Posted by
Always To The Right on Saturday, September 05, 2009 5:12:37 PM
How has this theme surfaced? It would be impossible to count them all, but we can get them into broad themes:
- Personnel - Barack Obama’s appointments have been a
continuing source of embarrassment. His Treasury Secretary blamed
Turbo-Tax for his tax evasion, but several more appointments also had
tax problems. Obama nominated Bill Richardson to Commerce knowing full
well of the pay-for-play probe in New Mexico that forced Richardson to
withdraw his name a few weeks later. Van Jones, the Green Jobs Czar,
is just the latest example of fumbled vetting that has plagued this
White House since the transition.
- Economics - Remember when Obama told the nation that a
$787 billion stimulus package would keep unemployment from getting
above 8%? Remember when Obama told the nation that his administration
had shaved $2 trillion off of the projected ten-year deficit? Remember
when Obama promised that he would speed up stimulus spending this
summer? None of those came to pass, which is why Obama hopes you’ve
forgotten all of that.
- Politics - One might have thought Obama would have learned
from the debacle of the stimulus package that he needed to lead, rather
than follow Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid. Instead, he passed the buck
on health-care reform and wound up losing control of the health-care
debate. Indeed, Obama made it worse by cheering on Pelosi and Reid,
demanding that Congress bend to their wills and vote on an overhaul of
1/6th of the American economy with just a handful of days for debate.
This week, seven months after his inauguration, Obama’s press flacks
announced with great fanfare that Obama would finally draft a proposal
himself — as if he were President, or something!
Who could have warned us that a man who served seven years in the
state legislature and three years in the Senate would not have been
prepared for the toughest executive position in the Free World? We
did. Repeatedly. So did John McCain, and for that matter, so did
Hillary Clinton.