PrintSeptember 14, 2009
The Obama Jingle: I Do It All for You
Speaking back in February of 2008 on the importance of giving the American people a clear choice, Barak Obama said, "This isn't about me and it's not about Senator Clinton. As I've said before, she was a friend before this campaign and she'll be a friend after it's over. I respect her as a colleague, and I congratulate her on her victories tonight." Little did she know on Super Tuesday that Obama would be sending her, as his Secretary of State, to such strategic countries as Cape Verde, Liberia, Barbados, and (according to the State Department) Texas, while assigning Iraq to the discombobulating Joe Biden, and dispatching her own illustriously unfaithful husband to rescue two female reporters in North Korea. As a former political rival, do you think she isn't seething about her slow submersion into oblivion? Couldn't you hear it in the way she snapped at the Congolese student? Do you think she isn't snarling under her breath that it is, in fact, all about Obama?
Some seven months later, during his acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention, Obama told the audience, "I stand before you tonight because all across America something is stirring. What the nay-sayers don't understand is that this election has never been about me. It's been about you." A noble sentiment, had there been any truth to it. In actuality, no president since JFK has been so fawned and ogled over by both fans and the press. Biden spelled it out, with characteristically foot-in-mouth fashion, when he said, "You've got the first mainstream African American, who's articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy." It was all about his mesmerizing presence: the slim physique, the stately cadence of his voice, the cool, confident demeanor, and, of course, the politically expedient color of his skin. It certainly wasn't about the content of his speeches, which was as vacuous as the now taunting mantra, "Hope and Change."
Almost a year later, during his Health Care press conference, amidst what has, heretofore, been a far less successful campaign, he told America, "This isn't about me. I have great health insurance, and so does every member of Congress. This debate is about the letters I read when I sit in the Oval Office every day, and the stories I hear at town hall meetings." Well, most of the American people oppose his ideas on health care. In fact, even after his rousing address to Congress, 41% strongly opposed it, compared to 27% that strongly favored it. Yet, if that speech is any indication, he has still not abandoned his attempts to foist nationalized healthcare, however incrementally, on the nation. So whose wishes do you think such a bill is about: his or those of his constituents, the American people?
Of course, the vast expansion of administrative powers is not about him, either. He has more czars at his immediate disposal than three centuries of Imperial Russia were able produce. One has to wonder how many times it has occurred to the president that, in as far (and only as far) as the cockeyed structure of his administration goes, he is indeed the king of kings. These czars are appointed by him, for the most part for undisclosed salaries, and are answerable to no one but him. With their help he has taken over banks, insurance companies, a significant portion of the automobile industry, and is currently vying for the health care industry, by way of the public option. As a member of the president's Economic Advisory Board, Jeffrey Immelt, The CEO of the conglomerate General Electric, which owns NBC, is but one pawn on his chessboard. In short, his power base is considerable.
Barack Obama's physique may be trimmer than that of any other president in American history. (I'm not absolutely sure, having not been able to find any pictures of Lincoln in swimming trunks.) Yet, when it comes to personal ambition, he is as great a glutton as has ever occupied the Oval Office, stuffing as much as he can of the private sector into his mouth and spitting out the bones of free enterprise, while using the Constitution as his napkin. But, of course, none of this is about him.
From the time he took office, he has set out to squander America's wealth through government spending and his own penchant for the high life. Who's paid for all his lavish parties at the White House, or his dates with Michelle to Broadway or Paris? American taxpayers have. And this amidst what he himself declared to be the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. It's not hard to imagine the First Lady's solution to the problems of both decreasing incomes and obesity in this country: "Let ‘em eat rice cakes!"
Moreover, how many generations of Americans will have to pay for a deficit that's spiraling out of control? It's now projected to go up to nine trillion dollars in ten years, by his administration's own reworked computations . Given their ability for psychotically optimistic forecasts (22% off, after but eight months?!), should we not expect the actual deficit to be much, much higher, especially if his schemes on Healthcare and Cap and Trade pass into law? And as the already humongous federal government bloats ever larger, so swells the influence and power of its chief executive. Yet...it's not about him.
Finally, we have the controversial exercise issued and then withdrawn by the Department of Education as a supplement to the President's recent address to school kids. It directed them to write a letter detailing how they will help the President. The objections to this exercise would have been minimal, were it not for these other issues, which together cause any discriminating thinker to question what the president might be up to. He appears to be trying very hard to bankrupt capitalism and subjugate the country to his will, as would any aspiring dictator. When you consider that, in any dictatorship, commanding the loyalty of the youth is essential, isn't there reason to wonder why these kids were not told to write about how they will help the country? Assuming, of course, that it really isn't about him.
But, of course, there is precedence for patriotic service to the president, rather than to the country. Go back to the formative years of our republic. Wasn't it Nathan Hale who said, "I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my president?" And didn't Steven Decatur later declare, "Our president! In his struggle to lead the moronic masses, may he always be in the right; but our president, right or wrong!" Then there is that most famous of presidential statements, uttered by JFK at his inauguration, "Ask not what your president can do for you, but what you can do for your president."
"It's not about me," Obama has repeatedly stated. To use a common line, modified from Shakespeare's Hamlet, "Me thinks thou dost protest too much." Translation: the more you assert your innocence in this matter, el Presidente, the less people will believe you.
On second thought, just keep talking.
On second thought, just keep talking.
