President Obama - Uninterested and Defiant

Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal called President Barack Obama the "most provincial US President in at least a century,....despite being the leader of the free world he is ignoring major international crises that will only escalate further in the final two years of his presidency." In a column written by Daniel Henninger under the headline "Obama To World: Drop Dead," the WSJ pounded Obama for his weak response toward Russia following the shooting down of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 and criticized him for ignoring multiple escalating conflicts throughout the world, instead focusing on fundraising and domestic Democratic politics. "As the world burns, the President spent this week fiddling at fundraisers in the living rooms of five Democratic Party fat cats in Seattle, San Francisco and Los Angeles," in the words of Henninger, the WSJ's deputy editorial page editor. In addition, Henninger suggested the President has been virtually absent on the escalating violence between Israel and Hamas, appears to be ignoring the takeover of ISIS in Iraq and its cleansing of Christians, has abandoned the civil war in Syria and the terrorist activities of Boko Haram in Nigeria. Henninger said : "Here's what it means. It means that 'the situation,' as the White House routinely euphemizes all the world's chaos, is going to get worse. It means in the next two years many more people are going to die, and not necessarily in the places where they are dying now. Why should it stop?" He added that Obama has "no interest" beyond consolidating political and electoral power inside the US. "Not even the White House of Lyndon Johnson, the ultimate pol, was so purely politicized," he wrote. "The fundraising is a frantic effort to protect this new Democratic voter machine. The world doesn't vote, so the world doesn't matter. Unless, of course, the American people in November decide that a world defined by events like Flight MH17 does matter," Henninger concluded. ~~~~~ Well, Ameticans seem to have already decided that it does matter. Today, one in every three Americans agree with former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin’s call for President Obama to be impeached. Palin called for impeachment for Obama's "purposeful dereliction of duty" in allowing thousands of illegal immigrants from Central America into the country. A new CNN/ORC International poll released Friday also reveals that half of all Americans think Obama has excessively expanded the powers of the presidency -- 48%, think Obama has "gone too far" in using the power of the presidency and executive branch, ignoring Congress, but 34% said he had it "about right" while 14% felt he has not gone far enough. In the poll, 33% of Americans say Obama should be impeached and removed from office while 65% said that he should not face impeachment. Looking at party divisions, 57% of Republicans and 35% of independents think Obama should be impeached, while 13% of Democrats feel that way. "Anti-impeachment sentiment is roughly where it was for past presidents – 67% opposed Bill Clinton's impeachment in September 1998, and 69% opposed impeaching George W. Bush when a few Democrats began talking about it in 2006." Only two US Presidents, Andrew Johnson in 1868 and Bill Clinton in 1998, were impeached by the House. Both were acquitted in the Senate, where a two-thirds vote is necessary to convict and remove a President from office. The CNN poll showed that nearly four out of five Americans, 79%, feel that impeachment should only occur if there is evidence that the President has committed a serious crime such as treason and bribery. But nearly one in five Americans, 18 %, think a President should be impeached to "express dissatisfaction" with his policies. House Speaker John Boehner has announced that he plans to sue the President for violating the Constitution by delaying the Obamacare employer mandate without approval from Congress. But, by a margin of 57% to 41%, Americans do not support such a lawsuit. This week, the House Rules Committee voted along party lines supporting a resolution authorizing the lawsuit, which is expected to be approved by the House next week. ~~~~~ A top White House advisor reacted to the CNN poll, saying on Friday that it is possible that Republicans might try to impeach President Obama over his go-it-alone immigration strategy. Dan Pfeiffer, one of Obama's longest-serving Senior Advisors, told reporters that the executive actions Obama will approve at the end of the summer aimed at tackling illegal immigration will likely generate Republican anger. Pfeiffer, speaking at a reporters' breakfast organized by the Christian Science Monitor, said he could easily see Republicans moving to impeachment proceedings to try to remove Obama from power in retaliation for the immigration orders he is expected to unveil by the end of the summer. "The President acting on immigration reform will certainly up the likelihood that they would contemplate impeachment," he said. He said it would be "foolish to discount the possibility" that Republicans will at least consider it. Many Republicans, however, see the GOP plan for a lawsuit to be aimed at restraining conservatives from demanding Obama's impeachment, knowing a move that strong could backfire as the GOP seeks to take over the Senate in the November congressional elections. A lawsuit would have far less impact than impeachment because it would be a legal proceeding in federal court to get a ruling on whether Obama went farther than the Constitution allows. Impeachment would be aimed at removing him from office, a far more dramatic course of action that is rarely used. Beyond his goal of trying to making changes to US immigration policy, Obama is struggling to contain a crisis on the Texas border with Mexico where tens of thousands of children have surged across in recent months, overwhelming border resources. Pfeiffer said the White House takes impeachment "very seriously." Pfeiffer said, however, that the lawsuit proposed by Speaker John Boehner and now being debated in the House "won't have an impact on how the President uses his executive authority. In fact, he said the threat of lawsuits validates the conclusion that Obama's executive actions are "far from the small ball that some have accused it of being." ~~~~~ Dear readers, the Wall Street Journal's view of the President's performance and the CNN poll reflect the views of the American people. The latest Fox News poll showed that 56% of Americans disapprove of Obama's performance on foreign policy, compared to 36% who approve. Earlier this month, a Quinnipiac University poll found that voters gave the President the worst grade ever on foreign policy, with a disapproval rating of 52%. Just 40% of those surveyed approved of his approach to foreign affairs. And a June WSJ/ NBC poll found that Obama had a 57% disapproval rating for his handling of foreign policy. The CNN poll this week also found the President's approval rating - and specifically, views on his ability to manage the government - to stand at 42%, in keeping with most major national poll taken in the last six months. There is a real constitutional crisis brewing in the United States. Barack Obama is seen as uninterested in doing his job and completely inept on those occasions when he actually tries to do it. Instead of bringing in Democrats with the stature to help him make peace with Americans and put him on the proper course to do his job competently, Obama has decided to devote himself to Denocratic political matters, leaving his White House senior staff alone to "hunker down" in a fashion reminiscent of the Nixon White House when it came under seige. That Senior Advisor Pfeiffer would suggest that the White House expects an attempt at impeachment and couples that with the defiant remark that Obama will deliberately announce an immigration policy sure to lead to an impeachment attenpt is inexplicable either in political or management terms. One is tempted to.conclude that Barack Obama is actively seeking a constitutional confrontation. Why? Perhaps he believes that he would win -- or losing, that his coalition would take to the streets to save him by bringing down the American Constitution. That seems far-fetched, to say the least. But other explanations are hard to find. Unless we are dealing with a President who is truly psychologically unstable. Just consider that the White House said this evening that it has no details about Secretary of State Kerry's current actions in the Gaza-Israeli crisis. Who, if anyone, is in charge of American foreign policy? It does not appear to be President Obama. It is a sad and dangerous time for America.