Friday, August 15, 2014
Has Mr. Obama Abandoned His Presidency?
MSNBC's Joe Scarborough, a left-leaning TV host, shared some insights on President Obama with Hugh Hewitt in an interview on Hewitt's radio show on Friday, saying that President Barack Obama has "checked out" of his job and "doesn't want to be there anymore," Scarborough, the host of the "Morning Joe" TV show, added that some of the President's closest political allies say he's ready to be an "ex-president." Scarborough said : "I tend to believe based on everything I've heard from people who work inside the White House, and we've got a lot of friends there, and based on my friends who are senior Democratic Senators, this President has checked out. This man wants to be an ex-president." Scarborough noted that Obama was on vacation while there were riots in Ferguson, Missouri, after an unarmed teenager was fatally shot by a police officer and while, at the same time,the ISIS insurgency in Iraq is widening. Scarborough added : "We’re all big supporters of Presidents going on vacation. It’s another thing to be in Martha’s Vineyard while you’ve got tanks rolling in Middle America, and all the Middle East melts down. This is a President that does go out of his way to show that he’s not paying attention to what anybody says. He’s going to do exactly what he wants to do, and he’s going to be stubborn about it. He is either politically tone deaf or he just doesn’t give a damn." Hewitt said he thinks Obama wants to get to his "Carter Center phase," referring to the diplomatic role former President Jimmy Carter took on after leaving the White House. Scarborough also said that the Obama administration's decision not to expand its inner circle was "one of the biggest mistakes that any President can make. This President wants 'yes' men around him....If anybody steps out of line, they're immediately insulated and pushed out." Scarborough's take on Obama's legacy : "The books are going to come [when the administration is over], and this President is going to have to deal with 20-30 years of disparagement from his own side, calling him one of the least effective Presidents, because he's one of the most insulated Presidents." ~~~~~ Dear readers, there are some, not many, but some jobs that the holder cannot simply choose not to do. The job of US President is surely at the top of this list. While some Presidents are more energetic than others - compare Clinton to Carter, for example - all Presidents sign on for a 24/7 presence when they choose to run for and are elected President. What is disconcerting about President Obama is that he is sometimes there and sometimes absent. And it has little to do with his vacations. Obama - indifferent and hostile to the GOP House - has been absent from dealing with Congress to enact tax reform or to develop programs to create badly needed jobs for Americans. But he has been present - alone and defiant - when it comes to using executive orders to implement his unpopular views anout the illegal immigration problem. Barack Obama has not only abandoned his job as President, he has somehow concluded that his only role as leader of his Democratic Party is as fundraiset. But, in his last foray through San Francisco even Democrats were less enthusiastic about coughing up $32,000 to see Obama up close. It is a new and troubling reality that both Congress and the Demicratic Party are facing -- an absentee President who refuses to engage as a President should to make the federal government function smoothly, but who can suddenly appear on the political scene and act in isolation, without consultation, when something interests him. It makes the election of a veto-proof GOP House and Senate essential in November -- for the safety of America until a new President is elected in 2016.
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Maybe, just maybe there should be an escape clause in the presidents imaginary contract with "The People". If he is unhappy with the job, the requirements, the pay, working conditions, etc - most likely we are equally unhappy with him and his job performance.
ReplyDeleteSo why not have the president serve at the will of the people - not impeachment, but simple sit down and agree to part ways. here's your severance check, enjoy the book signing tour.
Since he abandoned his Constitutional duties and requirements a long time ago. He might as well just do everything in and move out of the White House with the family and go back to Chicago.
ReplyDeleteThe tiresome futurism of Obama, his dogmatic views about what this ritualistically ballyhooed century will be like and what it will not be like, are only a part of what lowers his vision. The bigger problem is that the president feels inconvenienced by history. It refuses to follow his program for it. It regularly exasperates him and regularly disappoints him. It flows when he wants it to ebb and it ebbs when he wants it flow. The president is flabbergasted that the world won’t stay saved, or agree to be saved at all. After all, he came to save it he says, and so the world has only itself to blame if Obama is sick of it and going home.
ReplyDeletePresident Obama doesn’t comprehend the term “compromise”. His negotiating skills are non-existence. And he doesn’t comprehend that on the world stage at any given time you change what you can, accept what you can’t change, and manage the remainder as best as you can.
ReplyDeleteThere is no reason to be surprised by what looks as if he has thrown up his hands in failure and is going to sit out the rest of the game.
Obama’s stumbling, disastrous foreign policy is this: the world that in his view wanted to be rid of American interference & help. It turns out that Obama’s Iraq-based view of America’s role in the world, according to which American preeminence is bad for the world and bad for America, is not shared by societies and movements in many regions. They need, and deserve, support in their struggles. In Syria, for example, the tyrant enjoys the significant support of Russia, Iran, and Hezbollah, the Islamist rebels enjoy the significant support of Saudi Arabia and Qatar, and the moderate secular rebels enjoy the significant support of nobody. There are many places in the world where we are despised not for taking action but for not taking action. Our allies do not trust us. Our enemies do not fear us. What if American preeminence is good for the world and good for America?
ReplyDeleteObama has simply read the whole world wrong – no he hasn’t read the world at all, he has simply tried to force feed his philosophy of loathing of America. And now with all his failure at home and abroad he is suffering a letdown and still has no idea why he has failed.
The short coming if government is that we don't run it like a corporation/business. When a business gets an incompetent CEO of simply an employee at any level, the do one thing ... They Cut a Their Loses and Move On-period. They don't sit there and watch their market shares dwindle.They don't watch their stock price drop. They do protect their corporate structure and their share holders.
ReplyDeleteWe need to figure out what went wrong in 2008 & 2012. How was it possible to so devastate our system, our reputation, our honor in what us now 5.5 years.
Is it time for a Constitutional amendment to change the term if the presidency to a single 6 years? Possibly consideration for a dual presidency - one for domestic & one for foreign affairs? Neither us really a good idea. You don't throw out the baby because the bath water us dirty, do you?
We have had other bad presidents, just maybe not this bad. We will be OK. Recovery will take a little longer. This us just another test put before us.
"I will stand with the Muslims should the political winds shift in an ugly direction." - Barack Hussein Obama
ReplyDeleteSort of says it all. And the words are directly for his mouth.
And still we seem to locked to having him around until Jan. 20, 2017. Makes NO SENSE to us everyday citizens. None what so ever.