PrintSeptember 25, 2009
Obama and the Trust Factor
For the scant few media folks still scratching their heads in puzzled frustration over the massive displays of public discontent with Barack Obama's presidency, this one's for you. No, the discontent is not about his race, his smoking or whether he wears a helmet while riding his bike. It's not about his wife's biceps or her shorts or her fake eyelashes. It's not even about the President's vainglorious love of the cameras.
No, no, no. It's the trust factor, honey.
When a man campaigns for the presidency as an anti-ideological moderate, a lover of bi-partisan reconciliation, and vows to regain America's foothold on the world's respect, and then after becoming president, shoots down real bi-partisan input with a petulant, "I won," governs high-handedly from the farthest-left corner of American politics, all the while playing cozy-up with America's self-proclaimed enemies and arrogantly dissing our heretofore friends, then the citizens quite naturally feel they've been sucker-punched in the gut. And being sucker-punched in the gut tends to bring out the rudeness in even the most civil people.
On the pinnacle issue of the president's domestic agenda, healthcare reform, candidate Obama promised a completely open C-SPAN debate but instead has given Americans backroom deals and the same speech, recycled and spit out more than a hundred different ways. And the more Obama fights back against the so-called "smears," the more professional analysts jump into the verbal fray, calling him out on his own misinformation, falsehoods and crumbling credibility.
If universal healthcare proves to be the president's Waterloo, as suggested by Sen Jim DeMint (R-SC), the mushrooming ACORN scandal may yet be his Watergate. ACORN is the group that gave Barack Obama his teeth-cutting, political activist creds with their Project Vote drive in 1992. That was just the start of a blossoming, quite-close relationship between the President and ACORN.
As John Fund enumerated in the Wall Street Journal this week, Barack Obama also was a trainer for ACORN's Chicago conferences and became their lawyer in 1995, working to coerce Illinois to fully implement the federal Motor Voter Law, which was then "exploited by ACORN employees in an effort to flood voter rolls with fake names."
Barack Obama, in December 2007, announced to great community-organizer fanfare that the ACORN folks would be right beside him to "shape his agenda" for transforming America. President Obama seems to have lots of ‘splainin' to do on his ties to ACORN. What he knew, when he knew it, stuff like that.
In the realm of foreign policy, it appears that the only folks on the planet who can really trust our president are dictators, despot-wannabes and the ex-KGB honcho in Russia. It's downright worrisome when one recalls how Obama parried a 2008 question by CBS News as to whether he ever had any doubts about his foreign-policy experience. Rather than give a credible answer, the utterly-inexperienced Obama replied with the unequivocal, gallingly audacious, godlike, "NEVER."
Ousted Honduran dictator-wannabe, Zelaya, has received strident, meddling support from President Obama while the Iranian protesters risking life and limb for more freedom have gotten the cold shoulder. Poland and the Czech Republic got a big finger poke in the eye on missile defense, while Obama reaped the praises of the Russian Bear. Castro joined the cheers-to-Barack chorus Wednesday when Obama made his kumbayah-to-the-world speech at the UN. Iran is continuing her nuke plan and getting gasoline from Chavez, while Israel is having her face shoved in the mud. Obama's foreign policy is the most transparent thing about his administration.
President Obama never doubts himself or, apparently, our enemies. He saves all his doubts for the American people and our former friends around the globe. What's not to like? All the while, we dissenters are the ones who are in the President's eyes, "rude."
Oh, ye President of Thin-beyond-Thin Skin, a single, constrained shout-out of "You lie" and a few snarky posters don't even come close to the traditional incivility of the peculiar American bent.
Tar and feathers. Now, that's rude.
Burning in effigy. Now, that's real disdain .
Women in pink lingerie, with red-paint soaked hands shouting "war criminal" in your face. Now, that's uncivil.
So, again for establishment-media ninnies, when a man masquerades as an America-loving moderate to get elected and then behaves in opposite fashion, striking one loathsome thrust after another at America's gut, the resulting massive dissent isn't about the color of his skin, his little irksome habit of self-glorification or his proclivity for condescending academy-speak.
It's the trust factor, honey. Or, it's his faulty moral compass, dear. Or, it's his dishonesty, stupid. Or, it's his utter lack of integrity, idiot. Or, it's his weak character, imbecile. Or, it's his love for America-hating despots, moron.
Feel free to pick the one that makes a nice, warm, cuddly fit with your own civility preference. A disingenuous political scoundrel by any other name is the same. And civility - or lack of it -- doesn't change a thing.
Copyright 2009 Creators Syndicate.
[Appears by special arrangememnt with Creators Syndicate.]
[Appears by special arrangememnt with Creators Syndicate.]
