president has an obligation to care what the country thinks, and when his own most partisan advocates are saying he doesn’t, he is toast.
Yeah. This whole Putin and the downing of MH17 affair is really where Prezzie O could make some headway.
If there isn’t a more “Red Handed” situation than MH17 that has the WHOLE WORLD incensed is this one. What does O do? Nada. What does Putin do? Dodge all responsibility, because his state run TV and his propaganda machine don’t have to do much but push enough contradictory spin and misinformation unopposed by Russia’s ONLY competitor, and he’s fine. Even though the whole grassroots world knows he’s guilty as sin, the leader of Russia’s only competition in the world does nothing.
Without biting my head off for even asking, please tell me why you think “the world is desperate for American leadership”.
Because Europe is craven, paralyzed by realpolitik and cynical, and won’t stop Putin for fear of endangering its economic interests. The US has the power and independence to do something effective, just not the will.
Meanwhile, I’m in the Chicago area today, where traffic was just clogged by a visit from Ms. Obama, who after a lucrative fundraiser, escorted her daughters to a concert starring their booster, Jay-Z. I wonder if he performed “99 Problems.”
Unrelatedly, have you heard that there’s a conservative war on women?
President Obama could club a baby seal to death on camera and there would still be a third of the voters who would find a reason that it was President Bush’s fault, or that anyone who criticized such an act by a liberal black man is a raaaaacist.
The people voted for Mr. Obama’s second term knowing full well what they were getting. And, now that we are truly seeing even more clearly what we got there is not enough courage among our citizens to remove him from office.
I can’t think of anything more revelatory of our national character than that. “Chickens coming home to roost” springs to mind, but I think it’s been used before.
http://patterico.com/2014/07/26/mrs-obama-missing-the-irony/
Am I crazy, or was there originally something in here about Obama’s marijuana use? I vaguely remember making a comment related to it but now see neither the original quote nor my comment. Was it on another posting? Am I going insane?
Nothing here on that matter.
But you did post something recently about it, yes? Something about it not coming out until during his presidency? I wrote a whole comment about it any everything ..
Yes, absolutely, in the context of the news media not doing its job in vetting both tickets in 2008.