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The Curious Case Of Barack Obama’s Fading Presidency

apparently he was only in this line of work long enough to get the library...

By: Dave Poff (haystack) (Diary)  |  August 17th, 2010 at 10:00 AM  | 

RESIZE: AAA

Even before I saw this Politico piece I was planning to point out how odd it is that Obama keeps picking the wrong side of all the major issues of the day.

Seventy percent favor Arizona’s immigration law so Obama calls in the DOJ dogs to take the State to Court. Sixty percent favor repeal of healthcare reform so Obama takes a victory lap around the country, with a hand out for donor dollars, telling us we’re just afraid of what we don’t understand (and, of course, gives us the obligatory “the GOP is nothing but a bunch of fear mongers” speech).

Nearly 70% are opposed to the ground zero mosque…heck, even within his OWN party there is a deepening chasm…and what does the leader of both the free world AND the not-going-to-be-in-charge-much-longer party do? He steps in it with both feet, speaking out in support of the mosque when (as the WaPo rightly points out) he never really had to even open his mouth on the matter.

Sixty five percent of us are angry at the Federal Government, so what does Obama do? He changes the bloody subject in the National dialog and picks a fight with the GOP over Social Security…an issue his first term hasn’t even mentioned so far, and one he’s had no intention of trying to address as he spends the country willy nilly into the abyss of economic collapse.

Rasmussen has him at nearly 60% disapprove, and it all sorta makes sense. He seems more interested in being President of (and choosing sides with) the least among us…that 30-40% of us out there that go along with any old thing he says and does, paying little to no attention to the mid and long term effects of his ineptitude.

It’s no wonder then that even Politico’s Roger Simon (not the smart one mind you, but the one who gets bitterly drunk and writes straw man articles about how people who oppose the mosque are equivalent to slaveowners and segregationists) sees Obama’s as a one-term Presidency.

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  • alaskaescapeartist

    I feared that everything was calculated by this administration towards some sort of end game, be it a larger number of people dependent upon government, a power grab, a sinister strategy to socialize the country.

    Now, I’m convinced that it is much more simple than that.

    POTUS is an arrogant boob.

    No less dangerous than the whole “we’re the victims of an evil plan” thing, and maybe even more difficult to combat because it seems as though a significant portion of the electorate are following suit.

    There’s no plan, no cunning plot, unless you feel like connecting the dots between a bunch of unintended or unanticipated consequences (what else is new in the practical application of liberal policies).

    That this country has elected a pinhead with an over imaginative ego is one of the more frightening aspects of this debacle.

    • http://www.hickpolitics.com Dave Poff (haystack)

      .

    • janis

      doing all the stuff that scares the crap out of us. He just signs whatever they put in front of him before he leaves for his next vacation/golf game/basketball game. I don’t think he has a real clue to what is really being done, other than when his people tell him “It’s all good, O, just pack for warm weather on the Cape and don’t forget your camera and some clean socks.”

      It’s as if we’re all in kindergarten again, and the teacher left the most clueless kid in charge.

    • IJB

      Democrats, because of their characters and personalities, are in fact pretty much *unable* to put together a truly sinister plot and execute it.

      It’s why so many Hollywood movies are about that – Lefties are *paranoid* that someone (e.g. the Right) will execute a masterful conspiracy *on them* because they know they’re incapable of pulling off the same.

      If the Dems had their stuff together, we’d have Single Payer, Card Check, and Cap ‘n’ Trade *right now*.

      That we don’t tells you all you need to know about Democrat and Dem politicians in action – their bark is generally far worse than their bite. And they have a great tendency to trip over their own two feet…

    • jackhammer

      we are generally people who think the private sector is always more competent and more likely to get somethign done right than the government….so why do people always attribute well thoguht out grand schemes to people who usually can’t even do a basic analysis of school test scores, or issue drivers licences in a particularly customer friendly way (although I have to say the RMV in MA has improved dramatically).

      In Japan they have been claiming that they have a tonne of citizens who live to 113 and such, and it turns out most are just the pension scams of their kids….and long dead.

      Government is incompetent….full stop! They might get some things done, but always more expensively and less timely than private citizens or companies would. Even if they had grand designs, they’d never get ‘em fulfilled!

      • Achance

        Fortunately, it is much less good at actually carrying them out. At the top you have a combination of competing egos and the fact that high-level technical types usually don’t get along very well with the purely political types. This results in lots of fits and starts, changes of direction, and sometimes outright sabotage. Then if there is much in the way of complex implementation, you quickly run out of competent people. Government is very much a 90-10 operation; ninety percent of the work is done by ten percent of the people. By the time you get to semi-skilled production workers, the minimum qualification is “fogs a mirror” so long as the right block is checked on the affirmative action form.

  • coldair

    I will grant you the arrogance part of your argument.

    But “boob” – no. Our Commandante is not stupid. And he is street-wise. Do not call him inept – he is no such thing.

    He takes these positions because he knows it will be divisive. If he took the “smart” position – or did nothing – he could be seen as a unifier. He does not want that.

    Marx advocated an end to capitalism (we tend to call it free enterprise for aesthetic purposes – capitalism being a bit of a dirty word these days), by violent revolution of the proletariat over the bourgeoisie. He advocated this be done on a global basis; he (like Obama) was an enemy of nationalism.

    Not sure Obama seeks violence, but he does seek class conflict. He advances that cause every time he takes one of these positions, because he empowers the “minority” aggressively to clash with the majority.

    That’s his agenda. You know it from the people he associated with all his life – from things he has said, especially before and early in his campaign – and from the things he has done since taking office. This is not ineptness, it is purposeful execution of an Anti-American agenda.

    You were right all along.

    • alaskaescapeartist

      The tools (bureaucracy, controlling agencies, IRS, on and on) were already in place for him to achieve all the objectives you state. He didn’t need to go the ideologue route.

      If he were so calculating, he could have easily remained above the fray while appointing czars and signing executive orders.

      This is a simple case of someone who thinks he knows better than the rest of us. There is no evidence of his street smarts. No evidence of him calculating a path to divide as opposed to stumbling onto it.

      But whether I was correct “then”, or I’m right “now”… the issue would never have reared its pinhead were it not for a significant chunk of an electorate fueled by emotion.

      If there IS any savvy with this administration’s team, it was the ability to tap into that perfect storm of post-Bush. It didn’t hurt that he was up against Hillary’s robotic inability to do the same.

      • coldair

        “There is no evidence of his street smarts. No evidence of him calculating a path to divide as opposed to stumbling onto it.”

        An elementary principle of evidence: it may be presumed that one intends the natural consequence of his actions. Look at the people who surrounded him before the campaign: Rev Wright, Acorn & Bill Ayers for starters. He was a Chicago street agitator (“community organizer – sorry), and apparently a good one. Where’s the evidence that he lost those skills?

        Look at what he has done: bail-outs; suit against Arizona; ObamaCare, he’s pushing the destructive Cap & Trade; ruinous drilling moratorium in the Gulf. All things he has aggressively pursued in the face of express knowledge of their destructive impacts.

        What other evidence do you want? An express manifesto?

        • alaskaescapeartist

          He’s an ideologue with sense of power and can do no-wrong.

          It’s similar to the comments from the Left about Bush. He’s a complete moron and he is manipulating the entire country towards his evil agenda. What!?

          If you took any “Joe” off the street and made him President, by virtue of the power of the office, he would be perceived as an evil genius by many of those opposed to him.

          Evil geniuses are subtle. This guy is so bad you could almost argue he is a tool of our side. Can you name a conservative that could have inspired a Tea Party movement?

          The real problem is twofold… whether my thinking is correct or not.

          One – By virtue of his office, he is doing and can continue to do real and lasting damage. The fact that he is rapidly mitigating that ability all by himself is the most powerful argument in favor of the “boob theory”.

          Two – A majority of the electorate put him there. That is the REAL problem.

          You guys may be right…. maybe he really does know what he’s doing. If that’s the case, then he’s an even bigger idiot than I imagined.

          • Achance

            His job is to wreck it and to eliminate the US as the foremost World power and the only one with the ability to project power around the World. He is merely the front man and operative for the cabal that engineered the devestatingly high fuel prices in the summer of ’08 and then caused the panic that led to the meltdown and which assured Comrade Obama’s election.

            His masters seek disunity in the US and wouldn’t be at all bothered by that disunity eruping into violence. Mark my words, if the Republicans retake one body of the Congress, they will be blamed for everything that goes wrong, both real and contrived, and there WILL be violence in the cities by the summer of ’12. The Democrat fronts and the media were able to convince huge segments of the electorate that a booming economy with full employment was the worst times since the Great Depression, so they shouldn’t have much trouble convincing the doughnut cities that the Republicans are killing their babies and trying to starve them to death.

            What toppled the Wiemar Republic was the downturn in the World economy that prevented them from keeping up with inflation and keeping the public spending spigot flowing. We have a shaky World economy and Republicans will undoubtedly resist the wild spending that the Democrats have had. When the spending stream slows down, the Ds go to full-tilt class warfare. And the proletariat they’ll try to rouse isn’t just the city minorities. By that time huge numbers of people will have run out of unemployment benefits and will be on welfare. That welfare spending will pit Republicans in Congress directly against the poor and the unemployed of all races, genders, and social status. The summer of ’12 looks to be a long hot summer of the sort we haven’t seen since the ’60s.

          • coldair

            “Two – A majority of the electorate put him there. That is the REAL problem.”

            I could not agree with you more about this. Now, talk about “boobs”; these people are the real deal.

            It is nice to see the current surge toward a likely shift of control in Congress (the House, anyway), but we must be aware that the sight is illusory. It will last only as long as it takes the majority of the electorate to be again enraptured by the next charlatan to come along promising to tax the small minority of the wealthy, for the benefit of the poor unfortunate majority.

            One-man-one-vote (a mid-20th century invention of the Warren Court) is killing the Republic. And there will be no long-term correction to Constitutional Republicanism until that invention is sent the way of the Dodo Bird.

      • johnt

        Just where is it written that one must be intelligent and competent to be a statist? Was he slow, or dumb, when he aligned himself with the Alinsky/Wright./Ayers axis? And what difference would it make either way, at least in commitment?
        He knows exactly what he wants & what he’s doing. And if there’s any disabling confusion or slowness, he has had 21 months and ample advisers to make things simple for him.
        He didn’t stumble into the stimulus fraud, the fascist takeover of the auto companies, the power grab of the entire health care industry, the deliberate & unnecessary shutdown of much of the offshore drilling, the plain as the eyes can see harmful, long term, huge deficits, etc.

        Whatever his intelligence he knew exactly what he was doing, the consequences are not abstruse, the results are already coming in.
        Sure he stumbles, but he knows his own intentions.

        It is depressing that with all we know about this low life that some of us can still not grasp what we are up against, there is this thing called statism, there is powerlust, and brace yourself, there is evil. Face it.

        • fpete13527
    • bonsage

      perhaps it is to continue to agitate until something blows up, quite literally, and then the media can finally ‘discredit’ the right and take measures (possibly including ‘temporary’ imposition of martial law) such as suspension of elections ‘to preserve the peace’ and ‘protect the community’ – you know, from the will of the people.

  • partyof1

    with little thought to consequences is because he has the protection of the media. Even before the Journolist scandal we all knew it to be true.

    Does anyone doubt that the media will circle the wagons around him again in 2012? It’s not even about him personally, they just won’t let firstblackpresident fail.

    • gwalt

      The media will help and in the process continue it’s decline (I am advocating to speed it up by calling them out in public on billboards, news ads, etc.). But not in the normal way.

      Question; Why did Hillary take SecState? Why on earth would a woman who despises her boss, was a former First Lady for 8 years, a sitting NY Senator for eight take SS, and someone who came within a breath of winning the nomination take that job? She was lacking Foreign Policy chops, that’s why

      He’s not running again. Why the Petrobas 2 billion? Maybe he’s listed as a shareholder? (rhetorical) Why the Muslim appeasement?
      Maybe because Clinton got tens of millions for his library (and other advocacy things) that we know of. Obama stands to make MUCH MUCH more based on his Muslim appeasement.

      If Al gore can become a billionaire with just being a former VP and a slightly exaggerated intelligence, Obama can do the same.

      Billions await him in post prez—-even after one term. He will be treated (and believe he is) like Royalty the rest of his life. He doesn’t have it in him to wait until 2017 to rake it in.

      Unions owe him, BIG time. Trial lawyers owe. The seamy side of Chicago owe him.

      He wants his booty sooner and waayyyyy before Moochelle can figure out how much it is and take her “rightful” share.

      No—he will step aside for another historical “first”—a woman president and will be hailed a hero, unselfish—a uniter. Party loyalty first blah, blah blah. And the media will blame, as well as himself, that the GOP destroyed his presidency with a Repub controlled House (and maybe Senate) and in the name of the country, he will not run (or maybe even step down?) to “save” it.

      clap, clap, clap. Oh what a saint!!

      Yes, the GOP and Tea Party brought him down. Boo hoo those evil racist Republicans. He may even pretend to run, collect a couple hundred million, back out of running and take the cash. Kerry lost and kept his 25 million (or more). He will keep it for higher good and purposes. He knows best what do do with your money, right? Even if you are a slobbering idiot supporter.

      If you ask for your money back, you are a racist. So they won’t.

  • NeoKong

    And what?s the point of doing the right thing if your party is going to lose seats because of it?

    Any belief system they have ever had can always be tied to political gain or loss. They mean what they say until they don’t. Obama supported the mosque until he caught the heat and now he back pedals.
    He was for the mosque before he was against it.
    Pete Stark and his blue dogs were pro-life until it comes time to prove it and they dropped the camouflage.
    All of a sudden the Constitution is sacred and the lefties don’t like people being harassed for their faith and property rights mean something.
    What a joke.

    All the media is in a tizzy because they all came out and told us how courageous Obama was and what a true leader he is.
    Now they either have to back pedal like Obama or follow him off the cliff because this is destroying the Dems in the polls.
    Roger Simon is beside himself with anxiety because he is watching his guy tank big time.

    Personally I can’t get enough of it.
    It’s like watching the Wicked Witch melt into the floor screaming “curses”.

    • NeoKong

      I meant Bart Stupak. Not Pete Stark.

      Sometimes I’m sort of stupik.

      • eastbaylarry

        is probably true.

  • Common_Cents

    Obamas one term references could signal some deal. He goes hog wild for a term stirring crap up as an agitator, making dems long for a more stable Hillary.

  • fotophun

    what allegiance does BHO have to the Saudis
    seems along the way early in his life he was bought and paid for by the Saudis
    maybe he owes alot to them, from school financing to the presidency

    nine of the 12 hijackers were from Saudi plus isn’t Saudi where lots of the money is coming from for this mosque

    his bowing to the king tells us alot about his allegiance and it is not to this country

    • Joshua Persons
  • callawyn

    Nor does he claim to be. This descriptor has been sunk down the memory hole along with the ‘war on terror’, except the latter was replaced with ‘overseas contingency operation’ whereas ‘Leader of the Free World’ was simply dropped, quietly. They never use it.

    And, of course, why should they? They don’t believe the world should be free (just look at the position they took in Honduras), nor do they believe the US or the US President should be the leader of anything in the world, preferring to be one among equals, but under the UN’s umbrella.

  • msctex

    . . .to the question: why would any hypothetical smart person do demonstrably dumb, destructive things. More specifically, why would he align himself with a disproven ideology and inflict it upon an entire nation, watch as it does damage, and offer only more damage a cure to his own influence?

    Obama is not stupid. Nor is he especially smart. What he is, is just enough. In the end, we will more than likely realize he was a fairly average mind within a body that happened to be more marketable than most, due to historical events and the subsequent national zeitgeist. Add a fairly resonant voice and a shameless subservient Press, and you have a viable candidate. All of this talk of “street smarts,” or even the now discredited possibility of any sort of intellectual brilliance, assumes the man is actually in charge. He isn’t. He is a figurehead, but one whose handlers are so either removed from Reality or intentionally destructive, that he has been allowed to be tarnished to the point of irrelevancy.

    The ultimate reality is that we are most likely confronted by a figurehead President, whose puppetmasters are malevolent and destructive as imaginable under the circumstances, propped up and protected by people too “educated,” ignorant or dumb to know any better.

    • bonsage

      include wondering why the puppet masters appear to be deliberately destroying the puppet – what do they have in store for us when Obama really crashes and burns, or have they already achieved all their objectives? If there were an impeachment who would end up in the oval office…surely it wouldn’t be Biden.

      • msctex

        . . .risking insult to people I do not intend to insult, but I am convinced beyond doubt that Progressive thought occupies the same space in the mind as religious thought. In answer to your question, imagine a godless, secular religion, with no real tenets other than Faith. Even Islam knows what it wants, but Progressives have only an utter conviction about who is WRONG. Thus, anything we do or want, they will do the opposite, while latching onto any feel-good/sound-good
        notion that comes along: Global Warming, a long-since won war against Racism, et. al. We are Racists, we want to destroy the planet, and they know a better way. No one has ever defined it, of course, but they just know. . .

        Also, they do not think beyond the next move, convinced that being “right” is enough, so if they find themselves confronted with President Biden, they would move on from there, never thinking it could have been avoided.

  • thomas

    Well, it’s more than just “odd” that he “keeps picking the wrong side of all the major issues of the day.” What Comrade Obama IS, was there for all to see during the 2008 campaign — a radical communist, liberation theology nut, whose loyalties were solely aligned with the extreme left of this country — someone who would never give a damn about middle class America. And we now know it’s more likely than not that he’s a Muslim. If we make it through the next 2 and 1/2 years without America completely collapsing, it’ll only be by the grace of God.

    Good going Dems, Independents, real smart choice picking Comrade Obama over McCain.

    • msctex

      It’s not hard to make an argument that had McCain won, we would find ourselves in the same boat four years later, only now with Obama elevated by the Press to superhuman status, and a “Republican” tried and convicted as a failure. Because whatever good McCain would try to do would be stifled by Congress, just as it was with Bush. Perhaps this period is something we simply needed, as a nation, to get out of our system, simplistic as that expression may be under the circumstances.

      • thomas

        You’re getting at the idea, it seems, that every generation has to learn the hard way the value of liberty & limited government, and then to deeply distrust the we’ll-give-you-something-for-nothing Dems (Carter). Perhaps McCain would have been neutered by a Democrat Congress, but I doubt he would have agreed to 2 consecutive years of 1.4 Trillion deficits, with a 3d and 4th possibly to come, and with ludicrous programs galore. In any event, we must have a true conservative candidate in 2012, it’s the only way we’ll get out of this mess.

        • msctex

          And they were doing less and less damage each cycle, until our current imbroglio assumed control and made up the difference. But I can’t help but think this may well prove their final assault upon Reason, and if we can ride this out, things will be capable of being set right again, because they won’t be there to get in the way — at least not in any meaningful numbers.

  • burbmom

    I feel it was the only decision he’s made with the support of the majority of Americans. And my instincts tell me the sharpshooter probably took the shot before Obama gave the okay. Then Obama just rode the coattails of the success. Really what other decision has he made which a majority of America supported?

  • RJD

    I’ve been reading more lately about how it will be a positive for Obama if the GOP takes back the House and possibly the Senate. Give him an enemy to actually focus on. The problem with most of this is thinking is this: Obama is ain’t no Bill Clinton.

    As has been mentioned in this thread, Obama is an ideologue. On top of that, Obama’s White House staff are also ideologues. Unless Obama cleans house after November, there is no one there to pull him to the center or nudge him or mildly suggest he take that course of action.

    I fully expect Obama to dig in his heels and charge full speed ahead against a Republican House and/or Senate.*

    *Of course, this will require the GOP leadership to stand firm and principled…