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Obama's Clown

R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr., Spectator.org

 

This week the Drudge Report gave emphasis to its lead headline that a CNN poll found 52% of its respondents opposed to the reelection of President Obama with the boldfaced screamer: "Shock." Who is shocked? The American people are a sensible lot. Frankly I am not shocked.

 

This administration is as inept as you would expect an administration to be when presided over by the most inexperienced and most far-left president in modern American history. Mr. Obama is out of his depth. Moreover, he and his aides are oblivious to political realities.

 

A perfect example of this is their deployment this week of Vice President Joe Biden to refute former Vice President Richard Cheney's criticism of the Obama administration's approach to the war on terror. Pithily put, Cheney accuses the administration of treating the war on terror as a legal matter rather than a war. He is worried about our national security and quite properly he fears more attacks within the United States unless we are on the offensive.

 

So whom does the White House send out against this formidable foreign policy advocate? The administration sends the gaffable Joe Biden, the most gaffe-prone figure in public life. Read article.

Herbert E. Meyer, American Thinker.com

 

Americans have decided that the mainstream media has failed, and so we are replacing The New York Times, the television network news departments, and all the rest with an entirely new media, including FOX News and websites like American Thinker and Lucianne.com. Americans have decided that our country's education establishment has failed -- our kids are barely learning to read and write, let alone taught our country's history -- so we're seeing the rise of private schools, charter schools, and home-schooling. Would anyone like to bet that within just a few years, we'll have a wholly new financial establishment on Wall Street to replace the greedy idiots who run it now?

 

The re-establishment of America won't be easy, and we'll make mistakes along the way. Some of the new people will prove just as worthless as they ones they replaced. And some very good people who now hold key positions in politics, the media, education, and finance will be swept away by the avalanche. That's too bad, but collateral damage is unavoidable.

 

No other country in history has ever attempted to replace its establishments so smoothly and so peacefully -- and so cheerfully -- as we are doing right now. And it isn't likely that any other country ever will attempt something like this. How exhilarating to realize that 234 years after our revolution, the United States is still the most dynamic, forward-looking, optimistic place on Earth. Boy, what an exciting time to be an American. Read article.

Peter Wehner, Commentary Magazine.com

 

Jackson Diehl, in a recent posting, wrote about the fact that in his State of the Union address, President Obama failed to mention Israel, the Palestinians, or the Middle East peace process, which was one of his most high-profile diplomatic initiatives during his first year. “For those reading tea leaves,” Diehl wrote, “and there are many in the Middle East — the president has offered a few signs recently that Israeli-Palestinian negotiations have moved down his list of priorities.” Diehl thinks that’s a wise idea.

 

As I argued in a column earlier this month, the history of Israeli-Arab diplomacy clearly shows that only peace efforts that originate with the parties themselves have succeeded. Or, as former secretary of state James A. Baker III once put it, we “can’t want peace more than the parties” themselves. Baker, a master of Middle East diplomacy, once publicly gave Israelis and Palestinians the White House phone number and invited them to call when they were serious about pursuing negotiations. In a more subtle way, Obama may be doing the same thing.

 

I agree that having the U.S. try to impose a solution is the wrong way to proceed. But where I disagree with Diehl is in his “pox on both your houses” approach to the Israel-Palestinian conflict. This is an almost reflexive habit among many people in the foreign-policy establishment and the political class. The Israelis and Palestinians are equally to blame for the tension and lack of progress. Both sides have made mistakes. Neither has done all it should. Both are equally culpable. Call us when you’re serious.

 

This account is not only wrong; it is fanciful. It ignores so many things that bear on this matter. Read article.

 

Andrew Roberts, Spectator.org

 

"I do not think America is going to smash,” Winston Churchill told his American stockbroker in the depths of the Great Depression. “On the contrary I believe that they will quite soon begin to recover…. They carved it out of the prairie and the forests. They are going to have a strong national resurgence in the near future.”

 

Churchill’s own belief in the massive regenerative power of the United States was a constant in his life. He believed that given the will, Americans could achieve anything, because America was special. Yet today it is precisely this trust in the exceptionalism of America that is currently being called into question. History shows that nations that retain self-belief are indeed capable of astonishing feats, but those that suspect their time in the sun has passed cannot be saved, however rich they are or successful they have been.

 

Joyce Carol Oates, the award-winning novelist and Princeton professor, has written in the Atlantic: “How heartily sick the world has grown, in the first… years of the 21st century, of the American idea! Speak with any non-American, travel to any foreign country, and the consensus is: The American idea has become a cruel joke, a blustery and bellicose bodybuilder luridly bulked up on steroids, consequently low on natural testosterone, deranged and myopic, dangerous.” Such searing hatred of the American Idea from within American society—indeed from inside its cultural elite—is far more dangerous than what non-Americans feel. Of course, it couldn’t matter less what one writer feels if she does not represent the zeitgeist, but much more worrying was President Barack Obama’s reply in April to a question from a Financial Times reporter about whether he believed in American exceptionalism. He said: “I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism.”

 

This is reminiscent of what the Dodo says in Alice in Wonderland: “Everyone has won and all must have prizes.” Yet that is simply not how international relations work. Greeks might indeed believe in their own exceptionalism, as might Belgians, Thais, or Finns for that matter, but they are not truly exceptional in the light of global current affairs. The West once again looks to America for leadership in a risky world, as we so often have in the past. Read article.

 

Sultan Knish.Blogspot.com

 

Law and the legal system in all its institutions cannot be divorced from its root origin in the rights of the American citizen. No American institution can.

 

Of course this very idea is one of the greatest terrors of the legal establishment, which refuses to see itself as representative of a specific people or nation, but rather of abstract standards that they base on other abstract or philosophical transnational standards, with possibly a cite of some random line in the Constitution that usually has very little to do with the issue.

 

To liberals the entire military infrastructure of the War on Terror threatened their own power bases in the civilian judiciary. It assigned the War on Terror firmly into the realm of warfighting and not social justice. And Obama's policy to slowly shift terrorism back into the realm of lawyers and social workers came up against a problematic reality, composed of his own cronyism and the watchfulness of the American people.

 

Obama's cronyism led him to neglect and even show contempt for New York on numerous occasions. Despite winning the state, Obama's presence had never been strong here, and it has taken very little to summon up a backlash from even supposedly friendly Democrats. The Princess Caroline disaster alone demonstrated that had a special election been held, New York might have produced results rather similar to Massachusetts.

 

By designating the Khalid Sheikh Mohammed trial for New York City, without showing any interest in covering the monumental costs of such an affair, estimated in the billions, Obama treated the city as he had all along. But this time taking New York for granted generated a backlash, which had both of the state's Democratic Senators, the liberal Mayor who had campaigned for him, and even his own voters protesting in the streets against him in Lower Manhattan.

 

Had Obama ponied up the money, it's likely that the politicians would not have said "Boo" to the trials. But their protests alerted the public to the prospect of the trials here ahead of time. Which in turn helped create a startling alliance between Republicans, Conservative Democrats and New York politicians, angry over having a multi-billion dollar economic problem thrust on a city and state already deep in the red. The resulting circus helped bring the issue to national attention, at a time when terrorism was already in the news, and the perfect storm was born. Read article.

 

Daniel Foster, NRO.com

 

There is a great deal of back-and-forth in the blogosphere today on the subject of a Financial Times piece that lays the blame for Obama's floundering first year in office on an advisory staff geared for campaigning, not governing.

 

Based on extensive anonymous interviews with people around the Obama White House, the Financial Times's Edward Luce paints a picture of an administration run almost entirely from within the president's political machine — with campaign-managers-turned-advisers David Axelrod, Valerie Jarrett, and Robert Gibbs, along with Chicagoan legislative tactician Rahm Emanuel, in the room for every major decision.

 

Many of Obama's highest-profile cabinet members are, by contrast, largely disconnected from both policy creation and messaging decisions. Administration insiders say the famously irascible Mr Emanuel treats cabinet principals like minions. “I am not sure the president realises how much he is humiliating some of the big figures he spent so much trouble recruiting into his cabinet,” says the head of a presidential advisory board who visits the Oval Office frequently. “If you want people to trust you, you must first place trust in them.” . . .

 

In addition to hurling frequent profanities at people within the administration, Mr Emanuel has alienated many of Mr Obama’s closest outside supporters. Read article.

 

AJ Strata, Strata-Sphere.com/blog

 

It really is amazing how the far-left never accepts America’s repeated rejection of their government-centric, socialistic policies. Each time they trot them out the American people hammer them at the voting booth, put in small-government conservatives and the country enjoys decades of mostly positive economic health and wonderful lives.

 

Carter tried his command-control economic policies, which led to gas rationing and mind boggling inflation rates and recession. Carter got the boot in one term even though his administration came in the shadow of Tricky Dick Nixon. He was going to be the salve to an ugly moment in time and ended up making Nixon look good in comparison (better to have missing tapes than long gas lines).

 

Bill and Hillary went for the mythical holy grail of government run health care, which led to the first time in decades the GOP had control of Congress for a reasonable period. Clinton survived by moving to the center, and pushing small government policies. His socialistic plan for school uniforms was rightly dismissed, but everyone applauds his work with the GOP congress on eliminating the annual deficits.

 

Yes, there are times when the electorate has nailed the GOP as well – usually for not being a small government party as we saw with ‘Read My Lips’ Bush and the debacles in 2006/2008. Recall, George W Bush as actually a very successful president taking on two wars, 9-11, rebuilding the economy, etc. The 2006/2008 elections nailed do nothing GOP congresses that failed to control spending.

 

I could never understand why the left cherished Carter & Clinton considering how much damage they did to the Democrats’ reputation. Read article.

 

James Capretta, NRO.com

 

Suddenly, bipartisanship is all the rage at the Obama White House.

 

The president has announced that he will hold a bipartisan gathering on February 25 at Blair House, across the street from the White House, in an effort to get the health-care legislative effort out of the political ditch it is now in. Plans are also under way to stand up a bipartisan Debt Commission by executive order. The commission’s mandate would be to report back to the president and Congress on how to get the nation’s fiscal house in order — with a rather convenient reporting deadline of just after the November midterm elections.

 

In the daily back-and-forth of political news coverage, it is easy to lose sight of what a stunning turnabout this renewed interest in bipartisanship represents for Barack Obama. For more than a year, his administration attempted to govern based on an entirely different approach. The Democrats in the White House and on Capitol Hill welcomed any Republican willing to jump aboard their legislative plans. But, as the president and his top advisers repeatedly said, they were going to move ahead with “their agenda” — with or without willing Republican participation. Read article.

 

David Broder, JWR.com

 

There are warning signs to both parties in the latest Post-ABC News poll, and this should be a help as President Obama tries to spur a rebirth of bipartisanship in Washington.

 

Democrats have not felt secure in their congressional majorities since Scott Brown beat their candidate last month in the special election for the Massachusetts Senate seat. But the poll finding that Democrats have lost all of the 12-point lead over the Republicans they enjoyed four months ago -- and now are tied with the GOP at 46 percent each in support -- certainly confirms that more losses may come in the November midterm election.

 

Yet the voters are also signaling to the GOP that its current tactics could cost its candidates a golden opportunity. For all their gains on key issues in comparison to Obama and the Democrats, congressional Republicans are seen by the voters as more recalcitrant in general and more out of step in simply trying to shelve health-care reform. 

 

The poll found the country split on the somewhat different health-reform bills passed late last year by the House and Senate over almost unanimous Republican opposition. The bills were supported by 46 percent in the poll and opposed by 49 percent. But those adamantly opposed were almost twice as numerous as those strongly in support. Read article.